Next year starts in October
Saving seed
The last job of the harvest and the first of next year. Some seeds are a gift — shell the beans, dry them, done — and some are a trap, because the plant was a hybrid or because the squash crossed with the pumpkin two beds over. This sorts the garden into the five kinds, with the how for each crop.
Start here: the ones that come true
Self-pollinating, or so easy to keep apart that they come true from saved seed year after year. One packet of an open-pollinated variety is the last you need to buy.
Dry beans
Every dry bean you harvest is a seed, which makes this the easiest seed-saving there is and the one to start children on. Beans self-pollinate, so an open-pollinated variety comes true with 3–6 m (10–20 ft) from other varieties — and nearly all dry beans are open-pollinated heirlooms with names and stories (‘Jacob’s Cattle’, ‘Soldier’, ‘Vermont Cranberry’). Set aside the biggest, best-coloured beans from the healthiest plants, never from plants that showed yellow mottled leaves, since bean mosaic and blight travel on the seed. Dry them hard, freeze four days against weevils, and keep them in a labelled jar. Children can sort the saved seed by colour and size and cull the wrinkled ones; it is the kind of counting that sticks.
Keeps: 3–4 years.
Eggplant
Eggplant flowers self-pollinate, so an open-pollinated variety comes true — but check the packet, because many of the glossy black supermarket-type varieties are F1 hybrids. Bees do move pollen between plants, so keep varieties 90–500 m (300–1,600 ft) apart, or bag a few flowers in organza. Seed is not ripe at eating stage: leave the chosen fruit on the plant until it goes dull, yellowish or brownish, soft, and comes off with a tug — weeks past when you would eat it. Cube it and blend with water in a food processor on a gentle setting or mash it in a bucket; good seed sinks, pulp floats and pours off. Rinse in a sieve and dry on a plate or coffee filter for two weeks.
Keeps: 4–6 years.
Green beans
Beans self-pollinate before the flower opens, so any open-pollinated variety comes true and 3–6 m (10–20 ft) from another variety is enough (a few bumblebees will cross the odd flower; move to 30 m if purity really matters). Leave pods on your healthiest plants unpicked until they are tan, papery and rattle, which takes about six weeks past the eating stage; pull and hang the plants under cover if frost or a wet spell comes first. Shell by hand, spread the seed on a tray for another two weeks, and jar it when a bean shatters rather than dents under a hammer. Four days in the deep freeze at −18 °C kills any bean weevil eggs. Save from five to ten plants and never from a plant that showed mottled or yellowed leaves — several bean diseases ride on the seed.
Keeps: 3–4 years.
Lettuce
Lettuce is self-pollinating and comes true from any open-pollinated variety (which is most of them), with 3–6 m (10–20 ft) between varieties enough to keep them pure. Let one or two of your best, slowest-to-bolt plants go: the stalk shoots up to a metre in July, opens dozens of small yellow flowers, and 2–3 weeks after each flower a tuft of white fluff appears — the seed is ripe under it. Shake or bend the plant into a paper bag every few days for a couple of weeks, or cut the whole top when most tufts show and dry it upside down in a bag indoors. Rub the fluff between your hands and blow the chaff away. One plant gives more seed than a family uses in five years.
Keeps: Up to 6 years stored cool and dry; count on 3.
Peas
Peas are the classic beginner’s seed. The flowers pollinate themselves before they open, so almost any variety comes true, and 3–6 m (10–20 ft) between varieties is plenty. Mark your best plants early and leave their pods unpicked until they are brown, papery and rattle — about six weeks after the eating stage. If rain or frost threatens before that, pull the whole plants and hang them under cover until the pods are dry. Shell by hand (a good evening job for small fingers), spread the peas on a tray for two more weeks, and store them in a jar when a pea shatters rather than dents under a hammer. Four days in the deep freeze at −18 °C kills pea weevil larvae hiding inside the seed. Save from five to ten plants.
Keeps: 3–4 years.
Tomatoes
Tomatoes self-pollinate, so an open-pollinated or heirloom variety comes true from saved seed (an F1 hybrid — it will say so on the packet — will not). Squeeze the seeds and gel from a fully ripe fruit into a jar, add a splash of water, and leave it 2–3 days somewhere warm until a mould forms on top: the fermentation removes the germination-inhibiting gel and kills some seed-borne diseases. Pour off the floating pulp and hollow seeds, rinse the good ones in a sieve, and dry them on a plate or coffee filter (not paper towel — it sticks) for a week. Label and store cool and dry. A few metres between varieties is enough; potato-leaf and currant types want more.
Keeps: 5 years comfortably; often 10 if kept cool and dry.
Saved whole, not as seed
Grown from tubers, cloves, crowns, runners or cuttings. You save the plant itself — the biggest cloves, the healthiest tubers, the best runners.
Apples
An apple seed does not grow into its parent. Every seed is a cross with whatever tree the bees visited, so the seedling is a new and almost always sour apple; named varieties exist only because someone grafted a bud of the original onto a rootstock, and every McIntosh in the world is a piece of the first one. If a child wants to try, the honest version is an experiment: push a few seeds into a pot of soil outdoors in October (they need a cold winter before they will sprout), and see what comes up in May. It will be a tree; it will not be the apple they ate. To make more of a variety you like, learn to graft in late winter — a cleft or whip graft onto a hardy rootstock is a good Saturday with a ten-year-old.
Keeps: Not applicable — the variety lives in the grafted wood, not the seed. Seeds sown outdoors in autumn come up the following spring, as wild cards.
Garlic
Garlic is grown from cloves, and the clove you plant is a clone of the plant it came from, so a home crop improves year on year as you select it. Set aside the biggest, soundest bulbs at curing time — a tenth to a sixth of the crop — keep them whole, cool and dry, and break them into cloves only the day you plant; the biggest cloves grow the biggest bulbs. Hardneck varieties also make bulbils in the scape head: sown like seed they take two or three years to make a full bulb, but they are disease-free and the quickest way to multiply a variety. Don’t plant supermarket garlic — much of it is softneck from a warm climate, sometimes treated against sprouting, and it can bring nematodes and white rot into a clean bed.
Keeps: Cloves are planted the autumn they are harvested; a cured bulb kept dry at 15–18 °C is good for planting until about November.
Haskap (honeyberry)
Haskap varieties are clones and will not come from seed: a seedling is a new, unpredictable plant that takes years to show you what it is, and the Canadian cultivars are protected varieties that only licensed nurseries may propagate for sale. Buy plants, and buy at least two different, compatible varieties, because haskap cannot pollinate itself. For your own garden, softwood cuttings taken in June root under a plastic bag and are the way to fill out a hedge. Named pairs that work: Aurora with Borealis, Tundra or the Indigo series (Indigo Gem, Indigo Treat, Indigo Yum); the older Russian types pollinate most University of Saskatchewan varieties. Plant them close together in the same row — bees work along a row, not across the garden — with roughly one pollinator for every eight bushes if you are planting many.
Keeps: Not from seed. A rooted cutting takes about three years to fruit; a nursery plant gives its first real crop in year three.
Pears
Like apples, pears do not come true from seed: every seedling is a cross and a gamble, and the named varieties are grafted onto rootstock. Pear seeds sown outdoors in autumn will sprout in spring if a child wants to grow a tree, but it will be a new pear of its own and may take ten years to show you what. To propagate a variety, graft a dormant scion onto a pear or quince rootstock in late winter; pears graft easily.
Keeps: Not applicable — the variety lives in the grafted wood.
Potatoes
Potatoes are grown from tubers, not seed, and every extension service says the same thing: buy certified seed potatoes each spring. A tuber carries the viruses and scab of the plant it grew on, and saved seed goes downhill over a few years — smaller crop, more disease. If you save your own anyway, mark the healthiest, most productive plants in summer, keep egg-sized tubers from only those plants, store them cold and dark, and set them in light for two weeks before planting so they green and sprout. Grocery potatoes are often treated to stop sprouting and may carry disease, so they are a poor bet. The small green ‘true seed’ balls that sometimes form after flowering are not worth growing — the plants do not come true.
Keeps: Seed tubers keep one winter at 4–7 °C in the dark and are planted the following spring.
Raspberries
Red raspberries spread by suckers from the roots, and that is how you make more of them. In early spring before the buds break (or in late fall after the leaves drop), dig a sucker that came up a hand’s width or more from the row with a good piece of root attached, cut the top back to 15–20 cm, and replant it 60–90 cm apart in the new row. Take suckers only from a healthy, productive patch: viruses build up in raspberries over the years and travel with the plant, so when an old patch starts to decline, buy certified stock and start again somewhere else rather than moving its suckers. Seeds do not come true and take years.
Keeps: Not from seed. A sucker moved in early spring fruits the next summer (summer types) or that same autumn (fall types).
Rhubarb
Rhubarb is grown from crowns, not seed: seedlings are variable, slow (three years to the first picking) and rarely as good as the parent. Divide an established crown when it is 5–10 years old and the stalks have gone thin and crowded. Extension services prefer early spring, as soon as the ground can be worked and before the buds open; many gardeners do it in fall once the leaves have died back, and that works too. Dig the whole crown, cut it with a sharp spade into pieces that each have two or three fat pink buds and a good chunk of root, and replant them 1 m apart with the buds 5 cm (2 in) below the surface. A healthy crown gives five to ten new plants. Water them weekly through dry weather in their first season and take nothing from them that year.
Keeps: Not grown from seed in practice. Divisions give a light picking in their second spring and a full crop in the third.
Strawberries
Strawberries make their own plants: after the June crop every plant sends out runners with daughter plants along them. Choose the first daughter on each runner (the one nearest the mother, the strongest), set it onto bare soil or into a sunk pot of potting mix while it is still attached, pin it down with a bent wire or a stone, and keep it watered. It roots in three to four weeks; cut the cord and, by early September at the latest, move it to its new bed — plants rooted later than that will not fruit well next June. Take runners only from healthy, vigorous mothers. Seed is pointless: garden strawberries are hybrids and their seedlings do not come true. Note that many modern varieties are protected by plant breeders’ rights, which forbid propagating them for sale; your own garden is your own business.
Keeps: Not from seed. A daughter plant rooted by early September fruits the following June, and a bed renews itself from its own runners every 3–4 years.
Thyme, oregano, sage and rosemary
These are grown from cuttings and divisions, not seed: thyme and oregano from seed are variable and seed-grown oregano is often bland, and rosemary cultivars do not come true. Take 10–15 cm softwood tip cuttings from flower-free shoots in late spring or early summer, strip the lower leaves, dip in rooting hormone, set them in damp perlite or a gritty mix under a plastic bag out of direct sun, and they root in two to four weeks — ten to twenty days for rosemary with bottom heat. Divide clumps of thyme and oregano in early spring as growth starts; layer or divide sage, which is short-lived and worth replacing every three to five years. Cut old woody thyme back hard in spring every few years to renew it.
Keeps: Not from seed in practice. June cuttings are garden plants by autumn; sage is the one worth sowing if you must, 6–8 weeks before the last frost.
The biennials: a second year to flower
These make a root or a head the first year and seed the second. In a cold garden the plant has to be stored over winter and replanted, or mulched heavily where it stands.
Beets
Beets flower in their second year after a cold spell. Keep the best roots in damp sand at 0–4 °C over winter (or in the ground under heavy mulch where the soil stays above about −9 °C), replant them 45 cm (18 in) apart in spring, and let the 1–2 m seed stalks ripen in late summer; strip the dry seed clusters by hand. Beets are wind-pollinated and the pollen travels — Seed Savers Exchange asks for 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile) between varieties — and they cross with Swiss chard, which is the same species, so a bolting chard plant in the bed ruins your beet seed. Save from at least five plants. Each ‘seed’ is a cluster of two to four, which is why beets always need thinning.
Keeps: 4–5 years.
Brussels sprouts
Brussels sprouts are biennial, cross with every other Brassica oleracea, and are the hardest of the family to get seed from in a cold climate, because the plant has to live through winter and flower the next June. In zones 6–7 a mulched plant sometimes manages it in the ground; elsewhere dig the best five or more plants in November, pot them, hold them at 1–4 °C in a cold room, and replant in April. Keep cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower and kohlrabi from flowering within 250 m (800 ft). Cut the branches when most pods are tan, dry them on a sheet, and rub out the seed. Many good varieties are F1 hybrids in any case — check the packet — so this is a project for a seed-saver with space and a cold room, not a first-year job.
Keeps: 4–5 years.
Cabbage
Cabbage flowers in its second year, and it crosses with everything else in Brassica oleracea — kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kohlrabi, collards — so only one of the family may flower within 250 m (800 ft) that spring, and seed savers who want purity use 800 m. Choose at least five of your best heads (twenty is better), dig them before a hard freeze with roots on, trim the loose leaves, pack the roots in damp sand in a crate and keep them at 1–4 °C and high humidity all winter. Replant in April; cut an X in the top of the head so the flower stalk can push through. Yellow flowers in June, pods in July; cut whole branches when most pods are tan and dry them on a sheet, then rub the pods between your hands and winnow. A season spent on seed is a season with no cabbage from those plants, which is why most families buy cabbage seed and save bean seed.
Keeps: 4–5 years.
Carrots
Carrots flower in their second year, so you keep the best roots over winter (in the ground under mulch where winters are mild, or in damp sand at 0–4 °C), replant them 45 cm (18 in) apart in spring, and cut the umbels when they turn brown and dry in late summer. The catch is Queen Anne’s lace: it is the same species, it grows along every roadside in eastern Canada, and garden carrots cross with it freely, giving thin, pale, bitter roots. Seed Savers Exchange wants 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile) from wild carrot and other varieties, which most gardens cannot manage; bagging a few umbels and hand-pollinating is the realistic route. Save from at least five plants. For most families, carrot seed is one to buy.
Keeps: 3–6 years in a cool, dry, airtight jar — the low end if the jar is opened often.
Kale
Kale is a biennial and the easiest of the cabbage family to get seed from, because in zones 5 and up the plants usually live through winter in the ground (mulch the crowns; snow cover helps) and bolt to yellow flowers in May. In colder gardens dig a few plants in November, pot them, and hold them at 1–4 °C in a cold room or garage, then replant in April. It crosses with every other Brassica oleracea — cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, collards, kohlrabi — so only one of them may flower within 250 m (800 ft). Save from at least five plants, ideally twenty. Cut whole seed stalks when most of the pods are tan and brittle, dry them on a sheet for two weeks, then rub the pods between your hands and winnow in a breeze.
Keeps: 4–5 years.
Leeks
Leeks flower in their second year: the plants you leave in the ground over winter send up 1.5 m (5 ft) stalks with a drumstick head of mauve flowers in July, and black seed follows in September — the easiest biennial seed in the north, because the parent plant is hardy enough to stay put. Where winters are too hard for that, dig a few leeks in late fall, heel them into sand in the cold room and replant in April. They are insect-pollinated and cross with other leek varieties (and with elephant garlic, which is the same species) within 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile), so flower one variety at a time and save from at least five plants. Cut the heads as they dry, finish them in a paper bag, and rub out the seed.
Keeps: 2 years — leek seed, like onion, fades fast.
Onions
Onions flower in their second year, so you choose the best cured bulbs in autumn, keep them at 0–4 °C over winter, plant them in April 15 cm (6 in) apart, and let the 1 m (3 ft) globe heads set black seed by August; cut the heads as they dry, finish them in a paper bag and rub the seed out. They are insect-pollinated and cross with any other Allium cepa in flower — other onion varieties, shallots, multiplier onions — within 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile), so flower one variety at a time. Save from at least five bulbs, more if you can. Only open-pollinated varieties come true (‘Ailsa Craig’, ‘Stuttgarter’, ‘Red Wethersfield’); many storage onions sold as transplants are F1 hybrids.
Keeps: 1–2 years — onion seed is the quickest to die. Buy or save fresh each year and test old packets on a damp paper towel in February.
Parsley
Parsley flowers in its second year, in June, from a crown that overwintered; the seed ripens on the umbels in late summer and is gathered when the heads turn brown, dried in a paper bag, and rubbed out. It is insect-pollinated and different parsleys (curly, flat, Hamburg root) cross if they flower together, so let only one kind go to seed in a season. Second-year leaves are bitter, so a seed plant is a seed plant, not a kitchen plant. Sowing the seed is the hard part: it germinates slowly and unevenly, two to five weeks, and old seed worse than fresh — soak it in warm water for 24 hours before sowing, and sow more than you need.
Keeps: Short: 1–3 years. Use fresh seed and soak it.
Parsnips
Parsnips flower in their second summer, and they are the easiest biennial there is to save in the north: leave two or three good roots in the ground over winter and they throw 1.5 m (5 ft) stalks of yellow umbels in June. Let the flat, papery seeds turn brown and start to drop, cut the heads into a paper bag and rub the seed free. They are insect-pollinated and cross with wild parsnip — the same species, common along Ontario and Quebec roadsides — so look around first; Seed Savers Exchange asks for 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile) isolation. The real reason to save your own is that bought parsnip seed is often already too old to germinate well.
Keeps: 1–2 years at most — the shortest of the common garden seeds. Buy or save fresh every year and sow thickly.
Rutabagas
Rutabagas are biennials: keep a few of the best roots in damp sand at 0–4 °C over winter (they rarely survive in the ground in zones 3–5), replant them in April with the crown at soil level, and the 1.5 m (5 ft) stalks of yellow flowers set long pods by July. Pick the pods when they go tan and thresh them in a bag. Brassica napus also includes canola and Siberian kale, which will cross with a flowering rutabaga; turnips, cabbage and broccoli are different species and will not. Seed Savers Exchange asks for 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile) between varieties. Grow at least five plants together — they are poor self-pollinators.
Keeps: 4 years.
Swiss chard
Chard is the same species as the beet and crosses freely with it: both are wind-pollinated and the pollen travels, so no beet or other chard may be flowering within 250 m (800 ft) in the seed year, and real purity wants 1.6 km. It is a biennial — no seed until the second summer. In zones 5–6 a heavily mulched plant often overwinters in place; elsewhere dig a few plants before a hard freeze, trim the leaves to 5 cm, store the roots in damp sand at 1–4 °C and replant in April. Save from at least five plants, better twenty. The seed stalk grows to 1.5 m; cut it when two-thirds of the seed clusters are brown, dry it on a sheet for two weeks, and strip the clusters by hand. Each ‘seed’ is a cluster of two to five true seeds, which is why chard always needs thinning.
Keeps: 4–5 years.
The crossers: keep them apart
Insects or wind carry pollen between varieties — and between crops of the same species — so saved seed is a surprise unless one variety is grown, or the flowers are bagged.
Basil
Let one or two plants flower at the end of August and stand until the flower spikes go brown and dry. Strip the spikes into a bowl, crumble the dry calyxes between your fingers and the small black seeds fall out; blow the chaff away. Basil is insect-pollinated and different basils cross with each other — Genovese next to Thai or lemon basil gives you muddled seedlings — so save seed from a single variety, or from the plant furthest from the others. Most garden basils are open-pollinated and come true; a few disease-resistant ones are hybrids and the packet will say so.
Keeps: About 5 years, stored cool and dry.
Cilantro (coriander)
This is the one herb where saving seed and harvesting the crop are the same job. Let the plants flower, wait for the heads to brown, cut them into a paper bag, dry a week, rub out the seed and winnow. Cilantro is an annual, insect-pollinated, and crosses only with other cilantro — grow one variety if you want the slow-bolt trait kept — and it self-sows so freely that an August patch left to shatter is next year’s May crop. Keep the kitchen seed and the sowing seed in the same jar; they are the same thing.
Keeps: About 5 years, stored cool and dry.
Cucumbers
Cucumbers have separate male and female flowers and are pollinated by bees, so every cucumber variety in bee range crosses with every other (not with squash or melons — different species). Most modern slicers and many picklers are F1 hybrids and will not come true either, so start with an open-pollinated variety and only one of them, or isolate by 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile), or hand-pollinate a few flowers and tape them shut. Seed is nowhere near ready at eating size: leave the chosen fruit on the vine until it is fat, yellow or orange and softening, then wait a few more weeks — roughly 45–60 days after the flower. Scoop the seeds and pulp into a jar with water, ferment 1–3 days at 21–27 °C, pour off the floaters, rinse the heavy seeds, and dry on a plate for a week or two.
Keeps: About 5 years.
Dill
Dill is the easiest seed in the garden to save because it saves itself: let a few heads ripen and shatter and you will have volunteers forever. For a jar of seed, cut heads as they go brown, dry them upside down in a paper bag, shake, and winnow the chaff. It is an annual, insect-pollinated, and different dill varieties (Bouquet, Mammoth, Dukat, Fernleaf) cross with each other if they flower together — grow one variety for seed, or accept a mix. Whether dill crosses with fennel is argued over; keep them apart if you are saving either.
Keeps: 3–5 years, stored cool and dry.
Hot peppers
Many hot varieties — jalapeños, cayennes, Hungarian wax, most habaneros — are open-pollinated and come true if they have not crossed. The problem is that they cross readily with each other and with sweet peppers when bees move between plants, so a mixed pepper bed gives mixed seed. Isolate varieties by 90–500 m (300–1,600 ft) or bag a few flower clusters in organza and mark those fruit. Take seed from fully coloured, slightly soft fruit, up to two weeks past ripe. Wear gloves and work outdoors or by an open window: the dust from dried hot-pepper seed is unpleasant to breathe. Dry the seed on a plate for a week or two.
Keeps: About 3 years.
Pumpkins
Most pie and jack-o’-lantern pumpkins are Cucurbita pepo — the same species as zucchini, acorn, delicata, spaghetti squash and ornamental gourds — and they cross with all of those through bees; giant and some French pumpkins are C. maxima and cross with buttercup, kabocha and hubbard instead. Species do not cross with each other. The fruit this year is unaffected; it is next year’s plants from saved seed that come up as something odd, and a cross with a gourd can be bitter. To save seed grow one pepo variety, or isolate by 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile), or hand-pollinate a female flower and tape it shut. Let the pumpkin cure and sit three weeks or more, then scoop, rinse, pick the plump seeds and dry them on a plate for two to three weeks. Most pumpkin varieties are open-pollinated; the packet will say if it is an F1.
Keeps: About 6 years.
Radishes
Spring radishes are annuals, which makes them one of the easiest seed crops there is: leave a few of the best roots unpulled, they bolt to 1 m (3 ft) of white-pink flowers within weeks, and the fat green pods that follow are a crop in themselves — crisp and peppery raw, and the rat-tail types are grown just for them. Let the rest of the pods dry tan on the plant, pull the whole plant and finish it under cover, then crush the pods and winnow. Radishes are insect-pollinated and self-incompatible, so grow at least five plants together, and they cross with other radish varieties and with wild radish within 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile) — flower one variety at a time. Winter radishes are biennials and need overwintering first.
Keeps: 5–6 years.
Spinach
Spinach seed is harder than it looks. The plants are dioecious — separate male and female plants — and wind-pollinated with light pollen that travels far, so you need a block of at least 10 plants (20–50 is better) with roughly half of them male, and no other spinach flowering within 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile). Let a spring sowing bolt in June: the males throw pollen first and then die back; keep them until the females have set seed along their stems. Pull the female plants when two-thirds of the seed is tan, hang them to dry for 10 days, strip the seed by hand (wear gloves — some varieties are prickly) and winnow. Most families with one short row are better off buying spinach seed and saving their effort for lettuce and peas.
Keeps: Up to 6 years stored cool and dry; count on 3.
Turnips
Turnips are biennials — overwinter the roots in sand at 0–4 °C, or in the ground where the soil stays above about −10 °C, and replant them in spring — but the harder problem is crossing. Brassica rapa includes Chinese cabbage, bok choy, mizuna, tatsoi, broccoli raab and some mustards, and any of them flowering within 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile) will cross with your turnips; a bolting bok choy in June is the usual culprit. Rutabagas are a different species and will not cross. Turnips are self-incompatible, so grow at least five plants and let them flower together. Collect the pods when they turn tan and shatter them in a bag.
Keeps: 4 years.
Winter squash
Squash crosses within its species but not across species, and that is the key. Cucurbita pepo covers acorn, delicata, spaghetti squash, zucchini and most pumpkins; C. maxima covers buttercup, kabocha, hubbard and the giant pumpkins; C. moschata is butternut and its relatives. So a butternut will save true beside a buttercup and an acorn, but not beside another moschata, and your acorn is crossing with the zucchini three beds over. Grow one variety per species, isolate by 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile), or hand-pollinate a female flower and tape it shut. Pick the seed fruit fully mature and let it sit at least three weeks — the seeds keep maturing inside — then scoop, rinse off the strings, pick out the fat seeds and dry on a plate for two to three weeks until one snaps instead of bending. Most garden varieties are open-pollinated, but check the packet for F1.
Keeps: About 6 years.
Zucchini
Zucchini is Cucurbita pepo, the same species as acorn, delicata, spaghetti and patty-pan squash, most pie and jack-o’-lantern pumpkins, and ornamental gourds — and it crosses freely with all of them through bees. The fruit you eat this year is unaffected; the seed inside it is the problem. To save seed, grow one pepo variety, or isolate by 250–800 m (800 ft to ½ mile), or hand-pollinate a female flower with a male from the same variety the morning they open and tape it shut. Then let that fruit grow into a full marrow and sit until the rind is too hard to dent with a thumbnail and the stem is dry, pick it, and leave it indoors another three weeks. Scoop, rinse, and dry the seeds on a plate for two or three weeks. A crossed seedling can give bitter fruit — if a zucchini tastes strongly bitter, spit it out and compost the plant.
Keeps: About 6 years.
Usually hybrids: check the packet
Most garden varieties of these are F1 hybrids, bred from two parents; their seed grows, but not into the same plant. Look for ‘open-pollinated’ or ‘heirloom’ if you mean to save.
Broccoli
Most broccoli sold to gardeners is an F1 hybrid (the packet will say so), and its saved seed grows into a muddle of loose, uneven plants. Seed is worth saving only from an open-pollinated variety — ‘De Cicco’, ‘Calabrese’ and ‘Waltham 29’ are the common ones. Broccoli is unusual in the family in that it flowers the same year if you let a head bolt, so it needs no overwintering: leave the best three to five heads from at least five plants to open into yellow flowers, keep every other Brassica oleracea (cabbage, kale, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi) from flowering within 250 m (800 ft), and let the pods dry on the plant. Rub the brittle pods out between your hands and winnow. In zones 3–5 the pods often have not ripened before a hard freeze, which is the real obstacle.
Keeps: 3–5 years.
Cauliflower
Nearly every cauliflower variety sold is an F1 hybrid and will not come true, and the open-pollinated ones are the hardest of the whole cabbage family to grow for seed: the plant must be healthy enough to carry a full head and then push a flower stalk through it, which in most of Canada means overwintering it at 1–4 °C in a cold room and replanting in spring. It crosses with cabbage, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi, so none of them may flower within 250 m (800 ft). Seed savers who do it keep at least five plants, let the curd open into yellow flowers, and dry the pods on the plant before rubbing them out. For most families this is the crop to buy seed for every year and save the effort for beans.
Keeps: 4–5 years.
Sweet corn
Nearly every sweet corn sold is an F1 hybrid, and seed saved from it grows a ragged, uneven patch — so for most gardens the answer is simply to buy sweet corn seed every year. Corn is wind-pollinated and crosses with any corn within hundreds of metres, including the neighbour’s field; seed savers keep at least 250 m (800 ft) between varieties and prefer 800 m, or stagger sowings so that two patches silk at least two weeks apart. Even a supersweet eaten fresh goes starchy if a field-corn patch pollinates it, so 100 m (300 ft) or two weeks of separation matters for the table too. Where saving corn seed does make sense is with an open-pollinated flour, flint or dent corn — the old ‘Gaspé’ flint, the ‘Painted Mountain’ flours, the eight-row flints — or an open-pollinated sweet corn like ‘Golden Bantam’: leave the best ears on the stalks until the husks are dry and brown, pick, pull back the husks and hang the ears to finish drying for a month, then shell by hand. Save from dozens of plants at least — corn inbreeds badly from a handful — and from the whole patch rather than one favourite.
Keeps: 1–3 years; sow fresh seed when you can.
Sweet peppers
Check the packet first: many of the big blocky bell varieties sold in Canada are F1 hybrids and will not come true. From an open-pollinated variety, let the fruit go fully coloured and just starting to soften, then scrape the seeds out, rinse, and dry on a plate for a week or two until one snaps when you bend it. Peppers mostly self-pollinate, but bees do move pollen between plants, and sweet peppers cross with hot ones — a sweet pepper grown next to jalapeños can give you a hot ‘bell’ next year. Keep varieties 90–500 m (300–1,600 ft) apart, or bag a few flower clusters in organza before they open and mark those fruit for seed.
Keeps: About 3 years.
Questions people ask
Seed saving, answered
What is the difference between open-pollinated and hybrid seed?
Open-pollinated (and heirloom) varieties breed true: save the seed and you get the same plant. An F1 hybrid is the first-generation cross of two parent lines; it is uniform and often vigorous, but its own seed segregates back toward the parents. The packet says ‘F1’ or ‘hybrid’ when it is one.
How do you dry seeds for storage?
Spread them one layer deep on a plate, a screen or a coffee filter — not paper towel, which sticks — somewhere airy out of the sun for one to three weeks. A seed is dry enough when a bean snaps rather than dents under a fingernail and a tomato seed does not bend. Then jar them with a label and the year.
Where should seeds be stored?
Cool, dark and dry: a sealed jar in a cupboard against an outside wall, or the fridge with a packet of silica gel. The rule of thumb is that temperature in °F plus humidity in percent should stay under 100. Warm, damp and bright is what the garage in July is, and it halves the life of a packet.
How long do vegetable seeds last?
Stored cool and dry: onions, parsnips and parsley about a year; corn, peppers and peas two to three; beans, carrots and tomatoes three to five; cucumbers, squash, lettuce and brassicas five or more. Each crop page gives its own figure. Sow a few on damp paper towel in February to test an old packet.
Can children save seeds?
It is one of the best autumn jobs for them: shelling dry beans, scraping pumpkin seeds, shaking dill heads into a bag, squeezing tomato pulp into a jar. Keep them to the counting and sorting side of it, and let them write the labels.