Saving Seeds Properly - Ep. 215

Just Grow Something | The "Why" Behind the "How" of Gardening

Saving seeds from our gardens to use the next spring it is a great way to not only help our budget out a little bit but also to give ourselves some food security and doesn’t sound like it should be a very difficult task. At that point we’re not relying on someone else to grow our seeds for us that we have to buy over and over again. Just collect the seeds from whatever you want to keep, rinse them, dry them, and pack them away for next year, right?

Well, yes, but also, no. The method I just described can absolutely mean you’ll have beautifully preserved seeds that have fantastic germination the next season and yield a bounty of exactly what you thought you were planting. But it’s equally possible that you’ll open the seed packet the next season to find fuzzy gray fungus or black moldy growth on your seeds, or seeds that don’t sprout properly, or maybe they sprout and you get midway through the gardening season and the fruit on the plant look nothing like the ones you saved the seeds from.

So, today on Just Grow Something we’re going to dig into which plants you should and shouldn’t be saving seeds from, how to properly collect, clean, and dry those seeds in order to best guarantee your success the next season, and how to quickly test them before you store them to know if they’re viable. Let’s dig in!

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Hot Water Treatment for Seeds – Louisiana State University

How To Save Vegetable Seeds – Farmers Almanac