Garden Helps

1. It Saves You Money. Many home gardeners started with the goal of growing their own healthy food. Today seed packets can range from $3-7 and transplants can cost anywhere from $4-6. If you’re planting a large or diverse garden, this can really add up to Big Bucks! To stretch a budget to the max, knowing how to save seeds from your vegetable and flower gardens will save you money and significantly reduce the cost of producing healthy food.
2. You Can Keep Growing Your Favorite Variety. It’s always a joy to find that perfect variety that tickles your taste buds like no other. But, it’s heartbreaking when you can no longer find it anywhere! The bitter truth about commercial seed producers is they will base their production on how much they sell each year. So if your favorite variety doesn’t sell well, you may not see it again!
3. You Can Preserve Genetic Diversity and keep them from going extinct. Some varieties are only grown by local producers and aren’t available anywhere else. By saving the seed from these varieties, you can maintain better diversity and prevent them from disappearing completely.
4. You Can Grow Crops that are Well-Adapted to Your Garden. Ever notice some seed packages have letters or numbers at the end of the name? These letters and numbers mean the plant is resistant or better adapted to something that plagues other varieties of the same plant. This is achieved through seed saving. You can create your own seed stock that is especially adapted to the conditions in your garden (sunlight, soil pH, soil nutrients, and water amounts) and pass on any traits like ‘resistant to blight’, ‘better flavor’, or ‘big blooms’ to the next generations. Saving the seeds of your own crops ensures that you will have a successful and thriving garden in the coming years!
5. You Can Grow Crops that are of Consistent Quality. Who doesn’t like control! When you save seeds, you control what trails will be passed on to the next generation. By saving seeds from the best fruits and flowers, you control the qualities such as germination, flavor, ripening/bloom time, color, and disease resistance. Plus, while you’re waiting for the seeds to develop, you’re providing much-needed food to bees and other pollinators!

Printable How to Grow Healthy Seeds

Characteristics of Healthy Seeds

To grow the healthiest, most vigorous plants, you must start with healthy, robust seeds.

Viability: What percentage of a batch of seeds will germinate?

Vigor: How vigorous are the seedlings produced?

Size: Are the seeds large and fully formed?

Maturity: Did the seeds have what they needed to mature fully?

Viability and Vigor: Viability and vigor are not separable. Seeds that will sprout under ideal conditions must have enough viability and vigor to survive storage, emerge from the soil, and survive after germination, or they cannot be considered viable under field conditions.

Size and Maturity: Size and maturity are also important, and are inseparable from viability and vigor. The relative size and maturity of seeds relates directly to their survivability when planted. For the highest viability and vigor, seeds must be large and fully mature. Large, mature seeds have more stored food to nourish the seeds once they have sprouted and produce strong, vigorous seedlings, which have a better chance of surviving and thriving under field conditions. It is best to allow seeds to ripen to full maturity before they are harvested.

Healthy Plants Make Healthy Seeds

Healthy seeds start with healthy plants. Seed-producing plants should be robust and disease-free. Small or misshapen seeds are shorter-lived under storage conditions than larger, better-formed seeds.

Small seeds contain less stored food to help them emerge from the soil and produce healthy seedlings. Although small seeds may show a high initial germination rate under ideal conditions, they may lack the strength to emerge from the soil in field conditions.

Purposely Stressing Plants to Force Adaptation. Sometimes plants are deliberately stressed early in their lives to accelerate ‘natural’ selection. However, these stresses should be removed as much as possible as the flowering time approaches in order to allow healthy seeds to form and develop.

In an extreme case, you might even stress your plants to the point where even the well-adapted ones make small, starved seeds (i.e., for faster results). In this case plan on treating the seeds more carefully during planting and germination, and replant them every year as both their viability and their vigor will be compromised.

Remove Diseased Plants. Parent plants’ health is not only important to the health of the seeds they produce but can affect succeeding generations as well. Diseased plants pass disease pathogens to new plants through their seeds.

Do not allow diseased plants to produce seeds; remove them from the growing area (and dispose of them by hot-composting or burning) so they don’t pass their diseases on to their seeds or infect healthy plants.

Early Seed Formation. The period of time when your plants are first beginning to flower is especially important to seed viability. Plants should be strong, healthy, and minimally stressed during early seed formation and development. Give seed-producing plants plenty of water, light, and fertilizer early in their lives, so that they are strong and healthy when flowering commences.

Watering During Seed Formation. Sufficient moisture at flowering time is particularly important to successful pollen development and flower set. Too little water during flower initiation and early seed development lowers seed yields, and can even hurt the health and vigor of your finished seeds and seedlings.

Conversely, dry conditions are preferable during the latter stages of seed maturation, when seeds have formed and are drying in preparation for dormancy.

Seed Maturation. During seed maturation, warm (80º to 95ºF), dry conditions are most favorable to the final vigor, viability, and storage life of your finished seeds.

Wetting mature seeds slows their natural process of preparing for dormancy, extending the time during which their stored food reserves must be used for respiration. This lowers the seeds’ final dry weight and shortens their storage life.

If they are left on the plant during rainy periods, seeds may even mold or mildew in their pods or husks. For these reasons, it is best to harvest most type of seeds and bring them inside for  final drying as soon as they are fully mature and dry.

Over-Wintering Biennial Plants (a plant that takes two years to grow from seed to fruition and die.)

Biennial plants—such as collards, kale and chard for example—grow to maturity during one year, and then produce seeds early in their second year of growth. In areas where winters are mild, collecting seeds from biennial plants is not a problem.

A variety of means can be used to assist biennial plants in making it through harsh winters. In intermediate areas, biennials can be grown in cold frames (unheated, plastic- or glass-covered enclosures) that offer protection against the harshest weather. Greenhouses can also be used, though greenhouse space is usually limited and most biennials need exposure to a period of freezing weather in winter to properly mature. A thick mulch applied after plants freeze back will probably suffice in all but the most extreme winter climates.

Trust Your Own Experience

All the above having been said, use your own experience as a final guide. If you’ve had biennial plants (such as carrots or cabbages, broccoli, etc.) over-winter and flower in your garden, then all you may need for safe over-wintering is a little extra mulch. Most biennial plants will over-winter reasonably well in at least the southern half of the U.S. If you live in the northern half of the U.S. or at a high altitude, use your own experience (or experiment!) to determine the level of protection your biennial plants will need to over-winter successfully.

Different seeds are viable for different lengths of time. For instance, parsley can last 1-2 years while cucumber can last up to 8 if properly stored! Proper storage is crucial to maximizing viability. To know how long the seeds are viable, see Seed Viability Chart.

• Store in PAPER seed bags. NEVER plastic, as this damages viability. Seeds are alive and need air to stay alive. Paper allows for airflow, while plastic prevents fresh air from getting to the seeds.

• Store your seeds in a cool, dark, dry place with moderate temperatures until you are ready to plant (like a pantry). Keep out of direct sunlight. For seeds you’re planning on planting, Do not freeze or refrigerate or allow seeds to get wet, as this damages viability.

Vegetable, Flower, Herb, and Ornamental Seed Viability Chart

How to read a planting chart Planting charts that encompass the entire state give a very large window for planting times. Knowing when to plant for your area within that window can be a bit challenging.

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