Seed Saving: Where to Start?

Okay, you’ve decided you’re interested in saving your own vegetable seeds, but what’s the first step? Here are some suggestions.

Seed saving topics range from very simple to very complex. Some people with PhD’s write on seed saving topics. This post is intentionally going to focus on the very simplest aspects of seed saving.

First and foremost you must have the right seeds! I posted about this a few days ago. Not only are hybrid seeds genetically unstable, but they are ‘unknown quantities’ in your garden. Seed companies generally keep the parent plant varieties a secret, and often the genetics of the parent plants are not useful to have in your garden anyway. This unknown genetic material can be a real problem if it unknowingly cross pollinates with other plants in your garden. There are times you want F1 hybrid plants in your garden when seed saving or breeding your own plants, but those that come from commercial sources are most often not desirable. In any case, when you are first starting with seed saving, be sure not to confuse the matter with commercial F1 hybrid seeds.

Inbreeding Annuals

Okay, let’s talk about what ‘Inbreeding Annuals’ means.

There are two breeding characteristics, inbreeding and out-breeding. Inbreeding means a plant has flowers that pollinate themselves. Out-breeding means the plant develops flowers that must give and receive pollen to and from other plants. There are very few cases of 100% pure inbreeding or out-breeding plants, so generally what’s considered is if a plant is mostly one or the other.

There are three types of plants; annuals, biennials and perennials. These have a 1-year, 2-year and unending life cycles respectively. At the end of the first year, annuals will go to seed and die. Biennials will go to seed and die after the second year. Perennials generally go to seed each year and continue to grow. Most vegetables are either annual or biennial, but there are some perennials too.

Inbreeding plants are the easiest to save seeds from both because they don’t easily cross-pollinate with their neighboring plants (and so different varieties can be grown in close proximity), and also because they are genetically evolved not to be susceptible to ‘inbreeding depression’.

Inbreeding depression occurs when the size of a particular plant’s gene-pool gets too small. Think of this in terms of human children who are born as a result of incest, they develop birth defects and other gene related health problems. The same thing can happen with plants, and all plants need a certain ‘breadth’ to their gene-pool. Plants that are naturally inbreeding plants have a much higher resistance to these problems then their out-breeding counterparts.

In plain-speak what all this means is you can simply grow this type of plant, even several different varieties next to each other, save the seeds, and not worry about any of the ‘usual’ seed saving issues.

Keep in mind that because no plant is 100% inbreeding, it is possible to have issues with cross-pollination and inbreeding depression. As a matter of pursuing ‘best practice’ gardening, try to maintain a little space between different varieties of the same kinds of plants if you can. Also try to save seeds from a few different plants, to help maintain gene-pool breadth and prevent inbreeding depression. Like almost all other aspects of gardening, there are few absolute rules with seed saving, only guidelines, and it’s always best to avoid problems when you can.

If two plants cross-pollinate, after the seeds which are produced from this crossing are planted and grown, the resulting plant will have 50% of it’s genes from each parent plant. In this way crosses are usually easy to notice, and it’s important to watch out for them and not accidentally save seeds from these plants. It’s always fine to eat these plants! If you are interested in experimenting, it’s also okay to save seeds from these plants for replanting.

The other thing to consider for best practice gardening, is always save seeds from the best looking and highest quality plants! This is very important. There are always small genetic variations between plants, and if you save seeds from the best plants you will preserve those genetic traits. If you save seeds from the worst plants, you will also preserve those traits! Sometimes it’s hard to grow something all year long, only to have to eat the worst ones and save the best ones for seed saving, but it’s one of those things you get used to and you will be rewarded in the long run with genetically superior plants.

As a rule, don’t eat from and save seeds from the same plant. Many plants will die after they have successfully produced seeds. For example, common beans and pea plants both do this. If you eat from these plants first, then let them produce more seeds and die, the resulting saved seeds will be much weaker than if you hadn’t eaten from the plant first.

What are the Inbreeding Annuals?

Tomatoes: This is reportedly the most common plant in the home garden, and it’s very easy to save seeds from a tomato. When purchased, tomato seed is almost always very pure. When you save your own seed, since tomatoes are not 100% inbreeding, expect about 2-5% of your saved seeds will cross. This isn’t a bad thing. You can grow some interesting tomatoes this way! Any crosses will be F1 hybrids and will not be genetically stable, but are fine to eat! I wrote an earlier post explaining how to save tomato seeds. In this case it’s okay to eat and save seeds from the same plant, but make sure to save seeds from the first round of tomatoes if possible.

Peas and Ordinary Beans: By ordinary beans I mean what Americans would call bush or pole beans and Brits would call French or dwarf French beans. Fava (broad) and lima (butter) beans are both out-breeding plants, as are runner beans. For seed saving, just wait for the plants dry out and save the seeds. What you might normally eat is the same as what you plant as seeds. These are not 100% inbreeding plants, so try to maintain some space between varieties and expect to see some crosses. Cross-pollination seems to be a regional issue, as people in the US tend to report less crossing than for example people in Europe. Crossing is probably at least in part dependent on local insect populations. Crosses can be easier to notice if you don’t plant similar looking varieties next to each other, and be sure to isolate or discard seeds from plants that have crossed so they don’t get mixed in with the next year’s planting by accident.

Eggplants (Aubergines): Søren recently made a great post showing how to save seeds from these plants.

Peppers: You can save seeds from both hot and sweet peppers. Just let the peppers fully mature on the plant and start to rot, then lay the seeds out on a piece of paper to dry. Seeds from hot peppers can be very difficult to save, because the hot oils in them can burn your eyes, skin and nose. Be sure to take the proper precautions for this (and wear rubber gloves!).

Lettuce: Simply let the plant bolt and go to seed, then collect the seeds. The seeds have dandelion like ‘parachutes’, so be sure to collect them before they blow away.