A Beginner’s Guide to Seed-Saving in the Garden

Seed-saving is an excellent way to grow more in tune with your garden and the local environment. Once you start collecting, it’s difficult to stop! New plant discoveries, whether they be unique tomato shapes or a new impatiens flower color, occur after two plants breed amongst each other. Their commingled DNA leads to unique characteristics in the seedlings.

Seed-saving also helps you save money, as you’ll avoid the extravagant costs of buying seed packets from winter through summer. Buying all your seeds annually can be expensive, and seed-saving is a free activity to cut costs. 

I could go on and on about the benefits of saving your vegetable and fruit seeds, but I’ll finish with this last benefit. Growing plants from start to finish exposes them to your climate’s conditions—as you collect seed year after year, you create new hybrid species that adapt well to your ecoregion. Many famous vegetable varieties came about this way, like ‘Oregon Sugar Pod II’ snow peas from Oregon State University. 

With that, here is a beginner-friendly guide to seed-saving, including seven simple steps for success.

A Primer On Plant Genetics

Before we dive into the seven easy steps, we should discuss how plants reproduce. They use flowers with pollen and ovules to form new seeds. Some plants use pollen from another plant with their ovules, while others rely on their self-made pollen. Plants that need outside pollen are “open-pollinated” while many garden species have bisexual (aka “perfect flowers”) that can pollinate themselves. 

Tomatoes, peppers, and lettuce all sport bisexual flowers, while crops like corn and wheat are open-pollinated. With seed, the parent plants have a large influence on the progeny’s characteristics.

This means if you have two corn varieties in your garden planted closely enough together, their seeds will most likely have traits from both. Similar to the way that children have traits from their mother and father, plant babies also have characteristics from their two parents. 

Pollinating insects spread pollen readily, leading to further muddling of plant genetics. A good rule of thumb is to leave things be if you want new hybrid plants. Pollinators will combine pollen and ovules at will, doing the work for you. 

If you’d prefer to grow the same variety, you’ll need to pollinate the flowers with the pollen of your choice and isolate them from insects. Use a paintbrush to dust pollen into flowers’ stigmas. Then, use micromesh netting or net bags to protect the flowers as they morph and mature into pods or fruits. Heirloom plants tend to stay true to seed without much intervention and are good options for seed-saving beginners.

7 Steps To Save Seeds

Now that we’ve got the difference between hybrids, open-pollinated varieties, and heirlooms, we’re ready to save seeds! Follow these seven simple steps annually to create a strong seed supply. 

Step 1: Identify Varieties

Some plants are easier to save seeds from than others. Species that spread readily often house them with feathery plumes, exploding pods, or a lightweight nature so they can float into new areas. Other species, like tomatoes, squash, and watermelon house them inside fleshy fruit. First, identify which plants you’d like to save seeds from, so you’ll know how and when to collect them.

Fruiting crops tend to produce seeds later during the growing season, as they need to create nutrient-dense fruits or vegetables that take longer to grow. Others, like lettuce and Swiss chard, let seeds fall from early summer through winter, depending on when the parent plants germinated and began their life cycle.

Keep a close eye on your plants and you’ll know the precise moment to harvest. Species like tomatoes or apples have ripe ones when their fruits are red and swelling on the vine.

Others, like grasses, nasturtiums, and beet family crops exhibit brown, dry seed pods that crumble off their stalks when fully ripe. Still, others explode out of seed pods when they’re ready to germinate.

Step 2: Ensure Ample Pollination

Seeds are the end product of pollination. There must be enough pollen in the garden for them to form. A good rule of thumb to achieve this is by planting three or more of each crop variety. You’ll also want to use hand pollination if insects are absent.

Some species need more plants than others for enough pollen to be present. Corn, for example, relies on the wind for pollination, and dumps millions of pollen grains in the air in the hopes they’ll reach female tassels. If you only plant one or two in your garden, there won’t be enough pollen to cross-pollinate. You’ll need at least ten or more corn stalks of the same variety growing near each other for optimal seed formation.

Other species, especially ones with bisexual flowers, are less reliant on population size for pollen. They’ll self-pollinate if they need to. You’ll still want to plant three or more of the same variety since this ensures your plant population’s genetics stay strong. Plants, like humans, prefer not to inbreed, and many years of inbreeding leads to weak, disease and pest-susceptible species.

Some plants, like squash, have separate male and female flowers. They rely on pollinators to drag pollen from male flowers into receptive stigmas on female ones. If pollinators are absent, use a paintbrush to dab pollen from the male flowers to the female ones. This ensures successful pollination, which means you’ll have seeds to harvest in due time. 

Step 3: Gather Proper Tools

Now that we’ve got the preliminary work out of the way, we’re ready to start collecting! Seed-saving is easy if you have the proper tools. You can get away with using your hands to collect most species, although some have tiny seeds that require small objects to find. Others won’t come out of their pods and need some time to ripen after you collect them.

Step 4: Collect

Here’s the fun part: collecting! Take your herbal snips and snip off dry pods or seed heads, then place them in brown paper bags. The seeds fall to the bottom and you can collect them easily when they’re dry and ripe. Then you can clean them by separating the plant matter from the seed itself.

Use tweezers or your fingers to pull some out of the seed heads if you’d like just a few. This is a good method if you want to leave some in your garden to germinate naturally. Avoid pulling too hard on tender plant stems, as you can weaken them while harvesting. Use snips or be gentle with your fingers for best results. 

Most fruit and vegetable crops form seeds inside fleshy fruit. You’ll eat or use the fruit first to reach them. Scoop melon or squash seeds out with a spoon, and use a micromesh strainer to isolate seeds from the fleshy pulp. 

Step 5: Dry and Store

How to dry and store your harvested seeds depends on their species, growth habits, and preferences. Some are ready to store after you pick them if they’re dry, like lettuce, swiss chard, or nasturtiums. Others, like tomatoes, peppers, and even wildflowers, require some extra processing.

For fruit crops, isolate the seeds from the flesh and rinse them off. Then, let them dry on a paper towel or dish rag. When they’re no longer wet, store them long-term using airtight jars in a cool, dark location. 

Tomato seeds have a special coating on them that inhibits germination. You’ll need to ferment the seeds to mimic nature by removing these coatings. The process is simple: place them in a jar of water, and let them ferment for 24-72 hours, shaking the closed jar daily. Then, scoop any fleshy parts out, strain, and let them dry before storing them.

Step 6: Germinate New Seedlings

Native plants, wildflowers, and cool crops best germinate in fall for winter through spring harvest. Other warm-loving species need to wait until spring for optimal sprouting. Store as long as you need, then start them during their preferred season. 

I let some species naturalize in my garden, like lettuce and Swiss chard, and native wildflowers like poached eggs plant. They reseed readily, and I sow collected ones to supplement them with extra seedlings. Others, like garden balsam, I save until spring and germinate indoors in 5” nursery pots. 

Most species will keep for at least a year, while some remain viable for ten years or more. Crops like onions have notoriously short shelf lives, so you should sow them within the year. Consult germination guides to determine how long yours are viable. 

Step 7: Repeat!

Once you know how to collect seeds, you may never stop! This process is immensely rewarding, as it can create new hybrid plants you can’t find in catalogs and nurseries. Seed-save annually to increase your supply over the years. You’ll be self-sufficient before you know it!

If your plant populations are weak after a few years, they may need a genetic boost with DNA from other sources. Sow similar varieties around your hybrids, and they’ll collect new, genetically-rich pollen to enrich themselves with. 

Another cool way to mix species is by trading seeds with neighbors and friends. Grow your garden and your community with seed-saving this season!