Saving seed

The desire to save seed is understandable particularly for people growing heirloom vegetables. It gives you more of a connection with plants you grow if you complete the seed to seed cycle. It can also be a connection to vegetables of your heritage, a contribution to preserving genetic traits for the future and perhaps could save you money on seed purchases.

First, the cautions. Don’t save hybrid seed because plants that grow from it don’t come true to type. In fact you will likely have all sorts of small to large plants and variable fruit in fruiting vegetables. F1 hybrid seed saving is a waste of time.

The self-pollinating vegetables are good bets for easy seed saving. They rarely cross with others of their kind and don’t need long distance separation or bagged flowers to prevent stray pollen from reaching flowers. Beans, peas, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant are in this easy-to-save group. If you are growing ‘Brandywine’, ‘Cherokee Purple’ or ‘Mortgage Lifter’ tomato for the first time and like them, save seed if you are willing to grow your own transplants.

Open-pollinated varieties cross-pollinate but produce plants closely true to type if reasonably isolated by distance or time of flowering from other plants of their species. An example is ‘Straight 8’ cucumber. Wind-pollinated plants (corn) and insect pollinated plants (cucmbers, squash, pumpkins, melons) take more care to save because you have to pay attention to nearby plants and even hand pollinate.

Potatoes are popular heirlooms because tubers come true to type (no flowers involved). Baring disease accumulation in tubers, you can save colors and flavors not available in grocery stores. Examples are ‘Russian Banana’, ‘Yellow Finns’ and ‘Ruby Crescent Fingerling’.

Our dry Colorado climate is excellent for seed saving. Keep seeds in a cool place. Be sure to label with name, variety and date collected.

Share your seed saving tips and experiences with us.

Photo credit: Removing seed from ripe tomato, Flowering lettuce will produce seed - both Carl Wilson

The ‘birds and bees’ of saving seeds

Will saving seed from last year’s favorite vegetable pay off?

I don’t save seeds of F1 (first generation) hybrids because they lose hybrid vigor, don’t come true to type and most are patented anyway. Tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are ninety plus percent self pollinated and will come true to type if they are not a hybrid.

I save seeds of a favorite lettuce with success. Herbs such as dill self seed or can be collected and sown in either fall or spring.

What does and doesn’t work in terms of “the birds and bees” of the garden? Cucumbers do not cross with pumpkins, squash or melons but readily cross with each other.

Varieties of summer squash will cross with one another and with pumpkin. They don’t cross with winter squash. Cantaloupes do not cross with cucumbers, watermelons, pumpkins or squashes. Winter (fall) squash doesn’t cross with melons, pumpkins or summer squash. Sweet corn crosses with itself and also with field corn.

Potatoes by the way don’t cross with tomatoes. When potatoes produce fruit on the plants those aren’t a tomato, just a potato fruit. Propagate potatoes by saving and cutting tubers into seed pieces with an eye (sprout), not from potato fruit.

Many people prefer to buy seed and it generally is one of the least expensive investments in the garden.

I get a question every year from a Colorado gardener who claims they purchased seed and the plant produced a garden fruit monstrosity. Maybe a mix up occurred at the seed producer or more likely the seed of a hybid variety reverted to parental characteristics from last year's fruit dropped in the garden.

“Weird” crosses won’t show up in the year they are made. Crossed plant genetics are stored in the seed and don’t affect the fruit characteristics the year of the cross. The exception is sweet corn where crossing can affect the taste of the kernels that same year.

Certain crosses are genetically impossible because chromosome numbers aren’t the same, won’t successfully match up and can’t produce viable seed. See chromosome numbers below.

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Vegetable chromosome counts
Like chromosome numbers need to be present to even think that crossing is possible (pumpkin and summer squash). Genetically distant and totally unlike plants won’t cross even if numbers happen to be the same (cantaloupe and tomato).

• Cantaloupe 24
• Cucumber 14
• Potato 48
• Pumpkin 40
• Summer squash 40
• Sweet corn 20
• Tomato 24
• Watermelon 22
• Winter squash 24

[Pumpkin photo credit Carl Wilson]