Seed Saving

Ready To Save Seed?
Before you tackle your garden for seeds, let's go over a few things.

1. Refrain from picking all your beautiful flowers. There must be flowers left on your plants in order for them to set seed. The best cut flower, might have been the best saved seeds.

2. Know your plant. Is it an open-pollinated or is it a hybrid, engineered by humans to exhibit special qualities? Hybrid seed will not be true therefore it may not be suitable for seed saving.

3. Do you have more than one variety of the same plant you wish to save seed from? You may have some cross-pollination going on. That could lead to some freaky-looking or gorgeous new offspring. It can be an exciting risk to take.

Collecting The Seeds
Collecting seed too early will cause seeds to not be viable, so make sure that the seed heads are finished developing. Pods will change colors from green to tan, or brown and begin to dry out. Flower heads will begin to fall apart and look dry, so check daily for potential seed heads to pluck.

If you're worried that you might lose seed in the process of collecting, you can cut flower stalks as seed heads start to split. Pull a paper bag over the seed heads; gather edge around the stalks, tie together and hang upside down in a dry place until heads split and seeds drop into bag.

Some varieties of flowers can be real difficult to extract seed from. Tithonia is one of my favorite flowers, but talk about a pokey seed head! Rubbing the seed heads against a stiff screen comes in handy with loosening stubborn seeds.

Cleaning The Seed
You might notice a lot of debris or chaff among the newly collected seeds. You'll want to do your best cleaning this from the seed. Chaff left with the seeds may hold moisture causing mildew or mold. I use a shallow bowl to separate seed from any other plant debris. Seed will generally be heavier and fall to the bottom of the bowl. The debris can be picked up from the top or gently blown to the side. Whatever you do, try not to sneeze because picking thousands of seeds off the ground isn't as fun as it sounds. ;)

Continue Drying The Seed
Seeds should be kept in a cool, dry area until they are ready to store. I usually lay my seeds out on plastic plates since seeds tend to stick to paper plates or paper towels. It may take several weeks to achieve this, so be patient.

Storing Seeds
Recycled baby food jars work great for storing a bulk amount of seed. Whatever container you chose to use always label your container with the variety of seed, date and other descriptive information. Since containers should be stored in a cool place, you may want to keep them in a unheated room, a closet or even your refrigerator. Avoid opening the container until you a ready to plant or swap the seed. Amazingly, seeds that are stored properly can be viable for many years!!!

Good luck and have fun!!