Saving Seeds

[NKBJ]

Are there lots of seed savers here on INGO?

This year growing yard long beans, yellow squash and zuc's with seeds from last years crops.
Collecting yard long and scarlet runner bean seeds from this years garden. Processing potato berries for seeds to experiment with. Got a passel of cilantro berries maturing for next year. Saving pepperocini, jalapeno and banana peppers, cucumber and tomato seeds. Maybe some melons depending on how they work out.

Still working out how in the world I'm gonna save little taters for next years crop.
Had quite a few that just popped up from last year though. So, perhaps my beds this fall get "seeded". Not quite sure how I'm gonna make that work.

 

[teddy12b]

If I'm being honest with myself I'm not a good enough gardener to know what I'm doing harvesting and preserving the seeds correctly, so I have bought some of those survival seed vault or seed bank types of packages. I don't think they're all created equally, so I tried a few different types.

 

[snapping turtle]

copperhead Road

 

[spencer rifle]

We save seeds from almost everything we grow, and try to get them from the best plants we have. After years of this, it seems that the weather has much more to do with a successful crop than the seed quality. This year was great for cabbage and corn and zucchini and cantaloupe, but terrible for eggplant, potatoes (and root crops in general), and (fortunately), okra.

 

[Magyars]

We've saved seeds in the past...it's easier for us to buy seeds each year and keep a #10 can of hierloom seeds just in case.
Our vine crops, squash, pumpkin, zucchini, did really well this year.
Tomatoes and onions also are going great.

 

[bwframe]

I have been a very casual seed saver for years. This last couple years, it seems more important.

All of the dill I grow is from saved seed. Also have two dozen two-year-old asparagus plants grown from saved seed, along the side of the house. Volunteer asparagus grow in a couple different spots, as the result of my first year sloppy seed saving effort.

I'm paying closer attention to buying heirlooms vs hybrids this year. Bought most all of my seeds this year from the Migardener. All, or nearly all, of their seeds are heirloom.

I just cut up a large Black Beauty zucchini that I hope lived long enough to produce viable seeds, (before the struggling plant died.)

 

[Leadeye]

The gardener saves seeds from various flowers and gets them going again in the greenhouse late winter. I tried an experiment once to see if various types of beans sold for food at Walmart could be germinated and was pleasently surprised to find out that they grew healthy plants with usable seeds. We replanted these beans after harvest and got a repeat of that performance. Good info to have.

 

[Jaybird1980]

I save seeds from some tomatoes that are kind of hard to find, the rest of the seeds are purchased

 

[bwframe]

The gardener saves seeds from various flowers and gets them going again in the greenhouse late winter. I tried an experiment once to see if various types of beans sold for food at Walmart could be germinated and was pleasently surprised to find out that they grew healthy plants with usable seeds. We replanted these beans after harvest and got a repeat of that performance. Good info to have.

David the Good on youtube uses cheap dried beans from the grocery as a winter cover crop.

He's in Alabama, so the crop might or might not live through the winter. One way or the other, he tills the beans under in the spring for their nitrogen fixing.

Also says that the beans are a better "weed" to have, if there is self seeding in his process.

 

[NKBJ]

Early life lesson...
Grandad scorched a pot of beans and threw them out in the backyard to start a new batch.
And they started growing.

 

[Cameramonkey]

Ive not had super good luck with saving seeds. Except pumpkin.

I dont save them per se, but they get tilled under in the fall. When some plants grow voluntarily, I dont always knock them down with the hoe. If the plant is in a good spot, I'll keep it. If its a tomato, I'll throw a cage over it. THis year it was a grape tomato plant between the rows of lettuce.

Generally speaking, the tomatoes are sweeter, but the yeild isnt as good or large.

Except for the decorative mini pumpkins. We bought some for halloween decorations at a nursery last year for the kids to paint. They got tossed in the garden for compost. They sprouted, and I assumed it was a normal pumpkin plant. Nope. It took over half the garden. Then the fruits started and we realized what it was. I ended up with a dozen beautiful (yet useless) fruits.

 

[JeepHammer]

Seed collections is something I like.
We buy exotic produce and see if we can save seeds even if we don't eat it.

I have thousands of seed packets, bought in bulk when stores blow them out or go bankrupt, I'll never get them all planted but I keep them just the same.

They are small enough they don't take up much space, and in cold storage they often last decades.

Sometimes we plant exotics from old seed, see if they grows then try to figure out how to eat the produce if it grows.

Some stuff I won't be planting again (Asian skunk cabbage for instance),
And some stuff we only need every 4-5 years (ghost peppers) because we need very little, and it goes a LONG way.

I probably have 100 strains of corn, sweet corn in particular and we rotate year to year.
I LOVE sweet corn, and the older strains seem to be the best.
I don't know if I'll ever get through all of them, but I'm going to try!

 

[Expat]

I have two varieties of heirloom pole beans that I have been saving the seeds for several years. They are very simple to save. I let them dry in the garden and pick them at the end of the season, then save them in the garage over the winter. I break the pods up when I plant them. I used to shell them after I picked them

 

[Rosenbah]

Saving seeds in an art and you have to do it right. I saved some Kidney bean seeds early in the process and they grew fine and produced new beans - but they were as hard as wood and would not soften when you cook them like crazy.

Get a book like "Seed to Seed" by Ashworth. Some seeds are easy to save, Tomato, and some are hard, Squash.

 

[jake blue]

There's a certain variety of apple I like so I've been saving the seeds in the hopes that I could get just one of them to germinate and grow me my own fruit producing tree. I know it may be an exercise in futility though, no doubt they've genetically engineered the fruit to not reproduce otherwise they'd quickly be out of business when every other apple producer in America could grow their patented variety.

 

[Rosenbah]

Is the apple one of the hybrid apples? Do If so, it probably will not work. Otherwise if it is an older variety, it may work. Let us know your success or failure.

Good luck!

 

[bwframe]

There's a certain variety of apple I like so I've been saving the seeds in the hopes that I could get just one of them to germinate and grow me my own fruit producing tree. I know it may be an exercise in futility though, no doubt they've genetically engineered the fruit to not reproduce otherwise they'd quickly be out of business when every other apple producer in America could grow their patented variety.

IIRC, David the Good and MIgardener both have video on fruit tree propagation.