Process for harvesting next years seeds

[610Alpha]

Ok so I am thinking of planting for next year and I was going to use heirloom seeds.

How do I go about collecting seeds and saving them for use the following year? Is it just crack open the vegetable and extract seeds or is there a little more to it, for instance do I let the vegetable fully mature or harvest it when I would to eat it.

I want to sustain my seed supply from my own garden basically. Who wants to chime in first with their experience?

[Matt In Oklahoma]

I grow the vegtable till harvest then pull the seeds, clean all matter off, then dry, then I freeze them, however I am dabbling in sealing them in mylar and saving them. Make sure you label with as much data as you can.

[Lowdown3]

A good reference book for this is called "Seed to Seed" if you can't find it by that, I'll dig it out and get an author name.

Some vegetables like carrots and onions (IIRC on onions) have to be kept in the ground TWO years to get them to put out seeds.

Easiest ones to start with would be beans, peas, peppers, tomatoes.

Get some tree tape- the little neon orange flagging tape people use for marking trees, stakes on jobsites, etc.

Learn to look for traits that are beneficial to YOU. For example, we have a long growing season here, however it's tough to keep things going in the heat of the summer. If I plant snow peas in Feb I want them down by mid may at the latest. Any later than that and they are gone.

So let's say I plant in Feb, in early May a couple plants are already pushing out nice pods wherein the others are just starting to form.

Think that's a trait we need? You bet it is. Take your tree tape and wrap it/tie it around that plant with the "early" peas.

Some plants you can still use the edible parts and still get the seeds for use. Others will have to sacrifice the food value of that plant for seed for next year.

Herein is what's going to screw people up that haven't done this regularly once it's the PAW. Newbie gardener puts in his first garden on PAW plus 30 days. From some miracle his soil is already prepped, he planted the right varieties for his area at the right time, he got enough rain, he had enough fertilizer, the bugs did not ruin his future, etc. So he's looking at a nice stand of beans. He's hungry cause he didn't plan that well with his food storage and figured his non existent "hunting, fishing and gardening" skills would bridge the gap. Well he got lucky in the gardening at least. :) So he pulls a grand total of 5 bean plants to save for seeds. Next year if the bugs, mold, moisture and rodents did not rob him of his stored seeds, he find that he didn't take enough seeds so now he can only plant about 3/4 of the amount he planted last year.

This is one of the main reasons why you need to be storing and using your own seed as much as possible. So you know how much you do need to keep both to plant next year, as well as when you need to EXPAND your growing efforts, as well as some to keep for insurance. Crop failures, bad weather, etc. is common NOW, expect Mr. Murphy to be in full effect in the PAW.

For most folks, they won't be actually eating most of their first year garden, if they are smart, they'll be saving almost all their seeds that first year.

Why? Because only THEN will they realize that the four 10x6' raised beds they have won't actually feed their family, so they will need to expand their growing efforts in year 2.

We have done pretty well some years on growing veggies on almost a full acre. We have never got to the point where at least once during the year we didn't say "Thank God we have food storage."

Just some food for thought.
Lowdown3

[becky3086]

That was one of the most perfect posts I have read. I am always disgusted to read websites where someone says they have lived off of a couple of raised beds all year long. I bet if they had really had to live off what they raised in those beds--without having to buy anything to go with them--they would see how much their diet had been lacking.
Having said that, I have not been real vigilant about saving seeds and my gardening efforts have not been as great as they could have been but I am changing that this year. My fall gardening efforts (small though they are) are much better this year. I have picked more carefully my -heirloom seeds--for next year and hope to get more out of my garden because of some better water conservation efforts and better composting, mulching and weeding efforts, not to mention more beds.
Ok, I got off track there. There used to be a website that told how to save all sorts of seeds. Let me see if I can find it...
Here you go http://www.seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html

[610Alpha]

Thank you both for your comments and link! Another shining example of the knowledge and helpfulness of this forum!!

[monkeybird]

http://howtosaveseeds.com/index.php

I used this online website to save my heirloom seeds from this summer. It worked exactly like the writer said. I let you know how many come up next year.