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The Only 3 Seed Saving Methods You Need! Seed Saving is Key To Higher Yields Year After Year.
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Oct 28, 2022
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View Video Transcript
0:00
Hello plant people, how are you guys doing today? If you're near around here, my name is Ashley and I like to take science and apply to all things plants
0:06
In today's video, we're going to be looking at seed saving and I'm going to break this down into very easy steps to identify any plant without Googling how to save the seeds and make it super simple, super, super simple
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And there's a lot of lessons you can do in 30 days. So, and then you'll get addicted like me and you won't stop
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And that's kind of where I'm at. So thank you to today's sponsor, Skillshare
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And let's get into the video. So a common misconception when it comes to seed saving is that the only reason to
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save seeds is to save money and the reality is that that is not necessarily
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true. Another great reason to save seeds comes down to that plant's ability to
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survive in your climate. When you save seeds from plants grown in your
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environment that produce fruit, you already have a plant that's genetically expressing traits ideal for your environment. So when you go to select your
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For seeds, you wanna select the cream of the crop. So the characteristics that you like the most in that plant
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So for example, if you like big slicer tomatoes of a certain size, texture
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you wanna save seeds from that tomato. The same goes for peppers
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If you have a bell pepper of a particular size, taste and texture that you enjoy the most save seeds from that So as you going through your garden prep this year save seeds through that So as you go through prepping your garden pickling canning that sort of thing start saving those seeds and then reserve them off to the
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side for next year. Now I used to get so hung up on this when it comes to seed
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saving. What kind of seed is it? How do you save it? And the rules are pretty
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simple. There are three. There's flower saving, flower seed saving, there's dry
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seed saving and there's what seed saving it's literally that simple so let's go
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through each one and how you preserve or get each one of those ready so flower
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seed saving is literally this simple the seeds inside the flower is what you're
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going to save and you want to wait for these to dry out for as long as possible so you want to leave this on the plant until the last possible minute you can
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leave them out until it frost it will not harm them so an example of that is
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sunflower seeds but some that may not be as obvious that you can save seeds from
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are these so here's a very ugly lettuce plant but these little flowers and
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little poofs are actually seeds so you can just remove this and inside of that
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you have your lettuce seeds so this requires zero work other than putting
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them in a container for next year so this is another great example of seeds
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that can be saved this is from a flower I believe it's a Lissom I can't tell at
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this point because it's pretty much degraded to nothing but this again you
4:02
would just save from the flowers and in this case I would just crush up the
4:06
entire powdered portion because I'm not gonna be able to find the seeds they're too small and then put the whole flower decayed flower into a bag or container
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and then seed that in the spring so the next form is dry seed saving and that
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can be things like squash summer and winter squash peppers hot peppers that
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sort of thing and the key here is that it just doesn't have a gelatinous this outside inside of that fruit these ones are very easy to save for ones you know that will not
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save well inside of the fruit or preserve throughout the entire winter you would want
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to remove those from the inside of the actual plant and then lay them out on paper towel allow
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them to dry completely because you don't want any mold to form and then simply bag those up you can
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store them in your freezer or you can just store them in your cold cellar or fridge anything of
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that nature and they will not sprout so long as they are dry you can even store them with the
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paper towel to help ensure that now shout out to my sister-in-law here she had a really cool idea
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this spring with spaghetti squash and that was to lay it in the garden and then essentially whack it
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with a hoe and cut it up and release the seeds from there which did sprout and did yield actual
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spaghetti squash so for things that will last until the next spring maybe they won be edible by next spring but you can just simply seed those directly And the last and final seed saving technique is very specific to tomato plants mostly and that is something with the gelatinous coating
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on the outside so you want to pick a tomato that's overripe and then just simply break into it and
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squeeze the seeds into a cup now i've been using um for quite a while now the actual spice shaker
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jars you could just get from Dollarama I put them in there they're glass I let
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them ferment for about a week or two and then I simply wash that off all we're
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looking for is for that gelatinous coating to be gone so for depending on
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your climate so I'm in a cooler climate it's gonna take me a little bit longer just because my house is probably colder than someone that's like in California
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so some people will be able to get that fermentation process to happen quicker
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but all we're looking for is that gelatinous coating to be gone so we just
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to simply take our fingers give the actual seeds a little squeeze and see if we can feel anything if
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we can feel the gelatinous and the seed is uh kind of moving away from us it's not ready yet but if
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we can grab that seed physically and touch kind of its harder outer coating then it's fine it's
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ready to go and then we can just simply transfer that to paper towels dry it off and store it the
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same way we would store our zucchini or our squash seeds or any of those other ones so one thing i do
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think is important to note is that there is a potential for cross-pollination in any flower
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that is open so this will include things like squash uh tomatoes we won't have this issue with
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peppers can be open pollinated as well and so you may want to just do a quick google on that
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i'll provide a list here of the common ones i can find that are self-pollinated where we won't end
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up with crossing unless we very purposely do it it's like 99.9 percent of these are self-pollinated
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meaning the offspring from that are going to be identical to what you're seeing here today
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However, if you save seeds from open pollinated plants, you would want to actually cover them
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cover the flowers with those little treat baggies to ensure no pollinators can get in
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And you physically would want to do the pollinating to ensure the crosses are accurate
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Now, I don't get too hung up on this. I grow spaghetti squash pumpkins kind of all in the
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the same patch. My spaghetti squash taste and preserve everything normal to what a spaghetti
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squash does, but they look a little different on me outside, and that is because they are saved
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seeds. So that is maybe something to keep in mind. If you want identical clones, like a spaghetti
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squash that for sure looks like a spaghetti squash, you may not want to save seeds from those
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Flowers, I find, are just normal. They just do their thing. They don't cross-pollinate very often
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and that because you would need to have a very specific species And it just too much diversity in our communities and in a city environment for that cross to happen and then my last kind of point here because I don want to get in
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trouble with like proven winners or wave or anything like that is some of these are technically
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patented seeds especially in the flower world so if it says patented then you cannot save seeds
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from those technically and grow them i don't know the flower rules behind this i know the food rules
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behind this but when it comes to decorative flowers you may be able to save seed and then
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replant them for yourself but i know for sure you cannot sell the seeds and you cannot sell
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the plants i know that absolutely because it will come for you it will come for you so just keep
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that in mind for things like carrots beets onions leeks anything that's grown in the ground and it's
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kind of like a root vegetable we'll actually have to leave them in place for potentially one year
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depending on how hot your season and how long it is but otherwise we would have to leave it in
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ground for two years and fingers crossed it would overwinter in our zone so those are ones that we
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may not be able to get to flower and then save the seeds from just based on your climate but for some
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of us it may be possible and we're just going to follow the exact same rules as the flower saving
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rules from before. So this is very very easy guys don't put too much thought into this. I wouldn't
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worry about freezing or scarification or vernalization any of that because the majority of the seeds
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that we have will be just fine especially if we transfer them into you know the freezer or the
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fridge and then out again. If you put them in the freezer for two weeks prior to actually seeding
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them they'll germinate just fine. I mean there's exceptions to that like the luffa seeds that do
9:57
need the stratification. There's a lot of gourd seeds out there. A lot of gourds actually just in
10:03
general need some form of scarification or disruption of that seed coating. But otherwise
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very, very simple. Very, very, very simple, guys. Do not overthink this. You're going to wet seed
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save. And the only one that I think a majority you're going to encounter with that is tomatoes
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where you have to just ferment them. The rest, you're literally just going to take the seeds out
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of the fruit. And the third one is going to be you're going to steal from the flower and you're
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gonna wait till the last possible moment so everything's dead here it's deader
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than a doornail I've got leaves falling everything's kind of shutting down for
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the season right now where everything's really nice and dry it's a great time to
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go grab those seeds let me know in the comments down below which ones you've been growing from seed and for how long saved seed and for how long I have talked
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to some of you about this and I know some folks out there have been saving
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seeds for a long time like their grandparents seeds type thing so that's
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kind of cool and I will talk to you guys next time bye
#Biological Sciences
#Crops & Seed