I love sustainable ideas. I’m always trying to figure out ways to use every bit of something or find new uses for old things so that we can do that much more to stretch our dollars, limit waste, and do my part to keep things out of the landfill. I don’t always succeed, and sometimes I am downright lazy about it, but I really love it when things come together and I can find one more way to incorporate sustainability into our lives here on our homestead.
In this next installment of The Homesteading Series, we’ll be discussing seed saving. This is one of my favorite things to do in my garden because it seems to bring things full circle from the season before. Not to mention, it saves money!
Savings seeds is a simple process, albeit time consuming. However, once you get to know what the plants look like when they’ve gone to seed, you can get a rhythm down, which makes it an almost effortless process.
To save seeds, you will first of all need space in your garden for those plants whose seeds are not obtained from their fruit. Herbs, lettuces, and root vegetables are this type of plant, so if you would like to harvest seed from them, you will need to allow at least one plant to remain in your garden.This is a head from a carrot plant. as you can see, one plant creates many seeds. Each carrot plant has many heads, which makes keeping one plant very profitable.
Small is Fine
If you have a small garden like I do, it is difficult to allow plants to stay in the ground any longer than necessary. Thankfully most plants produce much more seed than a small-time gardener will need, so one plant will suffice—you can remove the rest (try not to disturb the roots of the one you are going to leave in, however).
For harvesting seeds from the actual fruit of a plant, there is no need to allow any plant to remain in the ground. You would simply just collect the mature seed from the fruit itself.The black seeds are lettuce, the brown pieces are dried plant. It’s ok to have a little of the plant in with the seeds, it doesn’t hurt anything. I like to leave it–it keeps me from planting too many seeds per hole. Click the photo to learn how to harvest romaine lettuce seeds.
If you are planting with the intention to harvest seeds from those plants, you will want to make sure to plant ONLY one variety of each vegetable you intend to harvest seed from. Some plants are able to remain true even if you do plant another variety nearby, but for the sake of ease, plan on only growing one variety until you can do some research of your own.These are radish seed pods. Each one has multiple radish seeds in it. I leave my seeds inside of the pods until I’m ready to use them. Click on the photo to learn how to harvest radish seed.
Harvesting Seeds
Harvesting seeds is pretty easy, it’s really just a matter of knowing when it’s time to harvest them. I’ve made up a short list of different seeds you can harvest and the particulars of how and when to do it. Click here to get the list. I was asked on the Let This Mind Be in You Facebook page the other day how I harvested my coriander, so I thought I’d go ahead and do a little picture tutorial for you today.
Harvesting Coriander
Coriander is one of the easiest seeds to harvest because of the obvious position of the seeds. Your coriander plant should be left in the ground until it’s completely dry before you begin harvesting. Once they are dry, hold the tops of the coriander branches over a metal sieve and begin rolling the seeds between your thumb and forefinger until the seeds fall off into the bowl. (To avoid a mess, you may want to put another bowl beneath your sieve.)
Once you have all of your seeds harvested, shake the sieve to allow any small pieces of the plant to fall through the bottom. Not all of the extra material will fall through–that’s ok, it won’t hurt anything to have it amongst the seed.
Bag your seed up in an airtight container or bag and mark it with the variety (if you know that), or just with the general name of the plant and the year that you harvested the seed. Store in a cool, dry place until next year.
To test the viability of your home-harvested seeds, go to this post.I use small plastic bags as seed packets. They hold plenty and are easy to mark with a sharpie. If you don’t have any bags, you can use these free printable seed packets.
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