Seed saving

By Shauna Dobbie

Once these poppy seed heads are a little drier you can break them to get the seeds out.

Keeping seeds has been done by humans since prehistoric times. At one time based on the necessity of staying alive, what has been learned through millennia has been passed down to us, and today seed collection in Canada is more of a challenge or interest than anything else. Here’s how you can satisfy the challenge for your own garden.

Most seeds are collected from annuals, which includes most vegetables and a number of flowers, but you can also collect seed from biennials (like carrots) and perennials as well.

Heirloom, open pollinated and F1

All heirloom varieties are open pollinated, but not all open pollinated varieties are heirloom. In some countries, heirloom has a particular definition of how old an open-pollinated plant is, but in Canada there isn’t any such definition. Fifty years is a popular cutoff point.

Open-pollinated seeds tend to “come true” to the parents. F1 seeds are unlikely to do so, and they may not be capable of growing a plant at all. You shouldn’t bother collecting seeds from F1 plants; if you do, be prepared for whatever surprise greets you when the seeds grow.

Echinacea seeds can be pulled from the dry seed heads but use gloves!

Dry collection

Let’s start out easy with dry collection of seeds. These are seeds you collect from plants at the end of their season, when the flowers and fruits are dried.

You can cut or snap off the seed heads of these plants and put them into a paper bag. For some plants, like calendula, it will be easier to just pull off the seeds. Make sure you write on the bag which exact plant you have collected the seed from.

With a bag of dried seed heads, give them a good shake to get the seeds separated. You can throw out the chaff that was around the seeds. If you don’t, it doesn’t really matter. Some chaff won’t stop the seeds from growing next year.

You can dry seeds further indoors on mesh or newspaper. When they are completely dry, put them into your preferred storage container: envelopes, jars or zippered baggies. Write on the container what kind of seed it is.

Collect seeds on a dry day after a couple of days without rain.

You can collect seeds as long as they are still on the plant, but for best success you should do it as soon as they’re ready, so the plant doesn’t release them. Some plants, like impatiens, explode the seed head with a bit of force; if you’re too late, the seeds could be all over your garden.

Collect seeds throughout the growing season.

Wet method

You can collect the seeds from some fruits and vegetables while still in a wet state. Tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, zucchini and strawberries are all collected this way.

Let the plant become over-ripe on the vine. Pick it, cut open the fruit and scoop the seeds and flesh out. (With strawberries, slice the seeds off the fruit.)

Pumpkin seed: You need to wash the pulp off of these pumpkin seeds before you can keep them.

Slice the seeds off of strawberries and let the flesh dry off.

Occasionally people will notice seeds germinating inside of a tomato. This usually happens to tomatoes that are very ripe and have been keptin a warm room. They’re safe to eat.

With some vegetables, like eggplants and pumpkins, you can just wash the sticky stuff off the seeds and spread them out on a screen or some newspa- per to dry. With others, like tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini, you’ll need to ferment them a bit to get the mucilaginous goo off. If you don’t get that stuff off, chances are the seeds will not dry out to store.

To ferment seeds like tomatoes and cucumbers, put the wet seeds in a bowl and cover them with water and then with plastic wrap. Leave that in a spot where it won’t be disturbed for two or three days. Mould will likely grow in that time. Throw out the mould at the top and rinse the seeds that have sunk to the bottom of the mix—these are the viable seeds.

Spread these viable seeds out on a paper plate or a screen, turning them over once or twice per day, until they are completely dry. This can take one to two weeks.

Store your dry seeds in envelopes or zippered baggies, labeled with the type.

Where do seedless plants come from?

Seedless fruit doesn’t come from Franken-plants. In general, the plant that produces seedless offspring is either cloned (as in the Cavendish bananas we enjoy) or pollinated by a particular strain of the plant whose offspring will be seedless, as in the seedless watermelon varieties.

Genetically, most seedless plants are triploid, which means they have sets of three genes, which isn’t generally normal. It’s the result of a normal diploid plant (sets of two genes) crossed with a normal tetraploid plant (sets of four genes). Triploid plants are usually sterile.

Triploidy can and does happen in nature. For seedless fruits, the mechanism is usually just the breeder controlling which plants pollinate other plants.

Seedless watermelon aren't genetically modified.