How to Save Your Vegetable Garden Seeds

Save your best seeds, the way that yesterday's gardeners did, to improve next year's yield.

Garden Vegetables - Old Time Illustration

In saving seeds only the best specimens of each kind should be saved, and all inferior ones rejected; this is easy enough with such plants as squashes, cucumbers, tomatoes, melons, etc., care being used to save only the earliest, fairest, and most perfect specimens. The seed should be allowed to ripen thoroughly before taking it from the fruit, which will require some weeks with squashes, after gathering from the vine; tomatoes are placed in the sun for a few days, and melon-seeds may be taken directly when the melon is fit to eat; seeds of this nature having a fleshy pulp are usually cleaned by allowing them to ferment in water for a day or two, when the pulp will easily wash off, after which the seed is spread upon a sheet in the sunshine to dry. Seeds of vines keep longer if not allowed to freeze; they will preserve their vitality five or six years if kept in a warm, dry place. A closet near a chimney is a good place, and, since mice and rats are fond of such tidbits as melon-seeds, it will be advisable to lock them up in a tin chest or other rat-proof arrangement. When saving seeds of beets, cabbage, turnip, etc., those who are most particular reject all but the seed grown on the leading stem.

Seeds of all kinds keep best in a dry, even temperature. When to be kept in large lots, they may be put in bags and hung from the ceiling of the room, to keep them from the mice. Most seeds are good from two to five years, if carefully kept; onion-seed, however, is very inferior after the first year, and worthless after the second. When old seed is to be used, it should be previously tested by sowing a counted lot in a hot-bed or other suitable place, and counting the number of plants that come up, and noting the vigor of the plants; the plants from old seed are usually less vigorous than from fresh seed, and sometimes are so weak as to be worthless.

From THE NATIONAL FARMER'S AND HOUSEKEEPER'S CYCLOPAEDIA, 1888

It will not do to take off all the best ears of corn, or the tightest heads of lettuce, using the nubbins and runts for seed, or the next year the nubbins will predominate and the lettuce will go to seed without taking the trouble to form a head at all.
The best plan is to set apart a section of the row of each variety for seed, and not gather any for use from that part; here all the nubbins and inferior specimens could be pulled off, throwing the full strength of the plant into the finest fruits; and the same way with the vines; one or more hills, as desired, could be kept for the purpose of bearing seed only.

All seeds should be thoroughly cleaned and dried, and each package should be carefully marked with name and date before storing. The seed chest should be in some cool place where there is no danger of frost or very warm heat, and, most of all, no danger from dampness. It is important to have the date of saving the seed marked, so that when all is not used it may be kept, as frequently a crop fails from a bad season or other causes, and a new lot of equal merit cannot be obtained, the date serving to tell how good the seed is; seed of some vegetables retaining vitality for only two years, and others as long as ten years.

If you save your own seed, the earliest ripened specimens should be saved for that purpose, and should be of perfect shape and evenly ripened, with no core, crack or rot about them. The easiest way to clean this seed is, take a small box, knock the top and bottom off, and nail some wire fly screening over the bottom; take the fresh tomatoes, not rotten ones, as are frequently used, and squeeze the seeds into this sieve, throwing the pulp and flesh away; the seed can be washed free and clean by running clean water upon them, keep them constantly stirred and pick out the bits of pulp as they become free and float upon the top of the water, while the water and finer particles will pass off through the screening. When clean allow all the water to drain off and spread the seeds thinly on a smooth board or cloth in the sun; they should be stirred frequently, to prevent their adhering to each other when dry. If seeds are washed out in this manner and carefully dried, you can depend on every one growing, while from those saved in the ordinary manner, from tomatoes that have been allowed to heat and rot, sometimes not one seed in a hundred will germinate.

From the 1888 book, HOW AND WHAT TO GROW IN A KITCHEN GARDEN OF ONE ACRE

This is part of an article from the book The Kitchen Garden Guide