By Silvia Strobl, Master Gardener in Training

Summer is flying by. You can feel the growing season coming to a close with the cooler morning temperatures in late August. Now is a good time to reflect on which vegetables did well in your garden and, if heirloom or open-pollinated varieties, allow some to go to seed for next year’s planting. Or you could collect more seed than you need and package them to exchange for more new varieties at next spring’s Seedy Saturday/Sunday events.

It is important to only collect seeds from open-pollinated varieties as these will retain their genetic diversity and produce plants that adapt to changing growing conditions. They produce seeds that can be legally grown, saved, and shared. Do not collect seeds from hybrid varieties as these will not grow like their parents.

Last spring, I picked up seeds of several new (to me) varieties that diversified both my vegetable garden and my diet this summer, including:

• An heirloom basil lettuce leaf variety with a milder peppery basil flavour that enhanced mixed lettuce salads throughout the growing season
• A purple pole bean, Trionfo Violetto, that unlike the purple pole bean, Blauhilde, that I usually grow was more tender and stringless, although not quite as productive
• A purple podded sugar snap pea, Sugar Magnolia Pea, that is still producing pods today. The peas are very sweet and unlike the purple pole beans do not turn green when cooked, plus they are easy to spot in the tangle of 6 feet tall vines
• A cantaloupe, Minnesota Midget,that started producing juicy, sweet, ripe fruits by the second week of August
• A mix of 2 different Armenian cucumbers with light green, ribbed tender skins rather than the dark green skinned Lebanese cucumbers typically grown and available year-round at the grocery store. Surprisingly, Armenian cucumbers are the same species as cantaloupe! Their denser, less watery flesh makes them ideal for tabouli and cucumber salads.
• Two different peppers that I grew as container plants: (i) Mini Red Bell that produced early sweet peppers that are 1-1/2 inches tall and wide and (ii) Buena Mulata a hot cayenne variety that changes from a pretty purple to red when ripe although we also enjoyed the early milder purple peppers in fresh salsas. Both pepper varieties are very productive, yielding dozens of peppers on one plant!

Why try growing something new?

While it is easy to get into a routine of growing the same varieties of vegetables each year, there are several reasons to experiment with new varieties. A different variety of beans or tomatoes might grow better in your soil conditions and produce a bigger crop, it might taste better, be easier to harvest, mature earlier, or be better suited to the vagaries of our new climate change world with more drought and/or rainy weather. Aside from these good reasons, growing something new can be a lot of fun!

Contributing seeds to your local Seedy Saturday/Sunday event is an economical way to support experimentation with new varieties. You can trade your seeds for seeds of other varieties collected by other gardeners.

How do you get started with seed collection?

As I learned during a seed collection workshop with Jill Bishop of Urban Tomato, here are some general steps to follow:

• Ensure the variety is open-pollinated or heirloom. The original seed package should provide this information. Or search for the variety name on the internet.

• Identify the vegetable varieties you enjoyed and mark healthy plants that you will let go to seed. For example, this year I identified 2 plants in my pole bean row where pods could go to seed.

• Let seeds mature on the plant and observe carefully to ensure you harvest seed heads just before they start to split open.

For beans and peas which are self-pollinated let pods over-ripen and turn brown on the plant. Keep green beans away from purple ones. When seeds rattle inside pods they are ready to harvest. Let the pods dry further indoors.

For lettuce greens, cruciferous vegetables (e.g., kale, cauliflower, broccoli, etc.) and herbs let a plant bolt. Keep different varieties (e.g., of lettuce) apart to avoid cross-pollination or only let one variety bolt. It will take some time for seeds to form and turn completely dry and brown. You might want to cover the seed head with a gauze bag to capture the seeds when seed heads split open. Note that kale is a biennial and won’t form seeds until Year 2 while most spinach varieties are dioecious and both a male and a female plant are required to obtain seed set.

Pepper seeds are simple to collect but make sure to grow varieties separated from one another to avoid cross-pollination. Growing peppers in pots makes this easy to do as you can move the pot during the flowering period. Scrape seeds from a fully ripe pepper and set seeds on newspaper to dry.

Both tomato and cucurbit seeds require a bit more effort to collect.

• A recent Peterborough & Area Master Gardener blog post, “Tasty Tomatoes”, provided steps for saving tomato seeds from ripe healthy tomatoes. As described in the blog, seeds should be fermented in water for a week to separate viable seeds and improve seed germination and longevity.

• For cucumbers, squash and melon, let the fruit get big, overripe, and mouldy on the vine, open the fruit, scoop out seeds and let them ferment like tomato seeds, then rinse and let dry.

Ensure that you label and date the seeds you collect through the drying and packaging process. When packaging seeds in smaller envelopes for Seedy Saturday/Sunday events include variety name, year collected, days to maturity, and spacing for sowing. Store seeds in paper envelopes in a dry cool place. If you use jars to store seeds, put an envelope with a fully gummed flap in the jar as well. If the envelope is sealed when you check the jar a week later, humidity levels are too high in the jar. Seeds will start to germinate if kept in humid conditions.

Follow these steps and you’ll be ready to leave a few seed envelopes of your favourite varieties at a Seedy Saturday/Sunday event that will soon be scheduled near you. And you’ll be able to pick up a few free new heirloom varieties to try in 2024!

Seed Collection Resources

Seeds of Diversity a Canadian organization with 1000+ members that grow rare seeds to exchange. They support Seedy Saturday and Sunday events across the country.

How to Save Your Own Seeds–A handbook for Small Scale Seed Production available from Seeds of Diversity for $15.00

The Seed Savers Exchange publishes a Seed Saving Guide in table format that identifies the primary pollination method, how many plants you should grow to collect viable seeds, and how far apart plants should be from other varieties to avoid cross-pollination for more than 80 varieties of vegetables. For example, for vegetables like tomatoes, beans, lettuce and squash, you should grow each variety at least 10 to 20 feet apart from other varieties. If you have a small garden, you can still grow more varieties together but cover a flower with a gauze or blossom bag to only allow that variety to self-pollinate.

There are lots of resources on the internet for making your own seed envelops, including this one: Make Your Own Seed Envelopes For Cheap