Tips for preserving your vegetable seeds for future planting
Growing your own vegetables year after year without the hefty seed costs is a breeze! Here's how to collect and store your favorite veggie seeds for repeated harvests.
Self-pollinators like beans and tomatoes are the easiest. They produce seedlings identical to their parents, making them perfect candidates for seed saving. However, other plants are more promiscuous and cross-breed easily. To keep their seeds true, isolate plants of the same variety, use a fleece or cloche, or hand-pollinate the flowers.
Biennials, such as carrots, beetroot, and parsley, are an example of plants that spend their first year growing leaves or roots. During the second year, they flower and produce seeds. Leave your best specimens in the ground through winter for a seedy harvest the following summer. As soon as the flowers turn brown and dry, snip the whole seedhead off and tip it into a paper bag. Separate the seed and chaff using a wire kitchen sieve.
Brassicas, including kale, kohlrabi, and rocket, produce huge yellow flowers loved by bees, followed by slender seedpods. Once these start turning from green to straw yellow, they're ripe. Collect the whole seedhead indoors and rest it on a sheet to dry out. Crush the pod to extract the seeds, then remove chaff and debris by blowing gently over the top, and pass the seed through a fine sieve.
Peas, beans, broad beans, and radishes let the pods develop fully on the plant until they turn crisp and brown. Once dry, collect the pods or snip the whole plant and hang it upside down to finish ripening, if it's wet.
Lettuce seedheads will be too big to fit into a bag, so upend them into a clean, dry bucket instead.
Squash, peppers, chillies, and their relatives produce seeds inside fleshy fruits. Cut the fruit in half and scoop out seeds with a spoon. Remove any fibers and spread the seeds on a piece of kitchen towel to dry for two weeks.
Tomatoes have an unusual method for seed extraction. Scoop out the seeds and soak them in a jar of water for two days. Strain the seeds, rinse them, and dry them on kitchen paper for two weeks before storing them.
Properly dried and stored seeds can remain viable for 2 to 10 years depending on the seed type. Keep seeds in a cool, dry place, avoiding direct sunlight and moisture. Store them in labeled, airtight containers in a refrigerator or freezer for long-term storage.
By following these steps, you'll have a bountiful supply of seeds that can be sown and grown year after year, allowing you to cultivate your favorite veggies effortlessly!
- Incorporating cooking with homegrown vegetables can be an exciting aspect of a food-and-drink lifestyle, as saving seeds from your own garden can lead to repeated harvests.
- Home-and-garden enthusiasts might find it interesting to note that self-pollinators like beans and tomatoes are easy to save seeds from, as they produce seedlings identical to their parents.
- For those who love gardening and enjoy experimenting with their food-and-drink choices, saving and storing seeds from lettuce, peas, beans, broad beans, radishes, carrots, beetroot, parsley, kale, kohlrabi, rocket, squash, peppers, and chillies can lead to a diverse collection of recipes.
