Acts of Seedition: A Practical Guide for Saving Seed
Seed Selection for Everyone
There’s no right or wrong way to save seeds. Some people are highly organized, others more laid-back in style. I once knew a gardener who made lovely hand-drawn illustrations of each plant variety on her homemade seed packets she made from recycled party invitation envelopes. I was more privy to junk mail envelopes since I didn’t usually receive formal invitations to anything. I’ve been growing food for many years, and I have a pretty good memory, so I don’t bother to write down the names of the plants on my makeshift packets. If I forget, I germinate them anyway and figure out plant's identity later from the shape of the leaf.
The more seasoned you get as a gardener in general, the more skills you learn to fall back on in times of now what did I put in this jar? In my view, the goal of gardening is to grow food and acquire skills. But if you want to have a really pretty or tightly organized way to save your seeds, go for it. What matters is simply that you do it.
Starting from Bought Seed
If you are getting started on planning your very first garden, or coming back to gardening after a long lull, of course you have to start somewhere. If you have friends who garden and save seed, call them first, because as you now know, many online catalogs already have wait-lists. For the seeds you are still able to buy, here’s some important tips to get you started in the right direction.
Select a Good Supplier.
By “good” I mostly mean ethical and fair. Pick a supplier, or a few suppliers, with clearly worded missions to foster organic food production and regenerative agriculture. Choose suppliers who provide plenty of contextual information about their seeds, not just pretty pictures.
Stay Local.
If possible, choose a supplier from within your local region. This benefits your local economy and increases your chances for a healthy and productive garden, even your first time around. Remember, while plants can live in several zones, it doesn’t mean they thrive in all those regions. Specificity of location and climate is everything when choosing which plants to grow. A local seed supplier much more likely to have the seeds best acclimated for your specific growing conditions.
Choose "Open Pollinated" Seeds.
While browsing the catalogs, this is yet another “gardening lingo” term you will encounter. Open-pollinated seeds are from plants that have not been cross-bred or exposed to pollen from plants that will cross-breed with them. Open-pollinated seeds produce plants true to type. Squash is an example of a plant that can easily be crossed with other varieties within its family. If you grow butternut squash interplanted with acorn squash, the seeds you end up with will be a cross of the two types. The problem is you don’t know which traits you will get, or even if the next year’s crop will be edible.
I’m all for gardeners learning through experimentation, but if your garden space is limited in size, you are better off choosing open-pollinated seeds to start with. The seeds those plant produce are good to save year after year and, provided they don’t accidentally cross with another type, will yield similar results.
If you are really taken by a showy hybrid variety, buy it as "an occasional treat." The hybrids sold in catalogs are “proven hybrids” — meaning that at least one generation will produce what you see in the picture. After that, it’s a gamble. It’s ok to gamble once in a while, as long as you also place many more safe bets.
Select the Best Plants for Seeds
You don’t need a degree in botany to select the best plants for seeds. But you do need to know what you’re looking for because it isn’t always the obvious factor. Here’s a few tried and true tips for getting the best possible produce from your saved seeds, year after year.
Pick a Work Horse, not a Showboat.
One mistake many novices make is to save seed from the biggest tomato on the plant, or the most enormous squash on the vine. Then, the following season, they are disappointed when their tomato plants all yield one bloated watery tomato, or one big mealy tasteless pumpkin. Even though those are exactly the traits they selected. What happened?
It’s easier and faster for a plant to produce simple watery tissues than complex starchy and sweet flesh. Don’t be seduced by the biggest melons. Choose fruits with the best flavor to select for the traits that really matter to your palate and health: taste and nutrition.
When it comes to gardening for resilience, you want to cultivate robust plants that give you fairly consistent results from one season to the next. So it makes sense to select your seeds from those plants. Also check for healthy foliage, strong stems, and overall sturdiness in addition to tasty produce when choosing plants for seed.
Keep ‘em Separated.
Now we already know that some plants will readily cross-breed within their family and the seeds will yield unpredictable results. Like I said, you might get something new and spectacular from a cross, but more likely you won’t.
Do a little research to find out which of the plants you are cultivating can easily hybridize, like squash for example. So don’t plant five different kinds of squash. Each year plant one, a different one, and not one that you can find in the store. Save seed each season and after two seasons you can start rotating them to cultivate diversity.
Seed a Community
Now, what if one of your neighbors is also growing beans of a different type? Well, it’s very likely you will end up with a cross, depending on how close your neighbor is and whether or not the pollinators carry some pollen from your neighbor’s bean plants over to yours. So, at the beginning of the season, it would be a good idea to coordinate with your gardening neighbor and decide which type of bean you will both grow that year.
Or, even better, if your space is small, perhaps you agree that one of you grows beans, and the other squash, and arrange for a swap. What a neighborly idea! Seriously, I dream of a world where historically meddling organizations like Home Owner’s Associations could be better utilized as a means to help gardeners coordinate their efforts and maximize happiness, instead of measuring the height of the grass in everyone’s lawn.
Know your Limits
Not all plants are equal when it comes to saving seed. Some seeds are technically more difficult to save properly than others. And by “properly” I simply mean in the manner that makes germination and growth most likely in the following season.
For most seeds you can simply extract them from the fully mature fruit, and spread them in the sun to dry on a screen or in a single layer on a table. Beans, peas, squash, and peppers all fit into the EASY category and you should start with those.
Some seeds, like tomato and cucumber seeds for example, need to be fermented first. It’s a bit more complicated, but not difficult. An easy way to ferment the seeds is simply to leave fruit lying around until it is very soft and slightly mushy. Then squash it and put it in a container with a tiny bit of water. Let the seeds sit in the mushy mass until it smells mildly of alcohol. Then scoop the seeds out of the fermented liquid and spread them out to dry. There are dozens of tutorial videos on YouTube featuring different methods.
The important thing is to know your limits and respect them. You don’t have to learn everything about how to save every seed in your first time at the rodeo. Master a few methods that work for you and then move on to mastering more. It’s much more do-able to accomplish any goal, one step at a time.
Wait it out
Saving seed is almost immediately gratifying. Within just a few months of starting your first garden, you will have plants setting seed. The only thing you need to do is let them do it. That means don’t pull out every withering plant once you’ve harvested the goods. In many cases, the goods are the seeds. Bean plants germinate from beans, peas from peas. Or the seeds are inside the fruit, as with tomatoes, peppers, squash, and melons.
But sometimes you have to wait it out. Many plants, including herbs and root vegetables, have to make a flower to contain their seeds. In many cases, the flower doesn’t emerge until after the choice edible part. Take basil as an example. It’s the leaves you want to harvest and eat. But as a basil plant reaches maturity, it begins to set lovely tiny white and purple clusters of blossoms, each small blossom containing an even tinier seed about the size of a grain of pepper. Likewise, if you leave root vegetables like carrots in the ground long enough, eventually they send up a tall shoot that opens to yellow flowers much sought after by pollinators. Wait a little longer, and as the flower begins to dry out you can gently shake the seeds free from the center.
Let the Wheel Spin.
I’ve actually read things in other gardening books like, “Make sure you harvest all of your vegetables before they set seed so they do not become bitter or unsightly.” How sad it must be to see the miracle of self-regenerating life in the garden as nothing more than “unsightly” or “bitter.” Yes, it is true that the edible parts of plants do become less succulent as the plant devotes its energy to creating seed. But this is part of the cycle and nothing can continue to exist if we keep breaking the cycle.
The journey from soil to seed to plant to seed to soil is not a line but a circle, a spinning wheel. Planting your own saved seed each growing season is an opportunity for you to participate in the cycle. By planting your seeds, you gain a very special privilege to set the wheel in motion. Then simply stand back and let it spin.
How to Save Seed
Now, I will be the first to admit I’m one of the least organized seed savers on the planet. Especially now that I’m planting on acres of land all year round in a sub-tropical forest, I actually don’t even save seed anymore, at least not for storage. Here, I’m on a constant schedule of harvesting seed, germinating, and transplanting from nursery to field. It’s a big operation with the wheel in perpetual motion.
Fortunately, my cohort from from urban gardening days, Kristina Maze, is a systematic saver and over-winter keeper of her diverse garden’s seeds. She’s also a busy active person with a full-time job so her methods are practical and not ridiculously time-consuming. Here’s her advice on how to harvest, store, and germinate different types of seed.
5 Easy Tips for Saving Seed
courtesy of Kristina Maze, Washington DC
Easy Shakedown
Allowing part of a garden to go to seed isn’t wasteful — it’s resourceful.
Gently place each seedy top of plants like carrots, basil, kale, bok choy, green onions, and dill into separate paper lunch bags and shake gently. If the seeds are dry but stubborn, cut the plant tops off into the bags. Also, for teeny tiny seeds (like basil), it’s easier to cut the dried flower clusters off and save the whole thing. Write down what’s in each bag and store somewhere dry and dark, like a pantry shelf.
Dry-Store-Soak-Sprout
Shuck beans and let them dry on a cookie sheet. (Beans must be completely dry otherwise they’ll become moldy and useless.) Store and use for soups and other savory winter dishes, reserving a handful for next year’s garden. As spring approaches, soak the beans in water till they split in the center and grow a sprout. Then plant them outside in tilled soil near a fence or other structure they can cling to and grow on. Water frequently. A similar dry-store-soak-sprout process is done for seeds harvested from cantaloupes, pumpkins, sunflowers, cucumbers, loofah, bell peppers, etc.
Got it? Use it
Repurposed, cleaned glass spice jars with lids are also great for storing dried seeds because they don’t take up much space. So are the tiny glass condiment jars with metal lids placed on hotel room service trays and dining tables. Remember to affix a label or write on the glass with a permanent marker each jar’s contents.
Be thrifty
Last year at a local organic market, I bought a bag of heirloom fingerling potatoes in a 99-cent discount bin. They were turning soft and growing “eyes” so no one was willing to fork over $6.99 a pound for them. I brought the potatoes home, stuck them in the ground, and a few months later pulled out over 200. I saved the smaller ones in a pot filled with dirt in my sun room over the winter, sprinkled them with water in the new year, and replanted the sprouting spuds in a raised garden bed in April. The stems and flowers withered and died in July, signaling it was time to harvest. I reserved a dozen of the 100 or so potatoes I dug out for next year’s garden.
Get clever
Potatoes aren’t the only store-bought vegetables urban gardeners can regenerate. Carrot tops (the flowers produce seeds), green onion bottoms, and peeled garlic cloves will begin sprouting if left in a ramekin of water, just like dried beans. All are flourishing in my garden beds right now. Vegetable pieces-parts grow just as well in frequently-watered containers placed on a sunny windowsill or countertop Even refrigerated produce can be regrown!
For those starting from scratch, you may very well experience a fruitless search for seeds. But don’t give up. Invest in buying young, potted vegetables and herbs at nurseries and garden centers. Plant them, eat them, and save some seeds for next year. If the summer growing season has already passed you by, get some seeds now for a fall or winter garden.
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At Sueño de Vida we work in a meaningful way to heal land ravaged by deforestation. How meaningful? According to a recent UN Foresight Brief on climate change,
--It is of the utmost importance to stop deforestation and to increase reforestation efforts around the world. Agricultural practices should focus on soil building and the use of agroforestry methods.
That is exactly what we do here at SdV. You can help by helping is do what we do every day: plant healthy forests that nurture soil, people, and local community.
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Kristen Krash is the co-founder and director of Sueño de Vida, a regenerative cacao farm and reforestation mission in Ecuador. Sueño de Vida works to educate and inspire everyday people about permaculture, sustainable living, environmental activism, and healthy living all in the name of living more in harmony with nature.