Saving seeds from one’s garden allow for an individual to create a permanent supply of those seeds. However, to ensure that the saved seeds are able to grow into plants that are similar to the original plants that were planted into the ground, an individual must follow certain step in the process. If an individual dont follow the steps that are required of that particular type of plant, then the individual may experience issue with their saved seeds either failing to grow altogether, or growing into a type of plant that is more different than the original plant that was cultivated.
One of the first steps that an individual should consider prior to beginning to save the seeds from the plants is to determine the type of seed that the plants contain. Some of the types of plants that contain seeds that will germinate into the same type of plant as the parent plant include plants that are open pollinated or heirloom varieties. These types of plants are suitable candidates for an individual to save their seeds from.
How to Save Seeds from Your Garden
However, plants that contain seeds that will not germinate into the same type of plant as the parent plant include those that are hybrid plants. Thus, an individual should determine whether an individual’s plants are open-pollinated/heirloom varieties or hybrid plants before beginning to save there seeds. An individual can also utilize a reference grid that details the requirements of the different type of crops that can be grown within a garden.
Such a reference grid can include information about the types of pollination that each crop require, how distant from each other the plants of that type need to be grown, and for how many years the saved seeds will remain viable. For instance, plants that are self-pollinating, such as tomatoes and beans, will require fewer distance between individual plants of that type than plants that are wind-pollinated, like corn. Additionally, cross-pollination can lead to the planted seeds germinating into different types of plants than the original plants from which the seeds were taken, so it is important for an individual to recognize if some of their planned crops are biennial crops, which take two year to complete their life cycle.
There are ten steps for saving seeds from a plant, and which an individual should follow. The first step is to select the plants that will have their seeds saved, and to allow the fruits or pods of the plants to mature. The seeds that are harvested from plants whose fruits are not fully mature will germinate at low rates.
Following the waiting period for the fruits and pods to mature, an individual must extract the seed from those plants, clean the seeds of any remaining plants material, and dry the seeds. Crops can be divided into those that contain wet extraction groups, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, and melons, whose seeds are surrounded by a gel, and those that contain dry extraction groups, like beans, peas, and lettuce, whose seeds is already within their pods or heads. Additionally, allowing these wet extraction groups to ferment will help to remove any disease from the seeds.
Once an individual has their seeds extracted, they must isolate the seeds to prevent them from germinating into another type of plant than the original plant from which the seeds were saved. Isolation can be achieved through growing the plants at a distance from one another, or through the caging of the plants, the bagging of their flowering plants, or through the hand pollination of their crops. An individual that has a large amount of land for their garden may elect to utilize the distance method of isolation.
An individual with a small garden, however, may opt for using cages or bags to contain the plants from other varieties from germinating into those types of plants. These methods should of been planned prior to the planting of the crops in order to ensure that the different types of plants are isolated from one another. The last two step in the process of saving the seeds from a plant are drying and storage of those seeds.
The seeds should be dried using methods like ambient air drying, utilizing a low-temperature dehydrator, or utilizing a desiccant to dry the seeds until they are hard to the touch. After drying the plants, the saved seeds should be stored in a cool and dark place, such as a refrigerator or freezer. Additionally, placing a silica gel packet within the container in which the seeds will be stored will allow those seeds to remain viable for longer periods of time due to the ability of the silica gel to retain low humidity within the storage container.