Saving Seeds of Your Vegetables And Flowers-MG

Saving seeds of your vegetables and flowers can be an interesting and rewarding experience. Most gardeners, at one time or another, have picked seeds of some of our favorite plants, or have been given seeds, to grow the following year. Perhaps the results were not always as successful as we had hoped for several different reasons.

There are certain simple tips to help you to become a successful seed saver, and by practicing proper techniques, you will have good results with seed saving.

The easiest seeds to save are from open-pollinated, non-hybrid annuals. Plants that are not self-pollinating can cross-pollinate; therefore, it is best to grow only one variety from which to save seed. If you grow two types of hybrid squash, for instance, near each other, the resultant seed will likely be a cross of the two, and the offspring will likely not be very tasteful. For home gardeners, it is best not to save seed from different hybrid varieties of peppers, melons, pumpkins, cucumbers and squash, because these plants will cross-pollinate easily; therefore, they need to be separated in greater spaces than most home gardeners use.

Biennial plants, such as beets, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, onions, parsley, parsnips, Swiss chard, and turnips, require more work as they do not send up seed stalks until their second year of growth.

Vegetable seeds most easily saved are non-hybrid tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers, and summer squash. To save seeds of these plants, wait until they are fully mature, beyond the good eating stage. For instance, wait until tomatoes are dead-ripe, peppers until they turn red, and squash, until you cannot dent them with your finger.

Tomato seeds are encased in a gelatinous coating, which prevents them from sprouting inside the tomato. Remove this coating by fermenting it. This mimics the natural rotting of the fruit and also kills seed -borne tomato disease. Squeeze the seeds from the fully ripe fruit into a bowl, add water, and let stand at room temperature for about three days. Once fermentation occurs, mold will form on the surface of the water.

Add more water, stir, and then gently scrape mold and debris off the top. Repeat until only clean seeds remain, then strain, rinse, and leave the seeds on a smooth surface, such as a saucer, until dry. Do not use absorbent materials such as a paper towel because the dried seeds adhere and are very difficult to remove.

For peppers, cut them open, scrape seeds onto a plate and let seeds dry. For beans, peas and other legumes, leave pods on the plant until they are rattle dry. For squash, wait until you cannot dent the skin with your fingernail, cut open and scrape the seeds into a bowl, then wash, drain and dry.

For most flower seeds, wait until the blossoms have completely dried, then depending on the type, either shake out seeds from pods or pull seeds from the dried flower.

After being sure the seeds are thoroughly dry, proper storage is important to maintain their viability. Used 35-mm film cases, prescription medicine bottles, or other small containers with lids work very well. Most seeds, except the legumes (beans, peas, etc.) are best placed in plastic bags or glass jars with lids, and stored in the freezer. For beans, peas, etc., they need to breathe, and should be stored in cloth bags, then placed in a glass container with some dried powdered milk to absorb any moisture.

Be sure to label all your containers of dried seed with a marking pen to prevent any possible mix-up later on as to the variety of seed you are saving. About one day before you plan to plant the following spring, remove seeds from the freezer and allow to thaw, and they will then be ready for planting.

Be sure the seeds you plan to save are open-pollinated varieties. If you originally purchased them from commercial sources, a good way to tell if they are not hybrids is to check seed packets. If the variety name is given in Latin, it is likely that the plant was bred without deliberate human interference; if F1 or F2 appears in parentheses after the name, it is a hybrid; if the letters cv are visible, it means the seeds are from a cultivated variety and thus are not suitable for seed saving.

If you still like to grow open-pollinated varieties of vegetables and flowers, and do not particularly care to save your own seed, there are many different groups throughout the country who stock these types of seeds and they are available through web-sites or catalogues. One of the most prominent is Seed Savers Exchange, and many different older varieties of flowers and vegetables can be purchased from them.


		University of Missouri Extension Jasper County jasperco@missouri.edu Web site maintained by: Virginia Bryan bryanv@missouri.edu Last updated: 09/02/2009