Saving Your Seeds
I have written about how important the seeds that you buy are. We only buy open pollinating seeds. These are the two companies that we have bought from in the past:
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds – Here’s what their site says: We only offer open-pollinated seeds: pure, natural and non-GMO! We offer heirloom seeds from 70 countries, including many that we collected ourselves.
Seeds Of Change - They offer over 1200 different organic seeds to choose from
The reason that we buy from these companies is that we are able to save our seeds. This means that we can purchase seeds only one time. These seeds are more expensive than seeds that you buy at local stores. However, it is a one time purchase, after that, we are able to produce our own seeds. This is a huge savings for us. We continue to add different plants each year, and so our variety of plants has grown. We are now able to grow our garden FREE each year.
How To Save Your Seeds:
Saving your seeds is really, really simple! Anyone can do it.
1. Pick your very ripe and mature produce that is open-pollinating. You only want to save mature seeds. For instance, make sure that the watermelon seeds that you save are black.
2. Remove the seeds from the fruit or vegetable.
3. Spread the seeds out onto paper towels. If there is plant matter on the seeds, try to remove it. Make sure that none of your seeds are touching each other.
4. Label your paper towel with what types of seeds you have.
5. Leave the seeds out on your counter to dry for several days. You want to make sure that they are completely dry. Your squash seeds will probably stick to the paper towel. Just scrape them off, and they are fine to use.
6. Store your seeds for the next year. Your seeds need to be in a dry, cool, dark location. We typically put the seeds into baby food jars or ziploc bags and store them in the freezer to hold until the next year.
Alternate Method to Save Pea and Bean Seeds:
Peas and beans are also really easy to save. We typically select a few pea and bean plants in our garden that will never be picked. We allow the plant to produce peas and beans and dry on the vine. Once the seeds have completely dried on the plant, we pull them off to save them for the next year. To ensure that they are dry enough, you can still leave them out for a day as shown above. Peas and beans can just get mixed together, and it has been helpful for us to bring these in in large quantities.
More budget saving gardening tips
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Oh…I’ve always been fascinated by those who garden…I can’t wait to save my own seeds too.
Jana
We just bought our first few heirloom plants from a local university. Looking forward to saving the seeds! Have you ever had any failures when you saved the seeds? What distance do you recommend to keep them from cross pollinating?
So far I haven’t had any failures, but I am sure that I will someday. I try to keep plants as far away as possible to prevent cross pollination for those that will cross pollinate. We grow several types of peppers and tomatoes, so those are spaced out as far as they can be. Also, your squash and zucchini plants should be separated. I have had these plants as little as four feet apart, and they did not cross pollinate. However, we typically try to keep them much further apart. It can just be difficult when you are planning the garden. For peppers, I suggest planting the least spicy closer together until you get to the more spicy peppers. You definitely don’t want to be surprised when you eat a bell pepper, and it is spicy. Hope that helps! Rene