How do you preserve seeds for next year?

AMKuska

AMKuska

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My husband and I would like to attempt saving some of the seeds from the garden for next year, but we've never done it before. Is it as simple as throwing it in an envelope and forgetting about it, or is there a trick to saving them? Are all seeds the same or are some different?
 
All are the same-all are different. I am saving seeds, learning as I go. Directions online say to ferment tomato seeds, then wash and clean them.... blah blah blah. So I did. Those annoying fruit gnats appeared and now they are everywhere. So I set the "fermenting" dish outside where it promptly got maggots. :sick I threw it away. Sigh. I think I'll try just drying some like my Daddy did.

Corn. easy. Get as dry as possible in the shuck, pull and shuck. Let dry, then shell. Put in a glass jar after VERY dry or it will mold.

My collard greens finally went to seed after 4 years. I got pruning loppers and chopped them all down but two and these bloomed and made seed pods. They got covered with gray aphids, absolutely covered. I just let them be. To have beneficial bugs, you gotta have bad bugs for them to eat. Sure enough, the ladybugs showed up, laid eggs, larve hatched out and they all had an aphid eating celebration. The seed pods dried and I picked them. I shelled them out and put the seeds in a saucer to further dry. I put them in an envelope.

I let a beet grow to a monsterous size and bloom. I saved the seed.....we'll see next season.

I have carrot blooms with tiny green seed pods in the garden now. Waiting for them to turn brown.

I have saved my green bean seeds for 5 years, give lots away and send them to my friends here on TEG.

I saved Voilet's Multicolored Butterbeans last year and planted them this year. They were in a envelope over the winter.

I am making progress and learning as I go.
 
You just described my list of interest, with the exception of wheat. Definitely interested in growing some next year.
 
There is a book that has been around for quite awhile, Seed to Seed, by Suzanne Ashworth.

I need to be a little more careful with seed. There is a little too much throwing it in an envelope and forgetting it at my house. Age is one problem. My age and the age of the seed. Nothing like counting on seed that grows like nothing ...

You need humid climate advice, @AMKuska . I have a great advantage: this is a pretty darn good seed growing region.

Steve
 
@baymule you are my hero! you really do have your stuff together when it comes to gardening! my beans didn't make it past a huge bunny that moved into the garden, but I have a few that you sent I will plant next year! I am drying my tomato seeds now and hope that this being the first non bean seed to dry it will work out.
@digitS' I have a big box of seeds that I bought and then forgot! I went through the entire house and dejunked and I am amazed by the amount of seeds just hiding around.
@AMKuska let us know how the seed collections go I will be very interested! ( a little bit of a coward to try to many things at once)
 
Each kind is handled a bit differently. Some things are easier to save than others. Some things cross easily and need to be isolated during pollination.

Easiest to save are tomatoes, beans and peas because they are pretty much self-pollinated and rarely cross. That's a good place to start. Hardest would be any kind of squash. They are bee pollinated and cross like crazy if not isolated by bagging blooms or a special screened box. This also leads to you having to hand pollinate them. Corn is easy if it is the only corn grown within like a mile. It's wind pollinated and subject to contamination. People grow a lot of field corn around here, so I'd have to take precautions. Brassicas are easy to save, but certain kinds can cross with each other. If you only have one per species, you can easily save them then. I've saved turnips and kale in the same season with no trouble because they are not the same species. Most flowers and herbs are easy.

To further complicate things, some things are biennial and take 2 years to get seed.

Then there are the differences in open-pollinated and hybrids. Don't save from hybrids unless you are willing to gamble. They will not come back true to the parent plant's characteristics.

So you'll really need to decide first what you want to save and research it individually. I have Seed to Seed by Suzanne Ashworth and it is very thorough, but it is also very technical and she makes some things sound harder to save than what they truly are, but it is a good how-to book if you want to learn how to do it right. A little Google searching would probably be a better place to start if you just want to jump right in.

You also only want to save seed from your best specimens that have good qualities that are true to form. That way you aren't furthering a bad trait and next year's harvest will hopefully be even better.
 
It sounds like I need to buy myself "Seed to Seed" and read it.
 
One thing you need to look at is whether the seeds have a stratification requirement. What stratification means is that some seeds need to see a certain amount of cold or even freezing weather before they germinate. When I think of this I usually think of tree seeds, not vegetables. Off the top of my head I can't think of any normal garden vegetable seeds that need this (hopefully someone will come up with one), but freezing them usually doesn't hurt. Some are supposed to do better with scarification. That's where you scratch them to help break up the tough outer coating, though I seldom do this before planting them. But scarification has nothing to do with your topic, storing them.

Another thing to consider is that things like to eat seeds. Seeds are packed with nutrients so are often prime meals for some critters. I've had mice eat seeds left out too long. I've had weevils eat bean seeds in a glass jar. I normally store bean seeds in the freezer for a week or so to kill weevils before I put them in a glass jar with an airtight lid for long term storage, or just leave them in the freezer until I'm ready to plant them. I keep my seeds in planting season in a plastic bucket so a mouse cannot climb inside. Seeds I store over winter go into glass jars with screw lids to protect them against critters.
 
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