Harvesting And Saving Seeds

There are a lot of great benefits that come with harvesting your own seeds. It’s great for the environment, it allows you to keep track of varieties of plants that you want to keep growing even if various companies stop stocking them, it allows you introduce new strains of certain plants in your garden as well as being able to get seeds from plants that you might see out in nature - just make sure not to take seeds from anyone's private garden without their permission first. This also allows you to keep heirloom plants going and is very cost effective because you don’t have to continually repurchase plants at the beginning of each growing season and you can trade with other gardeners to try new kinds.

Before you begin to collet your seeds though there are a few things you have to be aware of. First plants either have to pollinate themselves or they accomplish this using insects, various aspects of nature, or they need some help from us gardeners. Self-pollinating plants pretty much handle the work for you as they essentially produce clones of themselves, but cross-pollinating plants may need some help and that means you have to make your garden as favorable to pollinating insects as you can which you can easily do by growing plants that attract pollinators and avoiding use of any sprays that may harm these creature.

When you decide to start saving seeds its important that you only save seeds from varieties of plants you know and like because many varieties of plants are bred to be tough and have characteristics that serve well for transportation which isn’t exactly ideal for gardening on a smaller scale. This alone is reason enough to not save seeds from store bought produce. Seeds that are packaged by large companies may also be altered and hybridized so you may not want to save those either as they tend to be unreliable when carrying their traits over to the next generation and these seeds can be sterile and not produce fruit anyways.

When you’re ready to harvest your seeds it’s best to leave any dead flowers on their stem so that the plant will naturally turn to its own methods of producing seeds to keep itself going. Once it does so you can begin watching for seeds or seed pods to show up and ripen. Once the pod is fully mature and beginning to split or crack open to release the seeds you can use a small pot or a paper bag tied around the step to catch the seeds and make sure you can save them. Don’t worry too much about losing a few seeds here and there as they will just return to the soil and give you new plants for next year.

With vegetables all it takes is cutting open a vegetable at it’s peak ripeness (except for beans which should be harvested when dry) and removing the seeds, washing away any pulp and letting them dry. This is great for squash, pumpkins, and other soft pulpy type vegetables.

It’s not difficult at all to harvest your seeds and you can end up saving a lot of money and having a new sense of accomplishment from growing a garden entirely from seeds that you’ve harvested. Take the time to get it right and you’ll really enjoy it!