I’ve been doing a lot more seed saving in the past few years, and this season saved seeds from a range of different vegetable plants that I have never tried before. All of which take extra time, space and care, but I ended up with a huge amount of seeds.
Chapters in Video
0:00 Intro
1:05 Some Seed Saving is Easier
2:06 Rocket
3:17 Radish
4:37 Lettuce
6:31 Beetroot
8:32 Leek
9:59 Dealing With Abundance
10:26 Is It Worth It?
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34 Comments
Never been this early 😂
I really enjoyed this video and am grateful you demonstrated how you collect and process seeds. I've just a small kitchen garden but I can probably still put to use what you shared. I'd like to recommend, though, to collect some raddish seed pods when they are still young before they get woody for stir fry, salads, soups, etc. Very tasty! Best when fresh, but can be frozen for future cooking.
Loved seeing your thrashing and winnowing methods
Seed saving is a fascinating time filler. I find it exciting and I only have a balcony to work with. Thanks for the video.
Thank you! I was beginning to lose the will to live this afternoon 😁 – incessant rain, and no good gardening videos – until now. You gave me an idea actually, I did pop a few spare leek plants into the tunnel, so I will let a couple go to seed and see what happened, and I have had a few tomatoes self-seeded in there which I will try to keep in the house through winter. Charles Dowding does this with side shoots. It's a bit of fun to see what I get. Mind you, I first got into thinking about seed saving after watching Dr Vandana Shiva and what she is encouraging in India. They have had such a shocking time over there. I think it is something we may all have to do. Thanks again.
I feel better knowing I’m not the only one saving lots of seeds when I already have too many. 😂
What do you do with the tomato seeds after you put them on those jars? Surely you don’t just leave then there.
Over the years I've learned that I don't need to save cilantro/coriander seed. They are so prolific that if I just keep an eye out and weed carefully where cilantro had grown the previous year, I can easily save and transplant enough volunteers. Of course, it's easy to save the seeds from these prolific plants, but I get a special enjoyment from growing year after year from those seeds that have self-selected to grow well in my garden and climate. I'm considering doing something similar, and more deliberate, for a variety of crops; setting aside an area to let them grow wild for several seasons, self seeding for multiple generations, then harvesting and growing seed from the Nth generation that have done well here. As always, thanks for sharing, Bruce.
The blower was a great idea!
You follow my principle, "anything worth doing is worth over-doing"! If you haven't read them, I'd highly recommend reading Carol Deppe's gardening books, she's been breeding and saving seeds for many years and knows her stuff. The number of potential pitfalls is enormous and her books really opened my eyes to all the ways we can engage in inadvertent undesirable selection when saving seeds, as well as good guidelines on the populations of various plants needed to maintain diversity. This year's experiment was saving seeds from some excellent, but very expensive, lettuce varieties. It was actually hard to get them to bolt but they eventually did and the seeds are excellent. At 5 cents each, 50 grams of lettuce seeds is about like a bar of silver!
I saved lots of lettuce seeds last year, and all seemed to grow fine on planting this year. But this year I got none at all! :-(. They bolted and flowered but the seeds didn't seem to form. It was very dry and most of my lettuce was in raised beds this year as opposed to the nature a soil – but I had 4 -5 volunteer lettuces from last year out in the native soil that flowered and they also didn't develop seeds. I have got lots of rocket and radish, dill, and I'm trying with tomatoes, squash, cucumber (had one hidden one that got huge and matured). It's hard for me to dry seeds as my local micro climate is very humid and my house isn't warm. I do have a dehydrator, maybe I could use that on the lowest setting but it's a lot of power to use…
Awesome video!!!! super important seed saving 👍
A word of warning Bruce, I mistakenly disposed of what I thought was rubbish Chard seeds with the old plants into the compost bin, the result was amazing as when I used the compost to top dress the beds, up sprang hundreds of Chard and Tomato seedlings. I suspect they will overwinter as well, thus giving me another headache next year.
🌻I've been saving seed since I was a young boy just getting into gardening. For podding plants I don't bother with processing/crushing the pods, instead I bag up the pods and then when it is time to plant I break open several healthy looking pods and plant those seeds. Using several pods seems to give me enough diversity to save for the next season but I usually have enough pods to last for 3 to 4 years, trading seed with neighbors also helps with diversity. Also keeping the seeds in the pods I feel that they are better protected from drying out and remain viable even into year 4!
For melon and cucumber families I add a few new store bought seeds to the garden just to keep the diversity healthy as I have had some problems in the past with genetic drift.
With lettuce I don't bother with removing chaff and debris, just bag it up and then pull seeds from the bottom of the bag and heavily plant those even with some of the chaff. You are going to thin the row anyway so don't sweat it.
If you are growing any hybrid/F1 plants, never save seed! It wont work.
There doesn't need to be a lot of work in saving your seeds, Mother Nature doesn't clean her seeds, only seed selling companies do that to make them look pretty for us fickle consumers!!
If you are particular about the variety of seeds you grow, and it isn't very popular, then saving them provides you with peace of mind that you aren't dependent on your supplier. The other reason why I started saving was because I have read numerous accounts on the benefits of using seeds that are adapted to your growing conditions. Some sources have stated these saved seeds will produce a larger yield within your context. If some seeds are too difficult, like carrots, I will continue to buy in (we have loads of Queen Anne's Lace and cross pollinates with carrots).
I'm only a minute in and I already had one of those "why didn't I think of that?" moments… using the leaf blower to knock the chaff out of a big bowl or kettle of beans etc is fantastic.
Fantastic! Yes, keep saving the seeds and learning. I've started doing this too, sure alot to learn. Second year now and when I'm not overwhelmed it's fun and rewarding. Good knowlege to have I feel especially these days when we know our usual supplies might not be available. Grow, sell , give away or trade. I'm all for seed saving!
Not sure what your experience has been but I find that when I save my own arugula seeds, the progeny become just spicier and spicier with every generation, to the point where it's just like eating horseradish. Maybe it's something about my growing conditions, but I eventually just have to buy new seeds.
Thanks for doing this and sharing your knowledge
Definitely a worthwhile exercise! Thank you for sharing your experience!
I’d love to buy some of your seeds
i use fire to burn the fluff away from dandelion type seeds, im just using a normal lighter but im sure there are other things better for an actual farm instead of my small garden! Thanks for the great vid again!
👏🇨🇦 you may also enjoy https://youtu.be/TidlIQjUm3U
Very good coverage of seed saving, thank you!
Too bad that I have had mostly hybrids in my garden… Should look towards some "traditional" ones as well.
For what it's worth, I personally find saved seeds to typically have much better sprout rates over purchased varieties, especially when it comes to alliums (which are quite a pain in my experience to save seeds from due to their propensity for crossing if you save more than one variety). This is probably due to their age – you know how old they are, something not every supplier will tell you. I find the excess you get from saved seed makes spring planting far simpler; when seeds are limited special care is wise to stretch limited supplies to many seedling plugs or plantings and thin plantings can only be spotted in a limited capacity, but when seeds are plentiful it's far easier to just overseed with very good quality seed and then thin the stragglers, I find especially useful for things that get grazed here in southern ontario, peas and sunflowers and cabbage etc.
I rescued a set of large interlocking wooden rimmed seed sieves from a skip at a plant science building undergoing demolition some years ago, it would be relatively inexpensive to replicate a set from stainless steel woven cloth of different mesh sizes (available cheap on ebay)
I'm a fairly rubbish and unattentive vegetable gardener which has made me ok at accidental seed saving. Corn left too long, missed runner beans and peas and overripe cucumbers. Might save a bit of money next year.
My celery seemed to make a good amount of seeds too.
Birdy
Great video again, it would be great to hear if you have greater vigour from your own saved seed
Seed cleaner https://youtu.be/EAT0KU7Qw1A
make sure the seeds have a low moisture content before freezing so they wouldn't get hurt by the expanding water crystals inside.
I have sowed chard this year that i saved a decade ago and it is still germinating. I usually put 10% of space and numbers to seed saving. I usually do a germination test esp on small seeds like lettuce, celery etc as soon as they are dry.
too many seeds for your context you mean, I'm sure if you aren't doing variety trials and growing one or more polytunnels of beets for example then you'd probably need more seeds.
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