A Complete Guide to Seed Saving From Start To Finish

Before the dawn of seed stores, seed saving was an essential practice passed down from generation to generation. It allowed families and farmers to continue growing a garden year after year. Today, we have access to that beautiful heritage.

Seed saving is one of the easiest and most overlooked jobs in the garden. Now is the time to learn about this time-honored tradition so you can join the next generation of seed savers!

Gardening Is A Grand Teacher

The garden is an all-around growing and learning experience; a place that fosters development, patience, and excitement. It is a place where people can come learn what real food is and connect with it!

Seed saving is an integral part of that education. Whether you want to learn how to save sunflower seeds or cover crop seed, save tomato seeds or bean seeds, save lettuce seeds, onion seeds, or something else, MIgardener is committed to helping you learn and grow.

Why You Should Save Seeds

Many people start practicing seed saving simply to be thrifty and save money on gardening, but it has so many more benefits! I strongly encourage everyone to save seeds, whether they grow organically or not.

Seed saving gives you a never-ending supply of your favorite garden varieties. It helps preserve biodiversity, allows you to select desirable traits, and allows those varieties to better adapt to your unique local climate. It also increases self-sufficiency by providing a more secure seed source.

Can You Save Any Kind of Seeds

There are several different types of seeds available to home gardeners. The main two that you need to know about for seed saving are hybrid and heirloom vegetable seeds. Learning how to harvest and save seeds from your heirloom varieties is the best way to go!

Heirlooms are old open-pollinated varieties that have been stabilized over time to produce the same fruit every time. An heirloom tomato’s flavor and traits are much the same as people enjoyed 100 years ago!

A hybrid plant happens when two heirlooms cross-pollinate to create a new variety. Typically, seeds saved from hybrids will not grow fruit precisely like the mother plant, so they are not as reliable.

It is a myth that you cannot save seeds from a hybrid, although your results might not be exactly as planned. If you choose to save seeds from an heirloom variety, with hopes of repeated variety and quality, you must avoid cross-pollination.

Choosing the Best Plants For Saving Seeds

If you would like to start saving seeds but don’t know which plants to save seeds from, start with the plants you enjoy the most! Pro-Tip: Always avoid saving seeds from plants that weren’t productive, were disease-ridden, pest-prone, or had other major issues. If it wasn’t beautiful or didn’t have traits that you liked, don’t save those seeds.

Here are the three steps that I use to select the best plants for seed saving:

1. Start With Your Favorites - If a variety has traits that you enjoy, it is a worthy candidate for seed saving. Choose varieties that will add value to your garden (or someone else’s garden) in the future.

2. Look For The Best - Within your favorite varieties, select the individual plants that outperformed the rest! Choose the healthiest, best, and most robust plant to save seeds from. This will give you the strongest genetics for your future generations of plants. The amount of seed you can save from just one plant is impressive, usually more than enough to share with friends.

3. Select Mature Seeds - Make sure you wait until the seeds are mature before harvesting them! Even after following steps 1 and 2 to identify plants that are the perfect candidates for seed saving, they won't be viable if you save seeds that aren’t mature! This will look different on different plants, but as a general rule, look for seed pods that are dry and brown or fruits that are fully mature (which may mean you leave those fruits on the plant beyond normal harvesting time).

Following these steps will help you avoid wasting time and precious resources on saving seeds that aren’t viable.

The Seed Saving Process By Plant Type

The most straightforward way to describe the seed-saving process is: collect seeds, dry them, and store them. The variety you are trying to save seeds from will determine the technicalities of saving seeds.

• Flowering Plants - Plants harvested for their roots, leaves, or stems all show their seeds after becoming fully mature at the end of their growing cycle; this includes root crops, leafy greens, herbs, celery, and many flowers. Once the flowers fully dry out, the seeds inside will be perfectly ready for storage and normally require no further drying before storage.

• Legumes - Legumes like beans and peas are normally harvested young for eating. To harvest seeds from them, though, you need to leave them on the plant until they reach full maturity, which is when the fruits are completely dried and papery in texture. Then, pull the pods off the plant and shell the beans or peas. If you detect any moisture on them, leave them out to dry before storing them in a container.

• Nightshades (Without Gel) - Pepper and eggplants are two nightshades whose seeds are not surrounded by gel. Their lack of gel-like casing makes it much easier to save seeds from them! Leave peppers on the plant until they reach their maximum size. Pop off the tops of the peppers and shake the seeds out onto a napkin or paper towel to dry. For eggplants, leave the fruit on the plant until it reaches maximum maturity. Cut the fruit in half and slice out clumps of fruit that contain seeds. Most of the seeds will pop out easily. Rinse off the seeds if needed and dry them on a napkin.

• Seeds With A Gel Coating - Tomatoes, melons, and cucumber seeds have a protective gel coating. For these, you must ferment the seeds before the drying process to avoid rot! Leave the fruits you want to seed save from on the plant until they are fully mature, well past the point where they would be pleasant to eat. Scoop out the seeds and put them in a jar. Fill the jar halfway with water and leave it out for two days while the gel ferments off. After two days, discard any seeds that have floated to the top because floating seeds are not viable. (If left too long, the seeds will rot.) Strain and rinse the remaining seeds before drying them on a paper towel. Pro-Tip: If you have a problem with fruit flies, use fermenting lids on the jars.

For detailed tutorials on how to save seeds from specific varieties, check out my seed saving tutorials on the MIgardener YouTube channel.

Storing Seeds

After your seeds are dried, place them in a seed saver packet and label it with the name of the variety, the date, and whether or not they are potentially cross-pollinated. Place the packets in good seed storage containers and store them in a cool, dry, dark place.

Pro-Tip: The Best Seed Storage Containers is a must-read for anyone who wants to learn how to store seeds to keep them at peak freshness, how long they’re viable, and which storage containers work best for a large seed collection.

Preventing Cross Pollination

Most people forgo seed saving because they fear cross pollination. If you want to continue growing heirloom varieties that remain the same and are untouched by cross pollination, seed saving will be slightly more complicated than if you don't mind growing hybrids. (Read Avoiding Cross Pollination in Your Heirloom Garden for a complete guide.)

The squash family is a good example of this. Because insects like bees are responsible for their pollination, pumpkins can cross-breed with nearby zucchinis, creating pump-chini seeds. Trust me, pump-chinis do not taste good, and they make ugly Jack O' Lanterns!

Use blossom bags to avoid cross-pollination with self pollinating varieties like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. Place blossom bags over new clusters of flowers as soon as they form to prevent pollinators or outside pollen from getting through. When the flowers are ready, shake the bags to help them self-pollinate.

As soon as the fruit sets on those varieties, take the bag off, and tie a ribbon around that stem or branch to remember which seeds on the plant you can save. This ensures your heirloom varieties will stay the same!