Plants to Save Seed from for Beginners

I've had a goal for a couple of years now to save as many of my own seeds as possible. I've been slowly increasing my skill year by year, and I hope to do more this year. Eventually I'd even love to save and produce seed for all of the plants I grow in my garden. I find it super interesting, and important to me.

The act of saving seed can open up a world of possibility for you in your garden. Suddenly you can help preserve old varieties or start to breed new ones. You can select the best plants to collect seed from and the variety you're working with will adapt to your area naturally over time. It'll become more resistant to your diseases and flourish more in your gardening style. Plus you get to decide what's important to you, rather than having another professional do it for you.

Saving your own seed also helps increase the genetic heterogeneity for your community. If all of your neighbors buy tomatoes from the same nursery, and you have a different variety that you grew yourself you might not be affected by any bad tomato diseases that sweep through your community this year.

It's also just super fun to do and to analyze as the season goes on.

Before we get to the list let me explain one basic thing about plant physiology. Some plants, called inbreeders, are set up to pollinate themselves readily. Other plants, called outbreeders are more likely to get pollen from another plant. When growing a variety to save seed, you want your seeds to have the same or similar parents. That's how you maintain a variety, and get vegetables that look the same year after year. So it pays to know if your chosen plant is an inbreeder or an outbreeder.

Some outbreeders are simply more likely to get pollen from another source. They usually require hand pollination, but that's fairly easy to do with most plants. I've included a few in my list below.

Other outbreeding plants are self-infertile. Or if the plant is able to pollinate itself the offspring might be much weaker after one or more generations of being inbred. This last trick is called inbreeding depression, and can be hard to get around on a smaller scale.

However, If you're super interested by the idea of working with a classic outbreeder* then I hope you just go for it. A really good book to start reading would be "How to Breed your Own Vegetable Varieties" by Carol Deppe. She explains everything that you need to know about getting through the tricky bits of saving seed, and she does it in an interesting way. If you have the motivation to try and learn, then you can do it. I promise

On the other hand if you just want to start saving your own seed then here are a few plants that it might be good to start out with.

Peas

Peas actually pollinate themselves before the blossoms open. This makes it superbly easy to maintain a variety without much effort and little unwanted cross pollination. To save seed: simply allow some of the pods to dry on the plant. Pick the pods before the seeds drop on their own and put the seeds into an envelope of some sort.

Congratulations, you have just saved pea seed for next years garden.

Tomatoes

In a lot of varieties of tomato the anthers (male parts) have fused together over the stigma (female part) and only shed pollen inwards. This also makes them a really great inbreeder because often hand pollination is not entirely necessary. Although if you have a particularly active insect population in your garden** you might want to take the time to pollinate a few flowers by hand, just to be sure you get pure seed.

At the end of the season select a few tomatoes from the best plants. Then squeeze all of the juice and seeds into a cup or a bowl. After a few days the gelatinous coating around the seeds will have dissipated, and there will be a layer of mold growing on top. Dump the mold and some of the liquid out, then fill the cup with water again, so that you can pour some more of the yucky stuff out. Repeat this step until the seeds are clean then drain the cup and allow the seeds to dry on a paper towel or plate for a few days. Stirring them a couple times a day keeps them from sticking together.

I actually messed this up last year and let the tomato juice sit for too long. The seeds got a little too fermented and my germination rates were way, way down***. I'm going to try again this year though, hopefully I'll get better.

Melons

Melons are outbreeders, but they have no self sterility or inbreeding depression to deal with. You will have to hand pollinate, but luckily that's fairly easy to do. Melons and Squash are so easy to pollinate by hand that both would be a good place to start with experimental breeding.

To hand pollinate tape a female flower closed in the evening, when it looks like it'll be ready to open soon. Come back the next morning and remove the tape. If you picked the right flower it should open slowly in the next few minutes. Collect a male flower and lightly dust the stigma with the pollen. After you have finished tape the female flower closed and mark it well.

To collect the seed scoop it out of the ripe melon at the end of the season. Then clean it thoroughly but gently under some running water. Allow the seed to dry. You'll know that it is ready when it snaps rather than bends when pressure is applied.

Marigolds

IF you're more interested in flowers than Marigolds are a solid starting choice. It's as easy as letting the blooms produce seed and then collecting the seed when it's ready. It is a little tricky to separate the seed from the chaff so it pays to freeze the seed/chaff mixture for a few days to kill any seed borne pests.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers are another easy flower to collect seed from. Sunflowers also produce buckets of seed, so they're gratifying to collect from. If you live in an area with a lot of wild sunflowers you might also want to pollinate these by hand. Unless, you just want sunflowers and don't care about the form as much.

To hand pollinate take the bloom from one plant, and rub it onto the next plant, leaving both on their stem. Do this every day or two, because the seed forms progressively inwards. I've also read that using a microfiber cloth would work to rub the flowers with, but I haven't tried either yet, so I'm planning on doing a bit of experimentation this year.

Potatoes and Garlic

Though not true seed providing your own potato and garlic plants is as simple as saving some of this years harvest for next year. Just be sure to store the potatoes and garlic in an appropriate location during the off season.

So there you have it. A few simple ways to start saving your own seeds. What do you think you're going to try this year?

* Corn and broccoli are two popular examples

** Hooray!!!

*** I gave some of this bad seed away as Christmas gifts. Sorry!