Growing your own fruits and vegetables isn’t only a healthy choice, it can be a really economical one as well. With a little luck, you can bring in bushels of food for only the cost of a few packets of seeds. What if you could even eliminate that cost? Saving your own seed each year can close that self-sufficiency cycle and allow you to have a more efficient garden plan.
By deliberately choosing seeds from the plants that do really well, you’re going to continually be breeding plants that perfectly suit your garden. You can’t get that kind of quality from any seed catalog.
Some plants are simple to save seed from. You just have to make sure the fruits are all fully ripe before you start collecting. Peas and beans just need some pods left on the plant until they are dry, then you just shell for the seeds.
Not all plants are that straight-forward, though. Root vegetables are often harvested before the plant goes to flower and seed. Same goes for many leafy greens. In these cases, you’ll have to intentionally leave a few plants un-harvested at the end of the season, so that they can produce their seeds for you.
For even more complications, some plants take two years to complete their own life cycle (known as biennials) rather than the usual one. A common example is the carrot. If you want to save carrot seed, you need to grow a few plants and let them die back naturally after the first season. Leave them alone, and they will re-sprout the next year and produce their second year form, which will finally lead to flowers and seeds.
Label and store your seeds in a cool, dark place away from excess moisture and the threat of insect pests.