How to Save Seeds From Your Garden

It’s easy to learn How to Save Seeds with the tips and tricks below.

Saving seeds and storing them for the next year used to be a normal part of gardening, before the convenience of simply running to the store and getting seeds.

As more and more people start gardens and look for ways to lower costs on food, many people are getting back into the art of seed saving.

This simple gardening task is so easy anyone can do it.

Why Should Save Seeds From Your Garden?

Collecting seeds is a great way to save money and ensure that you never have to worry about whether or not you can get the seeds you need for your garden year after year.

If you save enough seeds you can even use them as an income source by selling your seeds or extra seedlings you start in the spring locally.

Saving seeds from your garden can even allow you to join seed swaps with other gardeners to increase the amazing varieties of plants in your garden.

Seed saving is easy to learn and a great option to ensure that you have your favorite plants year after year.

What Kinds of Seeds Can You Save?

You can save seeds from fruits, vegetables, and flowers.

To save seeds from your garden that stand a chance of germinating in the following year you need to save only heirloom seeds.

Non-heirloom seeds are often treated with chemicals to prevent germination, so you are forced to buy seeds year after year, instead of saving them and never having to buy the seeds again.

Heirloom seeds can be saved year after year.

These seeds have been cultivated for generations and tend to have a better germination rate than seeds that have been modified.

Heirloom seeds can be found online from passionate growers that work hard to help preserve the integrity of these heirloom plants.

In turn, you can do the same in your own garden and pass down the seeds from your favorite plants to the generations after you or simply share them with friends and family.

You can save seeds from fruits, vegetables, and flowers from your garden.

The process is simple and with a little knowledge about the plant you are growing, you can easily harvest and save seeds.

How to Save Flower Seeds

Saving flower seeds is easier than other types of seeds.

To save your flower seeds including some vegetables like broccoli, carrots, and celery you will need to allow the flowers to bloom and go through the process of pollination, dying off, and completely drying out.

To harvest seeds from your flowers, allow them to be fully developed and die out.

After your flowers die off, allow them to stay on the plant until they completely dry out.

After your flowers have dried out you can then cut the flowers, place them in a paper bag, and shake the seeds out.

Allow your seeds to dry in your bag or lay out on a paper towel for a few days to be sure they are fully dry before storing them.

This will help to ensure that your seeds do not mold while in storage.

How to Save Vegetable Seeds

Vegetables can be a bit tricky to save the seeds from because there are several different ways vegetable seeds mature and are harvested.

If you are growing a vegetable that produces the seeds in a flower, for plants like broccoli or spinach you will need to use the method used to collect seeds from flowers.

For fruits like tomatoes and other vegetables that contain seeds inside of them, you will need to use one of two methods.

One is to simply take the seeds from your ripe vegetables.

This works for things like tomatoes and papers. You can even use this method on organic tomatoes and papers from the store.

For other vegetables that tend to be edible long before their seeds are mature like eggplant and zucchini, you will need to leave some of them on the plant to keep growing until the seeds have matured.

In general, you want to wait until your produce is overripe and you can no longer eat it to take the seeds from these types of plants.

For example, the eggplant should be so ripe it is turning soft and squishy while zucchinis skin should be hard like a pumpkin before you harvest the seeds.

After you harvest your seeds, lay them out on a paper towel for several days to dry them completely.

This will prevent them from molding during storage.

How to Store Seeds

Seeds should be stored in a cool dark space.

For non-tropical native seeds, you can simply place them in your storage envelopes and put them into the refrigerator or freezer.

Avoid keeping them where they will get wet or damaged.

For long-term storage, you can store your seed in mylar bags or these free garden seeds packets.

Seed Savers Exchange

Once you have saved some seeds, you might be interested in aquiring more seeds from other seed savers like yourself.

The Seed Savers Exchange is the perfect place to go!

You might also reach out to your local libraries.

Thet’s right! Many libraries have seed libraries available, where you can pick out free heirloom seeds to grow in your garden.

They only ask that you give back and bring in some seeds to share too.