Keeping seeds from my garden.

digme

If I plant some veg in the garden,when the veg is ready to eat,
can I remove the seeds, and store them somehow in envelopes
for next year again or some other time in the future?

Thanos

Yes you can and a lot of us gardeners would do just that.
However some plants are easier to get the seeds from then others.

I would tend to pick seeds from the best plants and keep them for the following year. Seeds I keep are: beans, peas, garlic, patatoes, marrow.
These are all easy enough to store. Things like lettuce and onion I tend to just buy the following year.

For things like garlic and patatoes they should be cleaned off (remove soils) and stored in a dark cool place. For marrow, you need to clean a few nice big seeds and let them dry out on a plate and once they are dry you can put then in something, such as an envelope as you mention. For peas and beans they must be left on the plant until the go a brown colour and the pod becomes hard, then just pick the pod and store the whole thing, i would not open it until the follow spring when you are going to plant them.

digme

Oh that's great news.
I will be growing most of what you mentioned,could I do this with all of those plants indefinitely or would there be a set amount of years?Also what are your thoughts on Monsanto seeds where you cannot do such a thing,as they only let you grow your food once.How long would I be able to store these seeds for?Thanks for the detailed and fast reply!

The Sweeper

digme - everything Thanos said, but also your reference to Monsanto seeds - make sure you buy and plant varieties that you can harvest seeds from, as well as the plants themselves. Many organic seed suppliers supply varieties that you can re-sow yourself.

Allow the best specimen in the garden bed to run to seed. Often wait until the plant has died, because then it puts all of its energy into the seeds. Collect gently - brown paper bags are excellent for collecting and storing seeds. Sometimes you can just put the bag over the entire seed head and pinch it off, and store it like that. As you store it the seeds will often loosen from the seed head or pod, and collect at the bottom of the paper bag.

I have an old beer fridge out in my garage. It doesn't quite cut the mustard any more on keeping the tinnies cool, but it's perfect for storing seeds - cool, without being freezing, and dark. You can store seeds for a season, or even a couple of seasons, but they degenerate slowly in storage. The more pristine - cool, air tight, dark - the storage conditions, the longer the seeds will last.

Thanos

digme wrote: »

Oh that's great news.
I will be growing most of what you mentioned,could I do this with all of those plants indefinitely or would there be a set amount of years?Also what are your thoughts on Monsanto seeds where you cannot do such a thing,as they only let you grow your food once.How long would I be able to store these seeds for?Thanks for the detailed and fast reply!

Hi digme, with reference to the indefinitely question, the basic answer is yes.
Basically at the end of each season (or near the end if you can see the seed) you keep a few of the best seed pods or bulbs, these are used to plant next season, then at the end of that season you pick the best of them for the following season.
This is like selection of the fittest, by picking top seeds each year you are giving yourselft the best chance of having the best plants the following year.