By Barbara Ott, Butte County Master Gardener, September 23, 2016.
The abundance from summer vegetable gardens is extended through the winter and beyond by methods of canning, freezing and drying. But you can also give your summer vegetables a longer life span by saving their seeds.
Flowering vegetable plants can be cross-pollinated by wind or insects. This can cause even heirloom plants to produce offspring that are not true to the parent plant. Cross pollination can be minimized by planting just one variety of a vegetable, or by separating the different varieties with sufficient space between them. For example, do not plant hot peppers near sweet peppers. It is likely the sweet peppers will be hot if grown from their seeds the following season. The seeds from these peppers will not be true due to random pollination.
When friends and neighbors start saying “No thank-you” to zucchini, summer squash, and cucumbers, plan to let these vegetables set mature seeds, if they are not hybrids. Once this decision is made, production will decline. When saving seed, harvest from the best vegetables. Choose disease-free plants with desired qualities, look for the most flavorful vegetables, consider size, time from planting to harvest, and other 'best quality' characteristics.
The seeds in tomatoes, peppers, melons, summer squash, and cucumbers are ripe when the vegetables reach full color. Peppers will shrivel, tomatoes will be very soft, melons, summer squash, and cucumbers will be large. Pepper seeds can be taken out and dried. Tomato, melon, squash, and cucumber seeds are prepared with a wet method. Scoop the seed masses out of mature fruit. Put the seed mass and a small amount of warm water in a bucket or jar. Ferment for two to four days. Stir daily. The fermentation process kills viruses and separates the good seed from the bad seed. After two to four days, the good seeds will sink to the bottom of the container, while the pulp and bad seeds will float. Pour off the pulp, water, bad seed and mold. Spread the good seed on a screen or paper towel to dry.
Seeds must be stored dry. Make sure all containers or packages are labeled with the seed type or variety, and date of collection. Store in a cool dry location like a refrigerator. Seeds that are not dry enough before storage will mold. Seed viability will decrease over time. Most seed should be used within three years. As summer ends, enjoy the fruits of your labor, including saving some of your vegetable seeds for the future.
"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."
—Henry David Thoreau
Cold grey winter days provide the perfect opportunity for gardeners to succumb to the lures of beautifully-illustrated seed catalogs and dream of their spring and summer gardens to come. It is often that case, though, that home gardeners spend more money than they need to, and purchase more seed than they can possibly use. Who hasn't discovered when those lovely seed packets arrive in the mail, that they actually have room for only a small percentage of those seeds in their home garden?
Luckily, Butte County residents now have a source of reliable and FREE seeds for our own growing conditions: the Seed Lending Library at the Chico branch of the Butte County Library. A library card enables gardeners to “check out” seeds that have been saved in local gardens. The gardener then saves seeds from next year's garden, and returns them to the Seed Lending Library, and the cycle continues. With this wonderful resource, home gardeners instantly gain the ability to plant free locally-grown and acclimated seeds.
Why consider saving seeds when most seeds are inexpensive anyway?
- Locally-selected and saved seed varieties may be better suited to our local climate.
- Seed-saving methods attract beneficial insects by leaving plants to complete their flowering or fruiting cycle.
- Saving heirloom varieties helps keep these plants from extinction.
- Many flowers and vegetables grown today have no commercial seed sources.
- You can share or exchange seeds with other seed savers to gain seeds you might not have been able to save yourself.
While it is not difficult to save seeds, there can be some pitfalls. Only seeds from open-pollinated plants will produce the same crop next year. Most hybrid varieties do not breed true to type. This means that the seed saved from last season's frilly cosmos hybrid may produce a much simpler, plain cosmos next spring. Many vegetables (root crops, cole crops, parsley and others) are biennial and do not form seeds until the second year. Some common garden vegetables (like peppers and corn) need to be separated by variety to prevent cross pollination by insects and wind. Tiny seeds need to be separated from the chaff by sieving and hairy daisy seeds need trimming. But beyond these pitfalls, most flower and vegetable annuals are easy to harvest for beginning seed savers. Seeds don't need special care; plants complete their life cycle in one season; seeds are harvested and stored when dry and are ready for planting.
Getting started: head to the Chico branch of the Butte County library to get seeds at the Seed Lending Library. While there, look at or check out books that contain information on saving specific seeds. Plant encylopedias, for example, generally contain detailed seed-saving instructions. The internet is full of tips for seed saving. The websites organicgardening.com, motherearthnews.com and ucanr.edu are good resources for information about seed saving and seed viability. Spend some time this winter learning how to save seeds from next year's garden to share and to plant the following year.