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Joshua Peede
Landscape Designer & Gardener
ISCO Landscaping • Wilson, NC
SCC Landscape Gardening Graduate
Seed Saving: A
Resourceful Past Time
by Joshua Peede
Whether your passion is a garden for looking
or one for cooking, this article will be beneficial
to you. Maybe you enjoyed a tomato from the
garden this summer that tasted really good and
you wish to have another. Or possibly you have
been wanting to create a new perennial bed at
your home to incorporate some of your mother’s
flowers in order to preserve the lineage passed
down from your grandmother. What if you could
duplicate these plants, with their important
genetics, and have them for years to come at
no real expense? Well, let me walk you through
some simple steps to determining if and how
you can reproduce consistent offspring from
seed and before long, you will be testing this out
on all types of plants!
Seed saving has been going on for ages, so
it is nothing new. However the convenience
of pulling up a website, grabbing a mail order
catalog or running down to the local garden
center can many times entice us more than
the pastime of collecting and storing seed from
our gardens for use from year to year. Now do
not get me wrong, there is definitely a need for
purchasing new seed varieties, but many times,
the sight of that enticing photo on the front of
that little packet of cucumber seeds for $2.99
grabs our attention. Before we know it, we’ve
easily spent $20-30 on something that we could
have gotten for free.
In both flower and vegetable gardening,
there are a variety of steps for how to properly
collect, store and prepare for sowing. Typically
a few universal rules apply to saving all seeds,
but there are also specific procedures that are
required for many different plants. Before we dig
deeper, let’s look briefly at the two processes in
seed saving and storing that will come up often
which must be understood before proceeding.
The two processes are called scarification
and stratification. Scarification is the process of
removing some or all of an impermeable outer
seed coat by using an abrasive object such as
sandpaper. This allows moisture to penetrate
the seed, beginning the germination process.
Stratification is the process of mimicking winter
time for the seed, causing it to go into dormancy
to prepare for a spring-time germination. The
period for which stratification needs to occur
can vary from weeks to months, depending on
the seed. This is usually done in a refrigerator,
and upon removal from cold storage, sowing will
generally follow promptly. Now that those terms
are clarified, let’s proceed further into some
details on vegetable seed saving.
When saving vegetable seed, there are some
questions that must be answered. Is this a crosspollinated
or open-pollinated plant? Open
pollinated plants of the same fruit or vegetable
can be planted nearby each other without
affecting the purity of the seed’s traits. However
cross-pollinated plant seed does become
affected by the pollen of similar plants when
transferred from flower to flower. The seeds
from this plant will then carry traits from the
other plants of its type from which pollen was
taken. Heirlooms are a good example of openpollinated
plants, because they are characterized
by their track record of holding “true to seed” for
50 years or longer. If you determine which of the
two types that your desired plant is, then the
next steps will be simpler, because they are the
physical steps of harvesting the seed for later use.
When collecting seed from tomatoes, it is
best to select a healthy, ripe fruit and cut it
open. Take a knife or spoon to scoop out the
pulp and seeds together. Next, place them in
a small bowl filled with water for a couple of
days, stirring occasionally to keep mold from
collecting on the water’s surface. All viable seed
will sink to the bottom, while the seed that is
not fully developed will float, making it easy to
remove and separate from the good seed. After
pouring the water off and collecting the good
seed from the bottom, spread the seeds out on
a piece of paper for about a week to dry, before
putting them into storage. This same process
can be used for melons, cucumbers, pumpkins,
and squash. Always make sure to pick a healthy,
mature fruit for seed.
With many cool season vegetables, like
lettuce, kale, collards, cabbage, broccoli, beets,
cauliflower, rutabagas and others, you will need
to select one or two healthy plants to leave in the
garden through winter or summer, depending
on whether you are growing a fall or spring-time
cool season garden. When you do this, it allows
the plants to develop flower stalks that will soon
reveal seeds where the flowers were located on
the stems. Once the seeds have developed and
dried, they are ready for harvest. Make sure
you know that the seeds are fully dry before
harvesting, and do so on a dry day with no rain
in the last day or so.
If the seeds are in pods, one of the best ways
to remove them is to take a couple blocks of
wood, rubbing back and forth with the seed
pods between the wood. When doing this,
removing the plant from the ground will make
this easier. You can either hang the plant upsidedown
or lay on a table top where the seed pods
can hang freely in open air. Next, place a light
colored bed sheet or large cloth below to catch
the seeds when they fall. Lastly, once you have
successfully removed the seed by hand or with
the wood blocks, pick out the debris that is
mixed in, or you can filter out the debris through
a screen that is only large enough to allow the
seed through. Place in an envelope or small,
sealable bag for storage and use next year.
When it comes to seed saving with flowers,
things can get a little trickier. Considering
whether your plant is a good candidate
for seed propagation or not will require a
little investigating. Just like with vegetables,
determine whether the plant is cross-pollinated
or open-pollinated? Is the plant an annual,
biennial, or perennial? Are there any special
treatments such as scarification or stratification
that need to take place? These are probably
the main questions you must research before
proceeding. If you are expecting your seed to
be true to the characteristics of the plant from
which you are harvesting, then make sure that
there are no nearby plants of the same genus,
that could cause deviation in the offspring
through cross-pollination.
In the second question above, I referenced
three different categories in which all plants can
be subdivided. Annuals flower, produce seed
and die within one growing season. Biennials
form foliage in the first growing season, flower
and seed the following season before dying.
Perennials flower and produce seed every
growing season, and return year after year,
flowering from the same plant. Understanding
the cycles of these different categories will give
you a little insight on the plant with which you
are working.
You can experiment with different plants
you have around your home or try one of the
suggestions below. A few annuals that are easy
to grow from seed are zinnias, marigolds, blackeyed
susans (Rudbeckia hirta), and four o’
clocks, just to name a few. A good, short list of
biennials from seed includes Canterbury bells,
foxglove, and lupine. Perennials to be considered
with high seed production are coneflowers, bee
balm, and black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia fulgida).
Normally, the correct time to harvest the seed is
about a month or two following the flowering
season. Most seed is fairly easy to locate and
identify although sometimes this requires a little
extra searching; do your homework ahead of time.
We know that if our goal is to preserve the
purity of a cross-pollinating seed, then we
cannot mix multiple varieties of that plant in
the same area. However if your goal is to harvest
seed from a garden with a collection of similar
varieties, then go ahead and see what interesting
results you get. You may just cultivate a seed that
introduces an interesting plant with a future in
gardens around the world!
If you’re looking a good resource on seed
saving, then I recommend a book by Carole B.
Turner called Seed Sowing and Saving. This is
an excellent guide with detailed and simple
instructions. I wish you the best on all your
efforts! Happy gardening! ☐
No. 136 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. p.29
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