Saving Seeds for Next Year’s Garden

Not long ago, it was easy to find seeds for 99 cents a packet and sometimes less.  Those days are gone and while seeds are still a bargain when you think about all the growth, beauty and produce that comes from one packet of seeds, saving your own seeds is one way to offset the cost of gardening.

First a short lesson in genetics is necessary.  Open pollinated varieties retain their distinct characteristics as long as they are pollinated with the same variety or breed of plant.  Seed saved from open pollinated plants will produce identical plants to their parent. Hybrids, which are created by crossing plants of two different varieties, generally do not produce offspring with the same traits as the parent plant.  Start your seed saving adventure with open pollinated plants to ensure you get the crop you were hoping for next season.

Open pollinated varieties produce seeds in three ways.  Annual plants flower, set seed and die in a single growing season such as lettuce, tomatoes and peppers. In my garden, when my open pollinated varieties of lettuce bolt, I leave them in place.  They delight me with fluffy flowers and next come the seed heads.   I wait to pick them until the seeds are dry and then gather them in a paper bag to complete their drying process.  I keep the bag in a cool, dark and dry location.  Then I sort the seeds from the plant material and put them into a jar for the next growing season.  It is easy and I get a lot of seeds.  Tomatoes are a bit different.  Their seeds carry a gel coating.  Save the seeds when the fruit is ripe to eat.  Scoop seeds into a jar, add water and let them ferment a few days.  The good seeds sink and then rest you pour off.  Dry seeds on a plate and save for next growing season in a jar or envelope.  Pepper seeds are easy!  Save seed from fully ripe peppers.  In most cases, they will be red.  Even banana peppers turn red when fully ripe.  Do a little research to figure out what your fully ripe, open pollinated peppers look like.  Remove the seeds (wear gloves with hot peppers) and spread onto a plate to dry.  It typically takes 5-7 days.  Don’t dry seeds on paper towels.  They stick and it makes them hard to remove.

Biennials, such as carrots, parsnips and onions, don’t flower until their second growing season after they have gone through a cold period called vernalization.  Each year I leave a few parsnips in the ground after I harvest them in very early spring.  They are the first crop I harvest out of the garden.  By midsummer, they send up lovely flowers.  The larvae of a native moth eats some of the plant.  I don’t worry about this “damage” as I always get enough seeds.  When the seed heads dry, I collect them in a paper bag and treat them like the lettuce seed.

Long lived plants such as asparagus, rhubarb and many flowers and trees are perennials, surviving and flowering for many years.  No need for seed collection with perennials plants. 

Sharing the seeds you collect with gardening friends is a great way to spread the love of seeds.