A Guide to Seed Saving

by Jenna Aldrich, Brown Farm

Winter Caplanson photos

TERMINOLOGY

Let’s talk about basic seed saving jargon for a quick minute:

WET SEEDS are seeds like tomatoes and squashes that you harvest while the seed is wet.

DRY SEEDS like beans, peas and corn are harvested when the seed is dry.

OPEN-POLLINATED means that the flowers are fertilized by natural means and that if kept separate from other plants of the same variety (the degree of isolation required depends on the species), will breed true to type for the following generation.

HEIRLOOM means that it is an Open Pollinated variety that has been around for a few generations (not necessarily something that your great-great-grandma grew). All heirlooms are open pollinated, but not all open pollinated varieties are heirlooms.

HYBRIDS are a variety of a plant created by crossing two parent lines. Sometimes hybrids create sterile seeds. In some cases, this is done on purpose by large seed breeding companies to monopolize the market. Sometimes you can save hybrid seeds and “dehybridize” them to end up with a really cool genepool and a lifetime of fun. F1 hybrid means that it is the first generation after crossing the parent plants.

BREEDING PLANTS in nature is different than creating GMOs in a lab. In a laboratory, seed genetics are altered on a cellular level far from sun and soil. Breeding plants to develop new varieties or for F1 hybrids is done by crossing two plants that have desirable traits while they are in the flowering stage. There is a dark side of F1 hybrids; seed breeding for hybrids on large commercial scale is a highly skilled labor that is often outsourced to countries that do not protect a fair wage or fair working conditions.

CROSSERS are plants that cannot fertilize the flower themselves and need pollinators or wind to help; selfers are plants that can fertilize their own flowers.

Every living thing in this beautiful, diverse and magical world starts, in one form or another, as a seed. Despite the importance of seeds, a seed’s origin is often overlooked when we strive to become more “local” by growing our own food. If you started your own garden plants from seeds this spring, where did your seed come from? Do you know which farm grew the seed? Do you know how many hands passed the seed on at each point in its journey? Do you even know what country it came from? You might remember the seed company that was on the packet, but where did they get the seeds from? Chances are, tracing the path from the seed farm to the seed packet is not as simple as you would think.

By saving your own seed, you are able to improve the quality of the seed and subsequent generations of fruits and plants.

There are several seed companies right here in the Northeast that are helping to make a seed’s path more transparent. Fedco Seeds, a renowned seed supplier based in Clinton, ME, includes a supplier code (on a scale of 1-6) with each seed description in their catalog. Seeds with a code of “1” come from small scale seed farmers, and seeds with a score of “5” or “6” come from enormous multinational organizations. High Mowing Organic Seeds of Wolcott, VT grows a ton of their own seed stock, but when the seed is sourced from a contract grower or an outside vendor, it is clearly labeled in the seed description, usually with the name of the supplier. Purchasing seeds directly from the seed farm that grew them is a great way to ensure that you know exactly where your seeds came from. The best option though, and the most beneficial to you, your garden, and your ecosystem, is to save your own seed!

Saving seeds is stewardship of the land and preservation of plant varieties and food culture. It is political, radical, philosophical, and essential. It’s about breeding food resilience in our local communities; the seed is the first and last link in our local food cycle. And too often it is missing. To quote Matthew Dillon of the Organic Seed Alliance: “Seed Knowledge is eroding even faster than Seed Biodiversity.”

Saving seed is fundamentally easy. Although some seeds are easier to save than others, with a few basic techniques you can save any seed. Here in the Northeast, tomatoes (the gateway seed!), beans, peas, corn, cucumbers, melon and squash, herbs, lettuce, peppers, eggplant and spinach are all EASY SEED TO SAVE. Selecting open pollinated plants for saving seed is the most basic form of plant breeding; the seed steward selects for traits that they do or don’t want and saves seeds from those plants. Traits are anything that defines a plant or fruit; cold hardiness, heat tolerance, TASTE, plant growth habit, color, pest/ disease resistance…the list is endless! Our seed biodiversity is waning because the traits that make a vegetable or fruit marketable in a grocery store or grown at a large scale are quite different than small scale farming and gardening or being marketable at a farmers’ market or local food cooperative. Traits such as uniformity, storage life, and transportability are prioritized over taste, color, diversity, nutrition and cultural importance. As large-scale agriculture dominates how much of our population accesses food, it indirectly dominates how our seeds are grown and varieties selected (or not selected!) which is negatively affecting our seed biodiversity in a big way.

Mother Nature is the matriarch of all seed stewards, and she is always seeking balance. If you are paying attention, you’ll see that Nature is selecting for the subsequent generations all the time. If you have a plant in your garden with pest or disease pressure it is simply because that plant is not healthy, and Nature is finding balance. Unhealthy plants should not reproduce and pass on their genetics. Large commercial seed farms use synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides—both organic and conventional—to ensure a full crop of seed. There is no balance; plants that would have had the pest or disease are synthetically kept alive to reproduce. We are diluting our seed genetics and perpetuating the cycle of chemical use for generations of seeds and plants. By saving your own seed, you are able to improve the quality of the seed and subsequent generations of fruits and plants and be released from dependence of inputs in your garden beyond feeding the soil naturally.

Another reason to save your own seed is for the pollinators! Plants that would normally be harvested before they flower, like broccoli, are instead allowed to go through their entire life cycle including producing flowers. This is very beneficial to our insect and pollinator populations. Pollinators, especially native pollinators, need a diversity of flowers in the early, mid, and late season. In addition to different blossom colors, size and shape play an important role as well. For example, overwintered brassica crops (such as kale, turnips, cabbages, etc.) provide small yellow flowers in clusters in early spring which is ideal for the braconid family of wasps. Feeding beneficial parasitoid wasps, having living roots in the soil through Winter, and getting a seed crop (assuming you only over wintered one Brassica – crossers are gonna cross!) of a cold hardy vegetable acclimated to your microclimate (above and in the soil!) that you can plant again for the fall is a complete, beautiful cycle.

how to save seed

Sometimes planning for saving seed needs to be thought out before you sow the parent seeds. The Three Sisters garden is an example of premeditated seed saving. Choosing a flint corn that dries on the stalk and a storage bean to grow up the corn are keys to success, both in your crop harvest and your seed harvest. Choosing corn varieties that are flowering at different times than sweet or “cow” corn and planting them as transplants to really ensure that they won’t overlap in the flower stage and cross, is a simple way to isolate your crop. This method can be used with different vegetable families too.

And sometimes saving seeds can be spontaneous acts of stewardship. If you still have tomatoes out in your garden, and they are an Open Pollinated variety, their seeds will be true to type. Saving seeds can be as simple or as complicated as suits you. You can go out to your garden, take a juicy bite out of a tomato and spit the seeds out and you’re on your way to saving seeds for next year!

Wet Seed Saving, Tomatoes Saving WET, EASY seed is fairly straight forward. Tomatoes have mature seed at the eating stage. As a small-scale farmer, there are a lot of traits that I can select for as I choose tomatoes for saving seed; however sometimes I just go by intuition and I stuff a seemingly random fruit in my pocket because it struck me as a good candidate as I walked past the plant. Taste is always my top priority, but plant structure, fruit size, and color are all important traits too. Once you have chosen tomatoes for saving seed, cut them open with a knife or rip them open with your fingers. Squish out all the liquid and seeds into a jar, a pint mason jar works great. Unless there’s an off-type fruit that you’re trying to keep separate, put all the same variety from multiple fruits and multiple plants into the same jar. Add water and swish it around trying to get excess fruit chunks to separate from the seeds. Pour off the chunky water and add more water, making sure there’s plenty for the seeds to move around in. Depending on the volume of seeds in the jar, I usually end up filling the jar halfway full of water but fill accordingly to how many seeds you have.

Make sure you label your jar and your seeds at every step -- your future self will appreciate it! Label the jar with the variety, notes if needed (such as if it was from a particular plant or fruit with specific traits), and the date. Cover the jar; if using the lid don’t put it on too tight. It’s better to use a metal canning band or a rubber band to secure a piece of cloth or paper towel over the jar, and let it ferment. Fermentation breaks down the outer protective layer of the seed and improves the germination rate. Within a few days a layer of mold will form on the top, this is totally normal, and the viable seeds will have sunk to the bottom. Pour the mold and water off, careful to keep the viable seeds at the bottom in the jar. Rinse the seeds by adding fresh water, swishing, and pouring off.

Once clean, pour the wet seeds onto a dish towel, paper towel or even a coffee filter. Spread them out into a single layer, smearing with a rubber spatula works well. Let the seeds dry in a warm well-ventilated space out of direct sunlight. If you have a lot of varieties or different types of seed drying at once, using the racks of a food dehydrator that is OFF can be a real space saver. Once fully dry you can separate the seeds from each other gently with your fingers and store them.

Dry Seed Saving, Beans and Corn Saving DRY, EASY seed is also very straight forward – maybe even more so than wet seed. When saving dry seed, you let nature do most of the work, letting the pods dry down on the plants. The birds will let you know when your seed is ready, but you can also listen for it. Brassicas will sound like little maracas, the tiny black and brown seeds rattling in their slender pods. Pea and bean pods will get brittle to the touch, and sometimes let the seeds fall out. Beans have a percussion sound too; all dry seeds have their own song to sing when they are ready. Beans can be categorized by fresh eating (think green beans, either bush or pole) or dry storage (think Skunk or Scarlet Runner). Dry storage beans can be eaten fresh during summer and they make a delicious dry bean to cook in winter. Fresh eating beans, although possible, don’t make a great winter cooking bean and seed saved should be for next year’s crop and not for eating in winter.

When saving storage beans, save the biggest, plumpest beans from the fullest pods for seed and the rest for winter meals. When saving seed for fresh eating beans and peas, mark the healthiest plants with the tastiest pods with a scrap of cloth or ribbon tied around like a flag during the growing season and let them finish their cycle while harvesting food from the other plants. Once the plant and pods are completely dry and singing their seed songs, bring in the pods (or the whole plants!) for threshing. You don’t have to process the dry seed right away; dry seed can wait until the hustle of fall plantings and cover crop sowing and late summer harvests have waned. Your piles of pods and cobs will be waiting for you to keep your hands busy and connected to the seasons when you have time to start threshing.

Threshing is the process of separating the pod from the seed. Small batches can be done by hand, and this allows inspection of every seed to ensure quality and makes cleaning the seed in the next step easier. Larger batches can be done in a big tote or on a tarp with your feet, crushing the pods like Lucy crushing grapes.

Pop or flint corn will have its rustling-husk seed song when it is ready. The kernels will be hard – you should not be able to dent the kernel with your fingernail. The husk will be pale and dry, and so will the stalk. Bring in your seed harvests before the weather, bugs or birds can squander it. Pull back the husk and expose the kernels and let the cob dry and cure further in a sunny, warm, dry spot. There are a variety of tools that can be used to help get the kernels off of the cob once husked. A simple short piece of PVC pipe that allows the cob to fit through but has four screws protruding into the center helps pop off the kernels as you push the cob through. Similar to saving storage beans, you want to save the prettiest, plumpest, healthiest cobs for seed and the rest for your winter breads, muffins, tortillas, and meals and mashes.

Once you’ve freed the seed from the pods or gotten it off of a cob, you need to winnow to clean the seed. Try to get as much of the large debris out by hand, and then you will use a box fan to blow on the seed while you pour it into a waiting bucket. The basic principle is that the viable seed is heavier than the plant material, and the seed will fall into the bucket and the debris will blow away. You can do this as many times as needed to get the seed as clean as you like. You can also use seed screens, either bought or homemade, to help clean the seed. You’ll want a variety of screens that allow different sized seed through. Be creative, experiment! Screens can be made out of all different types of material – walk around your local hardware store or that dark place in your barn or garage, to get ideas and materials. Think of it as a flat colander, with a wooden box-like lip of several inches to keep the seed and debris from rolling off the edges as you rock and shake the screen.

seed storage

After the seed is clean and dry, you can store the seed in any jar or envelope. Coin envelopes work well for small seeds. Letter envelopes that are new or reused, shipping mailers, mason jars, glass jars from store-bought sauce and salsa - really anything that can hold seed, keep out moisture and bugs, and can be labeled, will do. To maintain seed viability, keeping seeds cool and dry is very important. I like to use envelopes in all shapes and sizes and put all of those envelopes into a large, air-tight tote. You can use silica packets to help absorb moisture. I’ve found that the reusable mini dehumidifiers work very well. I try to store the totes at about 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit depending on the space I have available and the time of year. A tote with something to maintain low humidity inside, stored in the coolest part of your basement should be sufficient.

now you’re off and running…

Saving seeds connects us to the land, to the natural cycles and it can also connect us with our community. There is so much to learn, and so much to share, about saving seeds. This article barely scratches the surface of seed stewardship, and I hope it is a catalyst for your own curiosity. I hope you continue on a seed saving journey and do so in the company of community. Community is a very valuable resource for seed savers –saving our seed biodiversity is a communal effort and sharing seed knowledge is the foundation. Several other resources that I have found to be invaluable are the Seed Savers Exchange, the Seed Ambassador Project, and the Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI). I’m hoping to organize a seed swap to be held at the Willimantic Farmers Market this fall. My goal is to connect our community through sharing seed and seed knowledge. If anyone is interested in helping or contributing in anyway, please reach out to me via email!

About the author: Jenna Aldrich is the co-owner and farmer at Brown Farm in Scotland, CT. When not farming or seed saving, she is fixing things she broke, shepherding sheep, preparing for winter, and homeschooling her two kids.