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FrontRangeLiving.com -> Garden -> Saving Seeds
 SAVING
SEEDS: Continuing a long tradition
By Niki Hayden
Saving seeds once ended the growing season for many farmers. Choosing seeds
from the best crops ensured a strong crop year after year, long before seed
companies sprouted. It’s a gift from our past and the wide range of fruits and
vegetables on the earth today derives from the centuries of seed saving by wise
growers. There are plenty of reasons to continue the tradition.
Saving seeds means that you’ll have fresh seed each year, which translates
into excellent germination. You will be able to choose the best of your garden
and continue the outstanding tomato variety, lettuces or beans and pass those
seeds onto friends. Saving seeds preserves the diversity of garden plants at a
time when sources for seeds are shrinking. And you’ll be able to tailor
produce to your garden: those that are cold hardy, or stand up to heat, produce
abundantly or appear impervious to pests. Saving seeds is an exercise in botany,
too, because you’ll begin to understand the mysteries of nature.
Tomatoes and beans are the easiest seeds to begin with. Tomatoes are somewhat
self-pollinating. True, they benefit from bees roaming around their flowers,
spreading pollen. But the male and female parts of the tomato flower are so
close together that they generally pollinate themselves. Just as important,
their self-pollination does not diminish the next generation.
Beans, too, often pollinate within the flower. This means that you’ll have
the same scarlet runner bean next year as you have this year. But other fruits
and vegetables require cross-pollination to bear seeds. Squash plants have both
male and female flowers. Bees must carry pollen from the male flower to the
female flower. In this chance encounter, the bee often has pollen from another
male flower. So the squash will come true to the plant, but its seeds will be
hybridized by nature. And the next generation will not look the same. This is
why you’ll often see a squash plant growing out of the compost pile that looks
different from any other squash plant you’ve ever seen.
Gardeners who save squash, melon and cucumber seeds will pollinate a female
flower with the male pollen by a tiny paintbrush. Then they twist the female
flower and place a baggie over the flower. Large-scale growers simply plant
acres of one kind of squash so that it’s nearly impossible for another kind of
squash pollen to be carried about by pollinators.
You’ll find dozens of books on how to save seeds and all are worth reading.
Most will give tips on the more difficult seeds. Allow lettuces to flower and go
to seed. Place baggies over the top. This is to catch the seeds before they blow
away in the wind. But for a first try, beans and tomatoes are the easiest. Beans
come packaged to save. Allow them to ripen in their pods until the pod is brown
and dry. The pod will open easily and the dried beans are a neat little package
of bean DNA. Nothing could be easier. Scarlet runner beans are favorite heirloom
beans to save. They’re beautiful beans with speckles of purple, which are
large and easy to handle. It’s a favorite for kids to save.
Next, consider a beloved tomato. Heirlooms are obvious choices but some old
hybrids may have stabilized enough to come true to seed, too. It’s worth a
try. Collect a ripe, very ripe, tomato. Slice it in half and squish the seeds
into a bowl. Add a bit of water just to keep the tomato pulp from sticking to
the sides of the bowl and let sit overnight. Tomato seeds are covered with a
thin greenish membrane that prevent the seeds from germinating while on the
vine. It’s only when the tomato falls to the ground and begins to rot that the
germinating sack sloughs away. Rinse you tomato seeds the next day and look to
see if that tiny membrane has disappeared. Your seeds should be placed on a
plate to dry completely. Then they are ready to store.
But before you store them for next year, try a germination test to make sure
you’ve got viable seeds. Roll up ten in a damp paper towel and place the towel
in a plastic bag. Put it in plain sight and leave it for a week or so. If all
the seeds germinate, you’ve successfully saved your seeds. Once they
germinate, you can’t keep those seeds. They’ve lost the ability to be
stored, but the rest of your seeds can be placed in an envelope with the name of
the tomato and the date collected. You’ll have enough seeds from one tomato to
give away to friends next growing season.
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