How to Save Basil Seeds - Seed Saving Tutorial

[Music] well hello everyone welcome to another very exciting episode here on the my gardener Channel this is gonna be a seed saving video on basil now we've got we've been doing a lot of seed saving videos throughout the past and I realized I had not yet done one on basil so many of you have been asking for it and it's finally come time to harvest basil seed so I figured you know what hey let's make it happen so so yeah we're gonna be harvesting basil seed it's something that is a really easy one to save I recommend everyone try saving seeds and basil is no exception to that it's a few few different tips to harvesting your basil seed that we'll get into they can make it a little more hands-on and and a little challenging for someone that's never done it before but once you see it it's really easy and so yeah definitely a recommend saving basil seed because basil is one of those ones that you can you can get the seed once and it makes so much seed on again a single plant that you'll never have to ever buy see it again for basil now also I will point out too that our basil has cross pollinated and whenever you're harvesting basil seed if you want something that's true to type you want to make sure that you put a large amount of distance in between it from another basil plant for instance rates are way spicy globe basil we have a dwarf Greek basil we have a purple basil here here purple basil here and then right here we have a cinnamon basil and then right there we have a lemon basil so we have a lot to different types of basil it's just something that you know we don't really care about cross-pollination but it's something that you will definitely take into consideration if you're planning on saving basil seed or if you're about to say basil seed just know that if you plant them really close together you might have some crazy crosses that's fine that's really honestly fine by me I don't personally mind if I get a crazy cross but just know that when they are this close they will readily cross pollinate they're not like other plants I like tomatoes or peppers where it's actually very difficult to cross pollinate even close even closely together basil not that case we will have so many different varieties but that's also something that I really find interesting and something that I certainly promote is increasing biodiversity when something crosses with one another you're going to have better genetics the next time around and sure it might not be true to this variety like am i we might not have a true lemon-basil or you might not have a true dwarf Greek basil but we will have maybe a cross of to where the the best genetics from both plants are taken into account and we might have a really super small leafed lemon basil who knows you know it's very cool it's very interesting and so I do love to do that just to kind of see what you get from plants so we'll be saving seeds from here come on in close so you can see what do you look would you look for when it comes to saving basil seed and it's give me a lot of fun so let's get started so the first thing you're going to need is a tub this is going to be your best friend when you're saving seeds of any kind because it just keeps things contained so many times people just want to use a plate or something and trust me seed goes everywhere and while volunteer plants I never complain about it's just if you want to contain the seed definitely something like this is going to be your ticket so you have a couple different you have a couple different examples here so this is the cinnamon basil and this is a this is a really good example of something that's ready to be harvested you see there it's very brittle 'listen so it's very brittle this on the other hand is not ready to be harvested see how green it is see that I don't care you know I don't I don't care how long it's been on the plant if it's not brown yet there's still too much water content just wait be patient here's a good example of something that's ready see these have been a little longer and you can see they do eventually dry out they take a long time but patience is key here you do not want green you don't want anything green because if the seeds have too much water content they're going to mold and we get pictures of mouldy bags all the time and it's something that people just kind of say I got mold but can I still plant the seed no no once you have mold the seeds are done they're gone so it is best to just wait and wait for them to be very dry alright so once you've gotten your bin full of seed heads it is very important to to break them up you have you want to release the seeds from the seed pods now I will say that this is probably one of the most fragrant seed saving videos that you will ever see the smell even from just harvesting the the seed pods it's almost intoxicating it is so Wow I mean it's it's incredible how fragrant it is so we're just gonna crush these up here and and have fun with it just just get in here the thing about basil seed is you really can't damage the seed some of the seeds like beans or peas and things like that get to be careful not to crush them or break them they're very difficult to break when you're when if you if you're rough with them the seeds are so small that they're almost impossible to damage that's why I also really love things like basil because you can I mean you can grip you can grip these and crush them between your hands whatever you can do to break the seed pods up is fine you're not going to do any damage whatsoever to the seeds so I'm gonna get these crushed up and then I'll get back to you when it's finished alright in the final thing you want to do is just take a kitchen sieve like this and dump your seed into the kitchen sieve and then simply shake the kitchen sieve and what this is going to do is it's going to make sure that all of the small seeds will drop through as well as some other fine particles but all of the big flower heads will stay behind re so very simple now that we've gotten the seed down to about you know a couple maybe a tablespoon or so this is just the final little step and it's very simple so since this seat is the heaviest what you want to do is get it all down to one corner and simply thump just like this for about 5-10 seconds and now all you have to do is simply pick off the the soft fluffy stuff right from the top and you'll lose a few seeds you can do this into another you know another bin if you want just I'm getting so many seeds I really don't I really don't mind about the maybe ten or twenty they're going to get lost plus I have still like ten more plans to save seeds from but just continuously do that just keep bumping it and then gathering the seed off the top and that's because the seeds are more dense than the little fluffy flower stop and then what you do is then once you get down to almost nothing all you have to do is just toss the seed gently like this and just give it a gentle breath and the rest of the light stuff should pretty much blow away not hard enough that you blow the CUA mind you just hard enough that the flowers the the little flower bits going all right and you're pretty much left with with the exception of a few tiny little bits and pieces here check this out and you're pretty much left with a hundred percent basil seed with the exception just a few little bits and pieces pretty amazing that's a good couple thousand let's get a couple thousand basil seeds right there so there you go hopefully you all enjoyed hopefully you learned something new I do hope you found this informative and I recommend getting out there and saving your basil seed save all of your seats for that matter it is a great way to save money in the garden it's a great way to give free seed to friends and family and it's also a great way to just get hands-on to the full circle of gardening so not only do you grow the stuff but then you get the seeds so that you can grow it from seed next year it is the full cycle and it really connects you to where your food comes from so I recommend everybody try it it is so much fun it is so easy and if you want to check out our other plate our other videos in our playlist I will post a link to that in the description box below I'm gonna try to get a few more out before the season is done and I do hope that you'll check them out so if you have not yet subscribed please do that if you have not yet give this video a thumbs up also please do that it really helps us out and if you have any comments questions or concerns about anything you saw in this video post them in the description the comments box below I'd be happy to read them whoa jeez had a hard time signing off there as always I'll catch you all later see ya bye [Music] you [Music]

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 56,581

Rating: 4.9410167 out of 5

Keywords: howto, walkthrough, migardener, how to save basil seed, how-to, tutorial, heirloom basil, how to grow basil, migardener.com, seed saving tutorial, basil, growing basil, Premiere_Elements_15, saving seeds

Id: QT3-LH3xiDc

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2017