The purchase of vegetable seeds can be expensive every year and take a lot of time if you are looking for the perfect sperm selection by seed catalogs. If you make your garden more self -sufficient and want to reduce costs, save the seeds of many common vegetables and improve your favorite plants for the coming years.
To make it easier for you to get started, you will find some of the best vegetables for seed savings and ways to ensure that the seeds you save, save sprouts and achieve the desired results.
The best seeds to save
While you may want to save the seeds from all the vegetables you have planted this year, some plants are simply not good for sparkling. Hybrid vegetables were carefully bred for color, taste and other properties, but the seeds they produce grow to plants that do not have the same desirable properties as the overarching vegetables. Two years of vegetables such as carrots, cabbage and onions are also difficult to collect seeds because they need two years to complete their life cycle and go to the seed.
Instead of collecting seeds from this vegetable, focus on the heed and open annual vegetables that produce seeds that are “loyal” during their first growth year. Most seed catalogs and seed packages describe in detail whether plants are heirlooms or hybrids (identified as “F1” in seed catalogs), so that they can assess whether they are worth collecting or not.
Tomato
Marty Ross
Tomatoes are one of the best plants for seed savings, partly because they can collect tomato seeds and Despite it Eat the tomatoes from which they came. Just wait until fruits ripen completely on the plant, exhaust the seeds and let them ferment in water for a few days to remove the mreiid seed cover. Then rinse the seeds in a sieve, let them dry completely on a paper towel or a paper plate and put them in marked and dated paper envelopes to store them.
Peas and beans
Bob Stefko
In order to save the seeds of peas and beans, all you have to do is let the pods dry completely on the plant until you hear the beans or peas in the pods rattling. As soon as this happens, carefully remove the pods from the system. Share them and reject the pods. Let the seeds dry on a tray for a few more days before keeping them.
Pumpkin, pumpkins and melons
Carson Downing
Pumpkin, pumpkins and other pumpkin bags such as zucchini potentially planted each other if they are planted up to a mile from each other within half a mile. If you (or your neighbor) grow different varieties and you want to get seeds to save, you should cover all plants of the same variety with a network that continues to exhaust the pollination of insects and your flowers.
When the harvest time arrives, choose your fully mature pumpkin, pumpkins or melons, separate the seeds and give you a good flush to remove all the mushy residues. To achieve the best germination results, only save the bouncing seeds and only the dark seeds of watermelons, since the watermelons are not ripe enough to sprout.
Cucumber
Cucumber only classified with themselves. So if you only grow one cucumber species, you do not have to take any additional steps to prevent cross pollination.
Cucumbers for eating are harvested when they are still a little immature and their skins are green. However, if you want to collect cucumber seeds, you need to leave your cucumbers on the vine until your skins become harder and turn a deep, golden yellow color. As soon as this occurs, select the fully mature cucumbers and draw out the seeds. Process the seeds with the same fermentation technology as with tomato seeds.
paprika
Marty Baldwin
Paprika such as peppers and peppers with peppers and sharp painminders if they are planted within 400 feet. So if you want to save the seeds, you also have to take some precautionary measures. The easiest way is to cover the peppers of the same variety with an insectable network and to question the flowers by hand with a brush.
Harn the peppers when you develop your full ripe color and your skins soften. Full -mature paprika develop red, orange, yellow and other brightly tinted skins, while they are still green peppers that are technically green, and their seeds may not dine. Take out the seeds and let them dry completely before storing.
radish
Blaine gases
To collect radish seeds, you have to let your plants ripen for a long time if you harvest radishes for your edible roots. While they mature, radishes bloom and then produce small seed pods on their stems. Collect them like bean pods as they dry.
Remember that radish pods burst frequently when they are fully mature. Maybe you want to collect them directly in a paper bag to avoid that you accidentally lose seeds while you collect them.
okra
Dana Gallagher
Edible okra is usually harvested when the pods are about 3 inches long. But Okra pods should be as large as possible and then dry completely on the plant if they want to collect viable seeds.
As soon as the pods are dry and start to open, turn the pods from the plant and crack up to collect the seeds inside. Let the seeds dry for a few days before keeping them.
Lettuce
In order to avoid a cross pollination, different salators in the garden should be separated by at least 10 feet.
Wait until your lettuce plants move or bloom. As soon as the flowers have dried, the seeds can be collected. Like dandelion seeds, mature lettuce seeds are attached to them a bit of fluff. Remove it by carefully rubbing the seeds in a sieve before keeping them.