Growing garden plants from seed is one of the great joys of having a garden. It doesn’t matter whether you measure your garden in acres or in pots on a balcony. The magic of taking your crop from seed to table provides satisfaction that’s hard to beat. When you’ve taken the time to collect your own seeds, clean them, store them and germinate them the following spring — it’s even better.
Of course, growing your own garden from your own seeds requires you to collect the seeds this year. And despite our best intentions, many of us think of it around January when the seed catalogs start to arrive in the mail. “Next year I’m going to remember to…“ Maybe now is a good time to start.
If you’ve never collected your own seeds, it can seem a little intimidating. Where do you start? Having a basic understanding of how the whole seed thing works can give you a pretty good blueprint to apply no matter what you’re collecting.
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When is the best time to collect seeds?
Plants give us clues, if we simply pay attention. Once they’ve produced a mature, viable seed, they’re likely to stop pumping resources into that seed or the flower/fruit in which the seed lives.
When your zinnia petals start to fade, when a tomato fruit ripens to a nice deep red, when your prized Golden Delicious apple turns that perfect shade of gold, that’s a pretty good sign that your seeds are either ready or getting close. Letting that zinnia turn good and brown, waiting until that tomato looks a little past prime and waiting for that apple to drop from the bough will give you a little more assurance that your seeds are ready for harvest.
In general, the best time to collect garden seeds is late summer to early autumn.
You also can take a cue from birds. They’re pretty smart and are not going to waste valuable resources pecking out unripe seeds that aren’t at their peak of nutritional value. They generally wait until they get the greatest nutritional bang for their pecking buck.
Once you see Mother Nature’s foragers foraging, it is a good clue that you might want to do the same.
What is the best way to store them?
Most seeds hate moisture. More precisely, most seeds store best when they are kept dry and cool. While water is essential for germination, if you want to keep your seeds happy and viable for as long as possible, dry is key (with a few notable exceptions). Whether you are saving seeds of marigolds, peppers or a favorite ornamental grass, air drying and then keeping them dry works best for storage until spring.
Drying fresh seed is a pretty simple process. If you have an air-conditioned home and you keep your thermostat set to something most people consider reasonable, you already have about the perfect conditions. Clean your seeds and spread them on a cookie sheet or plate and let them air dry, out of the sun, for a few days. Don’t use a paper towel — seeds have a tendency to cling to paper towels like Velcro as they dry — but rather spread them out on a firm surface to dry.
Once your seeds are dry, store them in labeled paper envelopes in a cool, dry, dark space. I store my seed envelopes in an outside-wall kitchen drawer that I don’t access often.
What seeds do not like to be dried?
Seeds with high moisture content don’t like to be dried down for storage. Magnolia seeds want their pulp removed (it contains a germination inhibitor) and then planted or stored moist in the refrigerator before sowing. Oaks (acorns), buckeyes, walnuts and the like tend to lose viability very quickly. Some, like white oaks, even send out a root in the fall. Most of these do best when they are sown as soon as they are ripe in the fall.
Maples — the trees that produce those delightful little helicopter seeds, or schizocarps — enter a double dormancy when dried that is a pain to overcome. They are best harvested long before they dry on the tree and immediately sown in a moist medium where they will (hopefully) germinate right away or the next spring.
