Saving Vegetable Seeds For Next Season

We all love growing our own food and you can't buy produce like this in the shops but at this time of year autumn fall is usually the time that gardeners across the globe start writing out their seed orders ready for the next growing season but that's a really expensive way of growing your own food and I'm here to tell you there's a much cheaper way in today's episode we're going to be looking at everything to do with seed saving I'm Tony O'Neill and this is UK Here We Grow on this channel we deal with all things gardening beekeeping and poultry keeping if it's your first time here consider hitting the subscribe button and bell icon to be notified every time we put up new content just like this gardeners can be really lazy it's all too easy to open that laptop go to your favorite seed company's website and start clicking those buttons and putting things into the baskets and it's not until you get to that basket to handle for your credit card details do you realize that you've just spent hundreds of pounds or dollars it's all too easy to do that so today I'm gonna show you how to save seed make sure you stay right to the end because not only am I going to show you how to save seed I'm gonna show you when to save seed or what seed to save so let's talk about the seeds in general I find it amazing that something as small as a seed has all that genetic information in it that can grow into a large plant and provide us with nutrient packed dense foods for us to be able to eat isn't nature amazing there are loads of ways to save money by saving your own seed but there are some seed that you shouldn't save take this sungold tomato for instance this is what's known as an f-1 variety now f1 means that it's been inbred by two different parents and they cross pollinate these parents the only issue is even if you collected the seed from this planted them and grew them on you wouldn't get this tomato at the end because the seed isn't viable it will revert back to one of its parents now collecting seed like that can be hit and miss because the parents may have only been selected for the size the flavor or even because of the color of a certain fruit but when you go to grow that you may grow that but then the taste of it may be absolutely disgusting so f1 is a no stick to heritage or standard seeds that are not been f1 hybrid we can collect seed from all sorts of things such as these beans we need to leave them on the plant until they are dry and leathery they usually turn brown like this but if the weather is cold and damp and the seed is not dried you can uproot the entire plant and hang it upside down to dry then collect the seed later simply split the pods and pull out the beans placing them into a tray to dry pods are very easy to collect as you can see here tomatoes cucumbers and other wet vegetables are little harder these are known as wet seed instead with these vegetables you need to scrape them from the fruit and place them into a glass of water after about a week you will see a scum and mildew form on the surface of the glass simply scoop this off and empty the contents into a strainer and wash the seed trying to remove most of the pulp place this onto a piece of cardboard or paper on a plate that is labeled with the seed and leave this to dry completely for a week you can then store this for next year storing potatoes is easy too now a lot of folks are under the impression that you can't store potatoes or been told that you can't store potatoes because of disease now there is no reason why a gardener can't store his own potato seed providing hasn't had any disease such as blight and things like that this year's a fantastic year another thing is well unless you're growing for competition or giant vegetables you need to collect seed round about egg size guys that's a perfect size for your seed potatoes simply place these into a trade with some paper in the bottom cover over with a hessian sack and store them in a cool dark frost free place such shed or garage and they will sit there until spring check them about once every six weeks and any that are going soft or start to get any mold or anything like that discard those so it's always a good idea to grow more than you actually need now if you're growing for competition there's a bit of a different way to do this you want to keep for me if I'm growing Giants I want to keep the biggest potatoes I have because that's where the genetics are okay so once we get that we want to wrap that potato in some newspaper this will help keep out the moisture stop premature sprouting and things like that and again we can store that in a tray cover it over with a hessian piece of material and store exactly as we would for any other potato again checking them every six weeks onions guys are another fantastic crop to save seed form however it's a little different for onions because we can't get them to go to seed in their first year what we have to do with onions is store the onion so now we have this onion we've cut the roots off the tops are going very brown as you can see we look after this end you know until next spring and then we'll replant this onion all this tops can be cut off and providing the onion is okay new roots will grow and new leaves as if the onion is growing again and that will then put out an onion scape and that will produce a seed head which we can collect like any other seed that we've spoken about today this is the reason why and any set if it isn't heat treated will actually go to seed because it's in its second year they are a biannual plant guys okay so we're onions we literally keep them now in a frost free place over winter and then we plant them again in spring collecting the seed the following year so we've collected all our seed what do we do with them how do we store them well we now have all our seed guys and for things like peas and beans glass jars are fantastic make sure they fully dry place all your beans into the jar until it's full and make sure you label your jar so you know exactly what they are you can eat these beans as well but obviously storing these like this means that they are completely dry and they then they can be stored in a dark place on a shelf somewhere nice and cool another way if the seeds are smaller like lettuce envelopes are a fantastic way to store those and again those envelopes can then be put into a tin a box or a sorter something like that in order to save those seeds other ways are plastic bags I'd prefer the glass jar method for most things however you decide to keep your seeds don't forget that you want to keep them in a dark cool place it's no good putting them in a kitchen where it's damp it's no good putting them in somewhere less got direct light you want to be cool and dark and a refrigerator is even a great idea because that prolongs the life as well guys well guys I really hope that this video has given you some insight on how to save money by saving your own seed question of the day how many of you have saved seed this year I'd be really interested to know what you've saved and how you've saved it if you've got any extra tips put them in the comments below so that everybody can learn from your knowledge I'm Tony O'Neill this is UK Here We Grow and remember folks you Reap What You Sow I'll see you in the next one bye bye

Channel: Simplify Gardening

Views: 80,769

Keywords: saving vegetable seeds for next season, vegetable seed saving, save seeds, saving seeds from your garden, saving seeds from vegetables, seed saving tips, Tony O'Neill, UK Here We Grow, seed potatoes, How to save potatoes for seed, seed saving, saving seeds, how to save seeds, organic gardening, heirloom seeds, save seed, tomato seeds, allotment gardening uk, saving cucumber seeds

Id: 3U1VgXU5gHM

Length: 8min 28sec (508 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 28 2018