Have you decided this is the year you’ll start saving seeds from your garden? Or, maybe you’ve saved seeds in the past and have had some problem with viability or germination the next season.

I mean, it doesn’t sound like it should be a difficult task. Just collect the seeds from whatever you want to keep, rinse them, dry them, and pack them away for next year, right? Well, sure! And while following this simple method can absolutely mean you’ll have beautifully preserved seeds that have fantastic germination the next season and yield a bounty of exactly what you thought you were planting, it’s equally possible that you’ll open the seed packet the next season to find fuzzy gray fungus or black moldy growth on your seeds, or nice looking seeds that don’t sprout properly, or maybe they sprout and you get midway through the gardening season and the fruit on the plant look nothing like the ones you saved the seeds from.

What seems like it should be a straightforward process actually requires a little finesse. So, this Garden Talk Tuesday I’m going to dig into which plants you should and shouldn’t be saving seeds from, how to properly collect, clean, and dry those seeds in order to best guarantee your success the next season, and what to do with certain seeds to hedge your bets against carrying disease over from one season to the other. Let’s dig in, shall we?

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Resources:

Hot Water Treatment for Seeds – Louisiana State University

How To Save Vegetable Seeds – Farmers Almanac