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Every year I have one or more of my customers at the farmers
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market come up to me on a Saturday and hand me a baggie of
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seeds and say here I saved the seeds from that fantastic
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watermelon, cantaloupe, tomato, zucchini.
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Enter your favorite thing here that I bought from you.
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And at that point I'm absolutely stuck between figuring out which
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particular thing I grew that they're talking about and which
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variety of that particular thing, whether or not it was
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open pollinated or a hybrid, and whether that fruit or veggie was
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mature enough to save the seeds from and be viable.
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I'm also stuck in my brain as to whether or not I should teach my
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well meaning customer the proper way to save seeds and which ones
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are worth saving, or to just smile gratefully and accept the
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baggie of mystery seeds and just let them be very proud of
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themselves. In most instances, I opt for the
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second one unless I know that that customer is also a gardener
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and would benefit from more information like the first
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option. It's really hard for me not to
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teach people this stuff. Y'all I even if they don't care
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about it. So saving seeds from our gardens
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to use the next spring is a great way to not only help our
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budget out a little bit, but also to give ourselves some food
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security. And it doesn't sound like it
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should be a very difficult task at that point.
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We're not relying on someone else to grow our seeds for us
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that we have to buy over and over again.
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Just collect the seeds from whatever you want to keep and
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rinse them and dry them and then pack them away for next year,
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right? Well, yes, but also no.
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The method that I just described can absolutely mean that you'll
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have beautifully preserved seeds that have fantastic germination
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the next season and will yield a bounty of exactly what you
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thought you were planting. But it's also equally possible
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that you will open that seed packet the next season to find
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fuzzy Gray fungus or seeds that don't sprout properly.
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Or maybe they do sprout and then you get midway through the
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gardening season and the fruit on that plant looks absolutely
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nothing like the one that you saved the seeds from.
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So today on Just Grow Something, we are going to dig into which
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plants you should and shouldn't be saving seeds from, how to
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properly collect, clean and dry those seeds in order to best
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guarantee your success next season, and how to quickly test
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them before you store them to know if they're viable.
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Let's dig in. Hey, I'm Karen, I started
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gardening in a small corner of my suburban backyard and now 18
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years later, I've got a degree in horticulture and operate a 40
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acre market farm. I believe there is power in food
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and that everyone should know how to grow at least a little
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bit of their own. On this podcast, I share
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evidence based techniques to help you plant, grow, harvest
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and store all your family's favorites.
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Consider me your friend in the garden.
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So grab your garden journal and a cup of coffee and get ready to
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just grow something. Before we jump in to this week's
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episode, I want to bring back a little something from earlier in
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the season and I want to do a question of the month for you.
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Now that we are into September and we are sort of winding down
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the summer part of the gardening season and we're heading into
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fall, I really want to know what was your biggest success in the
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garden this season? Send me a message, send me a DM.
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Go ahead and send me an e-mail reply to this episode from
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within Spotify, however you want to do it.
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This will also be in the e-mail this morning, so you can reply
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directly from the e-mail or you can just directly e-mail me to a
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grow at just growsomethingpodcast.com and let
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me know what was your biggest success in the garden this year?
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So there are three things that we need to think about or we
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need to know when we are trying to save our own seeds.
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Number one is which seeds should be saved in order to reproduce
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the plant we grew this year #2 is what the fruit or vegetable
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looks like when it's mature, and #3 is how to test the seeds for
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viability before putting them into storage.
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There is a #4 to this, and that's how to properly store
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them. But we'll go over that one next
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week. This week, let's dig into the
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saving of the seeds and we'll start with which plants we
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actually want to save seeds from.
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When saving seeds, we want to start with open pollinated
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varieties rather than hybrids. So we talked about this a little
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bit a couple weeks ago when we were talking about open
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pollinated versus heirloom versus hybrid versus GMO.
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If an open pollinated variety self pollinates or cross
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pollinates with other plants of the same plant variety, they set
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seed that grows into plants that are still very similar to the
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parent plant and they bear fruit that are similar to the parent
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fruit. OK, open pollinated varieties
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might be called heirlooms. Those are the ones that are
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passed down through generations. We talked about that in that
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episode. But regardless, you know,
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whether we're using the term open pollinated or heirloom and
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sometimes they're used interchangeably.
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The the only difference between those is how long the variety
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has actually been recognized. They all will produce or
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reproduce true to type if they are properly pollinated either
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by self pollinating, which is like most tomatoes, or cross
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pollinating with another plant of the same type, like plants in
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the cucumber family, right, The curcubits.
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Often times we associate this, you know, idea of open
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pollination with tomatoes. But there are plenty of squash,
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beans, peas, melons, cucumbers, lettuces, beets, all of those
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things that are hybrids that will not reproduce the same way
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if you save the seeds. And there are plenty of open
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pollinated varieties of all these plants out there too.
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Your seed catalog or your seed packet is going to tell you if
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they are a hybrid or not. If you bought the plant and it
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had a label with it, one of those little Pixie stakes that
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sticks into the pots, often times it will indicate if it's
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an F1 hybrid. If you bought it from a private
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grower, you may not know. So as long as you have the name,
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you should be able to go back and look.
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You can just look online to find out whether or not it's a hybrid
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or not. OK, so planning for seed saving
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may start way back in the spring when you first select which
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plants you're going to grow. Now, because cross pollination
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with another variety of the same plant species will produce
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viable seeds but not the same offspring, you will need to take
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a little bit of care and planting in your garden to
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guarantee the seeds that you produce will be true to type,
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right? Let me say that again, if you
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are growing a variety of cucumbers and you are Bryant
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growing a different variety of cucumbers or you are growing
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something that is also in the cucumber family, the Curcubit
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family, which includes zucchini, if they cross pollinate, they
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will produce fruit this year and those fruit will be exactly what
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you expect them to be. But if you save the seeds from
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one of those that has cross pollinated, it is going to be
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completely different. It will be a result of that
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cross right plants with separate male and female flowers.
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So squashes, melons, cucumbers, they might cross pollinate with
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each other and it is very difficult to keep the seed
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strain pure if you are growing more than one type of those in
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your garden, right? We've talked about like problems
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that we see in our cucumbers or zucchini, if they aren't
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properly pollinated, they get those shrunken or curled ends on
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them or they have a complete, you know, failure to grow out on
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the plant. So we know insects are
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responsible for pollinating our cucumbers, our melons, our
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zucchinis, our pumpkins. But that same cross pollination
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that we rely on to produce this year's crop is also what may
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prevent any of our saved seeds from that crop from producing
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the fruit that we expect, or even any fruit at all.
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Because sometimes when you get these cross pollinations, it
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ends up in a terminal seed, meaning it is not one that will
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actually produce a fruit. It will produce a nice big
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beautiful plant and it will flower, but you won't get any
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fruits that actually survive. So cross pollination will not
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affect the quality of this year's crops.
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So it's only a concern if you are saving seeds.
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OK, let me give you an example of this.
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There are both melons and cucumbers that fall into the
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species cucumber's Milo. So if you plant these two
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closely together in the garden, the insects may bring pollen
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from 1:00 to the other and that's cross pollinating.
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You will absolutely get the cucumbers and the melons that
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you expect this year. But if you save the seeds and
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grow them the following year, you will be growing a hybrid.
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Now, hybrid plants are products of crosses between, between two
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or more different varieties of the same species.
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So they are combining all of the traits of the parent plants.
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Now, sometimes a combination is really, really good.
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It produces plants that have, you know, better growth vigor,
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they have better disease resistance and productivity,
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right? These are the plants that we
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typically see crossed and developed intentionally for
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those traits. They're not just kind of
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happenstance out in the garden. These are done by plant breeders
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specifically. And that's why the hybrid seeds
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that we buy are generally more expensive because they cost more
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to produce, right? And these plants may produce a
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better result. It's not to say that an
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accidental cross in the garden hasn't produced beautiful
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hybrids. It's just to say that you won't
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know what you're going to get when you save the seeds from a
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random garden hybridization. This also means that you won't
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know what you're getting the following year if you save the
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seeds from an F1 hybrid that you purchased.
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So let's use tomatoes for an example.
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They are self pollinating, they have both male and female parts
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in the same flower, and they don't need the insects to
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pollinate them. It's less likely that they're
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going to cross pollinate with each other with another tomato
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in your yard if you grow them fairly closely together.
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But if you grow a hybrid variety to start with, so like a big boy
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or a beef master or an early girl, and you save those seeds,
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the plants grown from those seeds are not going to be
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identical to the hybrid parent. They will be a completely new
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combination of the good and the bad traits of the plants from
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that initial cross. They will always revert back to
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some of the parent plant traits from the original cross.
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Right? It is impossible to predict just
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how that seedling plant will perform or what qualities of
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fruit will have. That is why when you grow
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hybrids, you buy new seeds every year because that's how you're
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guaranteeing it. You want the 1st generation, you
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don't want the next generation. That's what that F1 stands for.
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Genetics Sir. Just kind of funny that way.
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I mean, you certainly can plant them.
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It's a totally fun experiment if you have the room in your garden
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and the inclination to, you know, try something like that.
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But it's certainly not what you want to aim for if your goal is
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to save your own seeds and continue your garden with the
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same plants that you grew the very first year.
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So if you want to save seeds from your garden and you want
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them to be the variety of plant that you grew this year, you
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need to A choose an open pollinated variety and B unless
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they are self pollinating like beans or tomatoes, you have to
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make sure that you space the plants in those same species far
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enough away from each other that there are very little chance of
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them crossing. Or you only grow 1 variety
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within that species so that there's no chance of them cross
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pollinating and you sort of creating your own hybrid.
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Unless you want to experiment and then you know what, go for
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it, no holds barred. So that answers consideration #1
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which plants we should save seeds from?
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The second question is what do those plants look like at
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maturity? Or rather, what do the fruits of
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those plants look like at maturity and why does this
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matter? In order to have mature seeds
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that are viable and able to regrow the next year, we have to
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have mature fruit. And many of the things that we
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harvest to eat, we harvest before they are mature.
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So let's take zucchini for example.
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The zucchini or corgget, depending on where you live that
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we are familiar with, is of course a summer staple, but it
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is actually harvested when the seeds and the skin are still
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very tender and immature. The seeds inside the typical
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zucchini that we pick to eat are not mature and so if we save
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those, they are not going to sprout the next year to produce
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a new plant. Now that ginormous baseball bat
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sized zucchini that you hauled out of the garden because you
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missed harvesting it for like a full 10 days in a row, Yeah,
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that one might be mature. We're looking for the epicarp or
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the skin of the zucchini to be solid enough that you can't push
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a fingernail through it easily, right?
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If that's the case, that it likely is mature enough to save
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the seeds. It takes a while for the
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zucchini to get to this stage. And this goes for any summer
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type squash. This also goes for all of your
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eggplants and anything in the cucumber family.
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When the fruit is still edible to our palate, it's very likely
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that the seeds are still immature.
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So we need to leave a few fruits to fully mature out in the
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garden when we want to save the seeds from those.
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Now for things like tomatoes or Peppers, melons and winter
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squashes, those are usually harvested when they are mature.
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So those seeds should be viable unless you're picking like green
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tomatoes or you're picking extraordinarily young, you know,
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gourds or loofah to eat them young.
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If you've let them get to when they are supposed to, you know,
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be mature, then they those seeds should be viable.
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It's also easy to save seeds from other annuals like lettuce
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or peas or beans. They self pollinate and they set
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seed very readily when they are mature.
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So you can leave them on the plant to dry and then just
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collect them that way. But not all plants are annuals.
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They won't all flower and set seed and die off in a single
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growing season. We also have biennials in our
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gardens. Now.
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Generally speaking, we are growing them as annuals because
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that's when we are harvesting them.
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But things like carrots and beets and onions don't generally
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flower until their second growing season.
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They are technically biennials and they have gone through a
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cold period at that point. So that means that we have to
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protect that plant over the winter and wait for it to flower
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the next year in order to be able to save the seeds.
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Now, this is totally doable if you are in a mild climate, but
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if you would live in a very cold climate, that plant may need
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extra protection. It may also need extra
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protection if you have a lot of wildlife in your garden.
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So if you're trying to overwinter something to save it
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for the next season and allow it to go ahead and produce seeds,
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then you may have to rely on heavy layers of mulch.
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You may also have to put row covers over top just to keep the
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animals, the critters out of them.
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So if you're planning to save seed from an annual, it's very
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straightforward. If it's a fruiting type of
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plant, you want to wait until you have this beautiful specimen
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on a very healthy plant. We want to choose healthy
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specimens, not diseased, and you want to let it get to full
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maturity. You want to perpetuate the genes
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of the biggest and the best in your garden so that you can grow
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the biggest and the best the next season.
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So we say save the seeds from the best and eat the rest,
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right? It does not take a ton of these
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fruits to save a large number of seeds.
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Have you ever looked really closely to see exactly how many
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seeds are in a tomato or a cucumber?
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Now, if you want to save seeds from a legume like a pea or a
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bean, then you likely want to just pick a few of your best
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looking plants and mark those in some way.
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Tie a ribbon or a string around them or sort of push them over
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to the side and mark them as your seed producers because you
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want to leave them on the the vine or the plant.
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You want them to get big and fat and dry.
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And so as you start to do that and you leave them on the plant,
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they're likely going to slow down their production.
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So my recommendation is keep a set of plants over here that
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you're actually harvesting from. Because as we continue to
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harvest, they want to produce more flowers, which means they
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continue to produce a crop and then leave these ones over here
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that are just kind of hanging out and allowing those pods to
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get to maturity and dry because more than likely that plant is
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going to stop producing. If the plant that you want to
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save seed from is a dry seed like lettuce or most herbs,
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these are the kind that sort of produce a flower that sets the
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seed, then you may or may not be able to harvest anything from
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those plants. Or you may only be harvesting
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for a very short time and then just allowing them to go to
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seeds so you can collect them. So if you're relying on all of
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your lettuces and you want to harvest all of your lettuces,
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but then you decide that you do want to actually save some seed
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from them, then you may again have to plant a whole separate
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little couple of plants that are specific just for saving your
00:18:01
seeds. The same thing can go for your
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herbs too. If you're growing basil, for
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example, and you want them to go to flower, you may pick one
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plant that you allow to set seed and go to flower and continue
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harvesting off of the other ones.
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So it does take some planting. Now, if the plant that you want
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to save from is a biennial, that makes the planning a little bit
00:18:20
more important, right? So carrots, beets, onions,
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parsley, all of our biennials, they don't set seed until their
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second year. They're going to need a little
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bit of extra care. You might not be able to grow
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those long enough to collect seed if you are in an area that
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gets really extreme cold and very hard frozen ground in the
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winter. So your root crops may not do
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well in the most extreme climates, and because they may
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not survive, they might very well rot in the ground.
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And so they're not going to come back up again the next year.
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But if you are in a more temperate climate where these
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things can overwinter fairly easily and you can, you know,
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protect them from the wildlife, you just need to plan for it a
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little bit. Either plant a bed specifically
00:19:00
for seed saving or just again mark the ones in partial rows
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that you intend to overwinter so they don't get harvested by
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mistake and that you know that you can go ahead and protect
00:19:10
them in some way. If you do get inclement weather
00:19:13
over the winter, make sure you have that plot sort of mapped
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out on your garden plan. Otherwise, or mark the bed in
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some way so that you know what's happening for the spring.
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That way you don't accidentally go and dig them up when you're
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trying to prep your garden beds again the next year and thwart
00:19:28
all of your own plans that you made for for being able to
00:19:30
select or collect those seeds. So if you're new to seed saving,
00:19:35
you may want to start with the really easy annuals like peas
00:19:39
and beans and tomatoes. They are annuals, they're self
00:19:43
pollinating, they require little to no isolation, and you really
00:19:47
only need a few plants to reliably produce enough seeds
00:19:51
and still be able to get a harvest to eat fresh.
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Now that you know what you can save seed from and what it means
00:19:59
for them to be mature, how do we harvest those seeds and test to
00:20:04
be sure that they're any good for the next year?
00:20:09
So our dry seeded crops, things like grains, lettuce, beans,
00:20:15
herbs, other plants that will go to seed that don't actually
00:20:19
produce a fruit, right? These can be removed from the
00:20:23
plant once the seeds are dry and hard.
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So just knock off the dust and the dirt and you're basically
00:20:29
set to go. You don't even actually have to
00:20:31
pull them out of their pods, just so long as they are
00:20:33
actually dry. But while you were waiting for
00:20:36
them to dry, you might actually want to protect them from birds
00:20:40
and wind. So you can tie paper bags over
00:20:44
the top of the seed heads. You can use little organza bags
00:20:47
as well, just to provide some protection so the birds don't
00:20:50
take off with your seeds or the wind doesn't knock them to the
00:20:53
ground. Now, if we're talking about
00:20:55
fruits from wet fruited crops, these are things like tomatoes,
00:20:59
squashes, cucumbers, things that have some sort of, you know, wet
00:21:04
gel in the inside surrounding that seed.
00:21:08
We generally either crush or cut these open and the seeds are
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extracted from the flesh and the pulp before being dried.
00:21:15
So with our with with these ones, again, make sure that they
00:21:18
are fully ripened and then bring them in, cut them open and scoop
00:21:23
out the seeds along with the gel that is surrounding them.
00:21:27
And then you can go ahead and cook and eat up the rest.
00:21:29
If it's a tomato or squash or whatever, take those seeds and
00:21:32
the gel and you put it into a glass jar with some water, fill
00:21:36
it up with the water, swirl it or stir it around.
00:21:39
Do this about twice a day and just set it aside.
00:21:42
That mixture is going to ferment just a little bit and the seeds
00:21:45
are going to kind of sink out of the gel and sink to the bottom
00:21:49
within about, you know, four or five days or so.
00:21:52
This makes pulling that gel off really easily.
00:21:55
It's also helping to prevent some of the bad bacteria from
00:21:57
hanging on because you're fermenting that a little bit.
00:22:00
So then all you have to do is pour off the liquid, rinse off
00:22:02
those seeds, spread them out on a paper towel, and just let them
00:22:06
dry. You can pat them dry, whatever.
00:22:08
Just make sure they're dry before you put them away.
00:22:10
If it's coming from a fruit like a pepper that does not have that
00:22:15
kind of gel in the inside, then you just want to sort of let
00:22:18
those Peppers sit out on the plant until they are fully ripe
00:22:22
and they kind of start to become wrinkly and then you know
00:22:25
they're done. And then it's easy peasy.
00:22:27
Cut them open, pull the seeds out from the Peppers, spread
00:22:30
them out to dry, and that's it. There's not much else to do when
00:22:33
you're talking about peas and beans and lettuce and those
00:22:36
herbs. You just want to, again, allow
00:22:39
those pods to ripen on the plant until they are dry.
00:22:43
Stay there until they are starting to turn brown.
00:22:45
The seeds are rattling in the inside of the pods.
00:22:48
If it's lettuce or something and the herbs you're going to see,
00:22:51
the seeds themselves are going to just sort of dry right there.
00:22:54
This is a really good time to make sure you're covering them
00:22:56
because at this point they fall off very easily.
00:22:59
So if you put a paper bag over top of them, you're going to
00:23:01
have less of a chance of losing them.
00:23:04
Just know that if you're doing like peas and beans, it may be a
00:23:09
full month after you would normally harvest them to eat
00:23:14
before you harvest them to store.
00:23:16
So you have to have a little bit of patience and just watch them
00:23:19
get get dry and brown. At that point you can just take
00:23:22
the pods right off the plant and you can store them that way.
00:23:25
You can just lay them out, you know, indoors to to make sure
00:23:28
they're completely dry and then just store them in the pods.
00:23:32
Otherwise leave them for about two weeks and then shell them
00:23:37
taking the seeds out and then go ahead and store them.
00:23:40
So for the lettuces and the herbs, they're going to be dry
00:23:42
and brown on the stock. So just put a paper bag over the
00:23:45
top of the seed head and then just kind of strip it off or
00:23:48
shake the seeds into the bag and then once again lay them out on
00:23:50
a paper towel. Make sure they're completely dry
00:23:52
before you put them away. OK, so once we've gone through
00:23:59
all of this work to grow and to harvest and to dry our seeds,
00:24:04
how do we know if what we've collected are actually OK to
00:24:07
plant the next season? Are they going to grow or did we
00:24:10
just waste all of our time and now we're storing something
00:24:13
that's not going to work for us the next year?
00:24:15
If there is any doubt, you can do a quick germination test.
00:24:18
All you're going to do is take a couple of layers of paper towels
00:24:21
and you're going to moisten them.
00:24:23
Then pick out 10 seeds from what it is that you are planning to
00:24:27
save. Put those 10 seeds spaced out on
00:24:30
1/2 of those towels and then fold the other half over on top.
00:24:34
That means you've got moisture in contact with that seed.
00:24:37
And then take the whole thing and put it into a plastic bag
00:24:40
and seal it up to trap that moisture.
00:24:42
Now you want to mark this plastic bag with what type of
00:24:47
seed it is, the variety that it is, and the number of expected
00:24:51
days to germination. So things like radishes are only
00:24:54
going to take a couple of days, cucumbers and tomatoes about
00:24:57
five to seven days. Peppers can take like 10 to 14
00:25:00
days. Sometimes the hot Peppers can
00:25:01
take up to three weeks. So you want to make sure that
00:25:04
you are marking that on the bag so you don't mistakenly think
00:25:08
that the seeds weren't viable and end up tossing them.
00:25:10
You want to wait the appropriate amount of time.
00:25:13
Once you've got it all marked and sealed up, put those into a
00:25:16
warm place. I mean, on a kitchen counter on
00:25:18
top of your refrigerator near a sunny window.
00:25:20
So long as they don't get too hot, We don't want to cook them,
00:25:22
we want to sprout them, and we're just going to wait for
00:25:25
those to germinate. So just keep checking them every
00:25:28
couple of days until the expected days to germination has
00:25:31
passed, and then count the number that's sprouted to figure
00:25:36
out your percentage of germination.
00:25:38
So if eight of the 10 seeds sprouted, you've got an 80%
00:25:41
germination rate and that is fantastic.
00:25:43
And those seeds are good to go into storage for the next year.
00:25:46
If you get less than 50% germination, then you might try
00:25:51
saving some different seeds. If you still have time to do
00:25:53
that in your season, 60 to 70% is OK.
00:25:57
You might choose to either save some different seeds or just
00:26:02
save the ones that you've already got and maybe double up
00:26:04
your planting rate the next season.
00:26:05
Just make sure you mark that when you go to put them in
00:26:08
storage. But if you've got 75%
00:26:10
germination or higher than just go ahead and plant as usual.
00:26:13
You have done your job, so next week we're going to talk about
00:26:17
the proper ways to store seeds and how to be sure that you're
00:26:21
not storing diseased seeds if your garden is especially prone
00:26:25
to certain diseases. Until next time, my gardening
00:26:28
friends, keep on cultivating that dream garden, and we'll
00:26:30
talk again soon. Thanks for listening to another
00:26:33
episode of the Just Grow Something podcast.
00:26:36
For more information about today's topic and to find all
00:26:38
the ways you can get in touch with me or support the show, go
00:26:41
to justgrowsomethingpodcast.com. Until next time, my gardening
00:26:45
friends, keep learning and keep growing.