Saving seeds....How?

[peapickinchicks]

I would like to begin to save seeds from my own garden vegtables. I bought heirloom seeds but I can't find any info. on how to save the seeds myself. I believe different seeds are saved differently is this true. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[patandchickens]

There are several excellent books on the subject, none of which I can recall the titles of offhand

but which your library may have or may be able to get via interlibrary loan.

Also google and wikipedia are your friend

In general, tomatoes you may (or may not) get poor germination unless you pick a kinda rotten one, or use a fresh fully-ripe one and squish it to ferment/mold in water for a coupla days, then rinse off the gooey bits and save clean seeds. Practically anything else, though, you just get the seed, rinse egregious gooey bits off it, let it air dry, then store somewhere cool/cold and dry.

Most people keep 'em in labelled film cans or pill vials or tiny manila envelopes, or even ziploc baggies, in a sealed box somewhere that stays cool. The little silica-gel dessicant packets you get in boxes of shoes and binoculars and such when you buy 'em can be useful for promoting dryness.

Good luck and have fun,

Pat

 

[kinnip]

Seed to Seed is a good book. It's put out by the Seed Saver's Exchange. Amazon has a lot of good books on the subject, including the aforementioned. Any time you save seeds, you should use the best, earliest, most rot resistant fruits you have. It's a little heartbreaking with the tomatoes, if you're greedy like me. You do have to use the whole fruit and ferment the seeds to get good germination. There are a number of good forums out there too. Google heirloom vegetables.

 

[morelcabin]

I have a book on the subject that I ordered from motherearth.com
It's called "Seed Sowing and Saving" by Carole B Turner

 

[sred98]

Just make sure they are completely dried. On the tomatoes, I always heard that you did not clean the gooey stuff off of them, so I put them on paper towels and kind of smear them around to separate them a little bit. Then let them dry. After they're dry you peel them off and put them in an envelope or jar to store them.

Pepper seeds are easy...just scoop them out and let them dry, then store them.

It's basically just get them out of the vegetables, let it dry, then put them somewhere safe and dry.

If you do flower seeds, if you aren't sure what the seeds look like (like with Monarda) it might be better to dry the whole flower head. Most flowers are easy to save. Just make sure they are DRY. Otherwise you end up with a moldy mess!

Shelly

 

[peapickinchicks]

Thanks everybody I knew I count on ya'll to help me out. You all are a blessing.