Whether you grow annuals or perennials, a garden continues year after year. If you’re looking to preserve the varieties and cultivars of plants that you most enjoy, you should save your seeds. Saving seeds from your own garden saves money too. If you save your own seeds, you don’t need to purchase more seed packets for next year’s garden. Plus, seeds saved carry with them a bit of genetic memory from their parents (called epigenetic memory). Seeds you save from your own garden will be more prepared to handle the kind of soil, light, and temperatures that their parent had to deal with. Your own saved seeds will be more likely to prosper next year than seeds from plants grown in other environments.

You want to make sure that the seeds you save this year are going to be viable for next year. In this guide we’ll go through the kinds of seeds you can save, how to best collect them, and how to store them for the long term. Pretty soon, you’ll collect so many seeds from your garden that you won’t need to purchase more. Plus, seeds from your own garden make a highly personal gift for friends and family!

What Kind of Plants Can You Save Seeds From?

You can save seeds from most vegetables, fruit, flowers, bushes, and even trees. The trick is knowing how the plant disperses its seeds so you can collect them the right way.

However, some seeds are less disposed to seed saving than others. Recalcitrant seeds, so called because they’re difficult to cultivate, must maintain a fleshy membrane around the radical (the embryo of a seed). In recalcitrant seeds, the radical will not grow into a plant if the membrane is dried out. (Here’s a great resource all about recalcitrant seeds.) Many tropical plants produce recalcitrant seeds that if frozen or dried out will not produce new plants. If you’re growing seeds from these sorts of plants, you should plant them straight away to produce new plants.

Seed Dispersal Methods – And What That Means When Collecting Seeds

Knowing how your plants produce their seed tells you how you collect that seed. There are several different methods of seed dispersal and each requires a different method to collect those seeds.

Animals or Gravity

Some seeds are surrounded by fleshy membranes designed to entice creatures (including us!) to eat them and deposit them elsewhere. Or, if uneaten, they may fall to the ground where the fruit will nourish the seeds. You can find many examples of this dispersal method in common staples in gardens like tomatoes, beans, strawberries, and squashes. You must remove the seeds from the fruit or husk, wash them fully, and then dry them before you store them.

Barbs

Many garden flowers, like the Love-In-A-Mist that I spotted on a garden tour at George Washington’s Mount Vernon, produce barbs around their seeds to encourage dispersal. Barbed seeds stick to clothes and fur to send their seeds to new locations. These seeds can fall apart easily and end up stuck to clothes and hair while harvesting. So it’s better to cut them from the plant when they’re mature but not yet dry. Let them dry out in a controlled environment, like a paper bag.

Wind

Another common garden flower method of dispersing seeds is through wind. Practically everyone knows of the dandelion. The hardy dandelion with their seeds on white tufts that float in the air is the perfect example of wind dispersal. Yet there are other flowers that are more-welcomed in the garden that use this method of seed dispersal too. Milkweed in butterfly gardens is one such flower. Deadhead flowers that disperse their seeds in this manner before their seeds can blow away. Bring the flowers with mature seeds inside to a paper bag where they’ll be contained as they finish drying out.

Explosions

Some plants, like arugula, kale, and the invasive garlic mustard, have seed pods that burst open to send the seeds within showering all over. Saving seeds from these plants can be something of a jump scare. Like barbed seeds, cut these seeds pods from the plant when mature but not quite dry. A paper bag is the perfect controlled environment for these seeds. Once they’re dry, you’ll be able to reach in and explode the seeds from their pods in the safety of the paper bag.

How to Prepare Collected Seeds for Storage

Once collected, you may need to do a little work to get your seeds ready for long term storage. Even if you intend to plant these seeds in next year’s garden, chances are that you’ve saved more seeds than you’re going to use in one growing season. So store your seeds well now so they’ll last you the next few years.

Cleaning Seeds

Some seeds need additional work before they’ll store properly. As previously mentioned, seeds from fruits or vegetables may have fleshy membranes that you need to clean before you can safely store the seeds. Failure to remove any pieces of the fruit may prevent moisture from fully evaporating and cause the seed to rot. Rinse seeds gently with water and lay them out on a paper towel to dry.

Don’t worry if you don’t get it all. As long as the seeds are properly dry, they’ll be ok. The idea is to remove as much as you can.

Drying Seeds

Leave your seeds to dry in the open air for at least a week. This ensures that all excess moisture has evaporated prior to putting them away. If you can, try to prevent seeds from clustering together. Seeds may hold moisture and rot in groups rather than drying.

If the seeds you collected are of the kind that are best kept in a paper bag, as mentioned above, then they have likely dried already by the time you’re ready to put them away. Separate the seeds from the chaff (seed pods, old blossoms, or fuzz to catch the wind). That way, you only store the seeds. You can discard the chaff in the trash or compost bin. Seeds don’t need the chaff, and it takes up a lot of space.

How to Store Seeds Once You’ve Collected Them

Once you’ve collected your seeds, you need to make sure that you store them properly. The perfect environment won’t get too hot, too cold, or too wet. The first thing you need to think about is what kind of bag or packet you should collect your seeds in. Then you should think about how to store those seed packets.

Seed Packets: Paper or Plastic?

As long as your seeds are properly dried out, you can store your seeds in almost any medium, including plastic. If you’re a even a little bit unsure if your seeds are still retaining moisture, however, you should avoid plastic. Plastic retains moisture. So if your seeds have any moisture in them, they will release it inside the plastic bag. This risks your seeds molding. Once a seed molds, it essentially rots and will not produce a healthy plant, if it germinates at all. Storing your seeds in paper will allow the seeds to continue to dry out if there’s any moisture left in them.

Waxed paper packets are the best of both worlds. Waxed paper breathes like regular paper does. But the waxed coating also helps protect the seeds within from exterior atmospheric humidity.

Seed Packet Templates

To help you on your journey to saving your own seeds, here’s my favorite seed packet template! You can customize it in your favorite word program by inserting the picture into a word document and adding text boxes over the lines. Or print the image as it is straight from your browser. Once printed, you can write on it with a pen, pencil, or marker. This template produces an envelope that resembles a commercial seed packet! Click here for the full, printable version!

Seed Storage Containers

My favorite seed storage container is the featured image at the top of this blog post. It’s a simple metal box that latches. I used this box to preserve several of my plants through seeds when I made my interstate move. Metal is a good choice to store seed packets because it maintains a cool, dry interior while also repelling humidity. If you use a metal box to store seeds, make sure not to store it in a location that is too warm or too cold. Because metal will conduct temperatures. A plastic container works okay too, as long as you don’t keep it in an area that’s too humid. Plastic retains humidity and that’s not good for your seeds. Make sure to take temperature and humidity into account when storing your seeds long term.

Whichever medium you choose to store your seeds, place the box in a dark or semi-dark location. Keep your seeds away from sources of light to best protect them from temperature fluctuations and premature germination.

Now You’re Seed Saving Savvy!

If you try any of these seed saving methods, I want to hear from you! Let me know how it went and if it worked for you! I hope this helps you to increase your garden’s bounty and start or add to you own seed collection!