My goal for this year is to save as many seeds as possible from this year's production. I began vegetable gardening a few years back not to save money but because i enjoyed it. A friend asked me several weeks ago, "Are you actually saving a lot of money by growing your own veggies?". At the time my answer was, "A little bit."
I decided at that moment that was going to be my goal for this year! In the past I would spend a good bit of money on buying rich soil, buying the seeds or plants, and organic natural insecticides. I now have my own compost so I'm hoping that I won't have to buy anymore soil. To stretch the dollar even further, I started saving seeds from the plants to use for next year's harvest.
How do you save the seeds?
If your herbs are seasonal (meaning they don't last all year due to temperature variances), they should flower before they die off. At this point, don't pull up the plant. Wait until the flowers look like they are dying. When the flowers look dead and dry, pick them off. If you pull the dry, dead leaves apart you should be able to find several little seeds inside each flower. If they are really dry all you should have to do is give the flower a shake and the seeds should fall out into your hand. Store them in an envelope or a brown paper lunch bag and label it. The next time spring or fall rolls around you can plant the seeds.
If you plan on saving seeds from produce, simply open the fruit or veggies and take out the seeds. Put the seeds on a paper towel on your counter for a few days to let them dry out. Once completely dried, you can store them as you would the herb seeds. I bought an orange flesh melon (kind of a mix bt a cantaloupe and a honey dew melon) from Whole Foods last year. I scraped the seeds out and saved them. The boys planted them a few weeks ago, and the plants are looking great!
In this picture, the big flower on the right is from my dill plant which is about to die off. If you look closely you can see the brown seeds :)
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