You’ve toiled a good bit over the plants you harvested today and you want to make the most of them, right? Besides using all parts of the veggies for cooking, you can make sure the seeds of the excellent specimens don’t go to waste, too – here’s how to save seeds from your own garden!
Saving seeds from the plants in your garden seems like a straightforward and easy task, but it requires some knowledge. You need to pick only the best plants, harvest the seeds at the right time and store them well for them to keep their germination properties longer. Here are a few tips you can follow!
How to pick the right plants?
Look for the easiest option if this is your first year – you’ll find tomatoes, beans, peas and peppers in this group. Their flowers are self-pollinating, and their seeds don’t need much to survive the winter.
Plants with separate male and female flowers may cross-pollinate making it difficult to keep the seed strain pure. The seeds you will get will no longer have the good and pure characteristics of the parent plant. So, it’s best to be cautious when trying to get seeds from corn, cucumber, melons, pumpkins and gourds for example.
Try to save seed only from open-pollinated varieties rather than hybrids. They can be self-pollinated or cross-pollinated by other plants in the same variety, but they will always grow into plants with very similar properties as the parent plant.
How to harvest the seeds?
Here are tips how to save the seeds for tomatoes, beans, and peppers!
Tomatoes:
1. Pick out ripe fruits
2. Scoop the seeds and the gel they’re in
3. Put them in a glass with water
4. Stir twice daily until the mixture ferments and the seeds sink to the bottom (5 days approximately)
5. Remove the liquid, rinse the seeds and let them dry on a paper towel.
Peppers:
1. Let some of the fruits stay on the plant until they go fully ripe and start to wrinkle
2. Remove the seeds and let them dry on a paper towel
3. Yes, it’s that easy!
Beans and peas:
1. Let some of the pods stay on the plant until they start turning brown and the seeds start to rattle inside (this may take a month more than the time you usually pick the pods)
2. Harvest the pods and let them dry indoors
3. Leave the seeds inside the pods until it’s time to plant them
How to store seeds?
Best way to store the precious seeds you’ve collected? Good ol’ glass jars! Make sure they’re tightly sealed, and that you’re using a different container for each type of seed. Label them correctly with variety name and date, and keep them cool and dry (not in the fridge, though). You can use a sachet of silica-based desiccant.
Seeds you’ve collected can be used within one year – the older they get, the lesser the chances they’ll germinate.
If something goes wrong and your seeds fail to germinate – you can always count on Westar Seeds to provide you with fresh and high-quality seeds for your garden and farm. We treat and pack seeds carefully to ensure best germination properties and provide a separate line of defense against diseases. Give us a call at (760) 353-73333 to learn more about how we can help you grow more!
