September Seed Saving

Becky_Alton
2 September 2022

A valuable skill that I’ve learnt over the years is seed saving, which is something you can put to practise this month. Seed saving is super easy and extremely rewarding, plus it saves you money! Whilst it has been practised for thousands of years, the popularity has faded in more recent times.

Where to start

What a lot of people don’t realise is that that seeds bought in a pack from the store won’t have been adapted to your soils/environment/climate change and probably won’t produce the best crop you could grow. I’m passionate in raising awareness about saving your own seed. Whilst flowers are quite straight forward, there are a few things you have to know first before you start seed saving from vegetables, and remember that every plant is different so some will be a lot easier than others.

The right time
Instead of harvesting your food to eat you have to leave it in the ground – each plant will set their seeds at different times. Lettuce will only take a few weeks extra to flower but trying to do it during summer months when its drier is best. Other crops take a lot longer to set seed such as beetroot and carrots and will have to be overwintered, so they set seed in the following spring.

Quantities, planting and identification

How many plants?
Depending on the plant you are saving from depends on how may plants you need. A dozen plants will give you a good variety to collect from but some plants give you lots of seeds so a couple of plants would be enough.

Spacing
Crops will be much bigger if left in the ground to save seed from, so space them out more than you would if you were to plant to harvest.

True to self
It’s important to save seed from the best quality plant, any miss shapes, incorrect colour or weak plants will pass these characteristics to the seed, so keep a close eye on the parent plant.

How to keep them safe

Storage
Saved seeds must be kept cool and dry, this is super vital before storing them away too as this can cause the seeds to rot. I keep mine in a cupboard at home as I find my shed can fluctuate too much in temperature.

Cross pollination
Cross pollination is when one plant pollinates another plant of a different variety resulting in seeds having characteristics from both varieties. It can only happen with the same species. This is an important part of seed saving, so you need to do some research to see which vegetables will cross with other varieties. Some plants don’t cross and are self-pollinating plants such as beans, peas, lettuce, peppers and tomatoes.

Have a go!

If you are planting lots of varieties and are wanting to save seed, you will have to plant the different varieties around 100 yards apart from each other or maybe eve more – this isn’t always possible in your back garden due to size so just select the same variety to grow.

If this is your first time, I recommend you go for the easier vegetables to begin with, such as lettuce, peas and tomatoes.

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