It’s that time again, the time when the rains come, and the plants turn brown, their flowers going to seed. It’s time to collect and save seeds.  

Seed saving may be the most neglected element of gardening. Every winter, most of us feast our eyes upon the pages of seed catalogs, drooling over the newest varieties that seed companies have either discovered in some faraway place or simply bred. The ordered seeds arrive, and, thrilled, we arrange them in piles: one pile for outdoor April sowing, another for indoor starting in March, a pile for late spring direct sowing, and another for late summer sowing. 

But how many of us know where those seeds came from and how they are harvested?

If they come from far away, will they thrive in our own gardens? And should we even import them? Remember back in 2020, when we were in lockdown, and all the seed companies sold out of almost everything? I wasn’t able to purchase any seeds that year, but luckily I had already started saving seeds, and of those that I hadn’t learned how to save, I had enough left over from the year before. I’ve made it a practice to not use up all the seeds I buy in any given year, just in case there is a temporary disturbance in the supply in the following year.

It is wiser still to save seeds from your own permaculture garden, so let us begin looking at ways to do that.

Before you start on your seedsaving journey, make sure you’re planting heirloom, preferably local, varieties, and not hybrid seeds. Hybrid seed packets usually have “F1” on the label somewhere, and heirlooms should also be labeled. If you save seeds from a hybrid plant, the next generation of plants will be very different from the plants whose seeds you saved. Once a friend gave me a delicious beefy tomato, saying I should save the seeds. I ate the tomato and diligently saved the seeds, and then I planted the seeds the following spring and raised the seedlings under lights indoors before planting them out in the spring. The plants grew large and produced a lot of fruits, tiny fruits with a tough skin and no flavor at all. Lesson learned! My friend had not known that her tomato was a hybrid. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get seeds from a friend! If someone offers you some seeds that are not hybrid, by all means, plant them!

And now the techniques…

Let’s start with the easiest ones. 

Garlic can be preserved for next year’s planting simply by storing the bulbs you’ve harvested in spring until fall and then, when ready to plant, pulling a few of the bulbs apart and poking the individual cloves, pointy side up, into the ground. When you harvest it in late spring, cure it by laying it out in the shade to dry out. When the stalks and leaves are dried out, bring your garlic inside to store in a cool dry place (basements or cabinets work great). Make sure not to eat it all after you harvest it – save a few bulbs for fall planting.

Beans are very easy to save. Plant heirloom varieties of beans, each type separated by some other plants, just to be safe and avoid cross pollination. Beans tend to be pretty stable, but once in a while I’ve ended up with some strange ones. I ate those and didn’t replant any. Let your beans ripen completely. You can leave them on the vine until they start to harden. That’s when I pick mine and shell them. After shelling them, lay them out on a cloth to dry out completely. 

Ground Cherries, a delicious little fruit that is related to the tomatillo, can simply be picked when ripe and squashed on a napkin or piece of wax paper. Smear the fruit across the paper surface, and you will see the seeds. Let them dry thoroughly and store.

When I cut up a fresh heirloom pepper, I save the seeds by pulling them out of the pepper and spreading them on a paper to dry. You can do this with store bought peppers, provided they are organic and you know they are not hybrids.

Tomatoes require one extra step. When you chop up your heirloom tomato, collect the seeds and put them in a bowl with their liquid. If there isn’t a lot of liquid, add a little filtered water. Cover with a piece of cheesecloth or linen, but not plastic wrap. You want some air to get in. The tomato goop will get moldy in a few days, and this is necessary to break down the outside of the seeds. Once it looks pretty nasty and moldy, pour the mess into a fine sieve and rinse them, rubbing them gently to pull off any attached bits and hulls. When they look clean, put them on a napkin or wax paper and allow to dry completely.

Asparagus  produces seeds if you have both male and female asparagus. Some gardeners prefer to plant only male asparagus, because the spears are a little bigger, but I like to have both male and female, for the very reason that I want them to produce seeds and make more plants. The seeds are spherical and red, about a centimenter wide, or a bit smaller. You can either let the seeds land where they will, or you can harvest them and plant some. I enjoy finding stray asparagus plants in my yard! My mother used to go hunting for wild asparagus as a child; it was a staple of her diet.

Chard and beets are trickier than any I’ve mentioned so far. They are closely related and will cross pollinate. I’ve found that this doesn’t affect the chard too much; it still looks and tastes like chard, with an occasional beety root. But the following generation of beets will be unreliable. You may end up with a lot of beet greens that have tiny beetroots. Some of them may taste a bit like chard. If you want to save beet seeds, don’t plant chard anywhere nearby.

Peas seem easy to save. Just pick them when they seem dry on the vines and dry them out a while longer, but there is one extra step to take when you store them. You must freeze the dried seeds first! Otherwise, you will likely find a tiny hole in each seed. This is made by a small insect, a seed beetle, who eats out the inside and ruins the seed. It will not germinate. Freezing will kill these bugs. You don’t need to freeze the seed until next planting – a week should do.

Onions and leeks produce copious seeds. Don’t make the same mistake that I’ve made, of forgetting which onions I planted where! Many onion varieties are hybrids, so make sure you know where you planted those. It’s wise to separate them from the leeks. I’ve never had trouble saving the seeds. The plant is a biennial (true of both leeks and onions), meaning it has a two-year life cycle. In the first year, you should eat most of the fat bulbs and leeks. If they flower in the first year, they will not store well, and you don’t want to save those seeds, as that would be preserving the gene for early flowering and unstorable onions! Leave some of your fattest bulbs and leeks in the ground over the winter. They will grow in the spring and send up a lovely flower. Watch these flowers carefully. Each stem has a mass of small flowers, which each contain a seed. Then those flowers have lost their color, and the black seeds become visible, cut off the stems and upend them into a paper bag to store the seeds.

Cilantro and Parsley are very easy. Just let the flowers go to seed and let the seeds turn brown and dry. Now you can collect and store them.

Zinnias are usually hybrids – the next generation of flowers will be pretty enough, but not as interesting as the original hybrid. If you don’t mind this, go ahead and save the seeds. Wait until the flower is completely dry, then snip it off and keep it in a bag. You can pull the flowers apart and find the seeds inside, underneath the central petals.

Squashes, Cucumbers, and Melons  are material for another article. Squashes and zucchine will usually cross pollinate, resulting at best in boring things that have no flavor whatsoever, and at worst in things that are slightly toxic. The same goes for cucumbers and melons, which are closely related. These plants need to be isolated. If your squash flowers, you must catch the flower on its first day and pollinate it by hand before either tying the flower shut or covering it with a bag and tying that shut, to prevent bees from bringing pollen from different varieties of squash. Even if you plant only one variety of squash, your neighbor, or someone living half a block away, may be growing a different variety. Bees travel long distances, up to a mile or even more.

Now that you’ve saved and dried your seeds, be sure to store them in a dark dry place. Paper envelopes or small glass containers make good storage containers; avoid plastic if you can. And label them with plant type and year harvested!

Hopefully, this helps you begin your journey to saving seeds, but I’d like to point out that nobody can be truly self-sufficient.

We need community.

I can’t grow everything on my own land- some things just won’t grow here, and the same goes for my neighbors. We can all grow different things and trade with each other. This reflects both the Permaculture ethics of People Care and Fair Share.

So learn to save seeds, not only for yourself, but for the community you live in.