Does anyone else here save seeds? I have been making selections of vegetable drops for many year, and wife has begun doing the same with flowers. Alaska has some guys (mostly) who save cabbage seeds trying to develop the largest cabbages they can. Cabbage is too much work for me, and I have no interest in super-large cabbage, but we save onion, parsnip, peppers, tomatoes, and occasionally squash. We try select mostly for earliness and reliability.
I never have, but my gardening has always been Hobby and not Survival. I assume you dry these so they do not form mold. You using a dehydrator? I can't imagine Alaska having enough hot arid days to accomplish that task. Do you harvest the seeds as you eat the food, or are you grabbing a few likely candidates and getting enough for the next year or two from them?
Usually we collect the seeds as we eat the food and dry them at room temperature except for wet seed like tomatoes that should be fermented first. I never put them on the dehydrator, as I am afraid that would reduce germination. I have a seed dryer that is a heavy glass jar with silica gel in the bottom to create an arid atmosphere should it be needed, as for freezing seeds.
Interesting. My dehydrator manual states that the lowest temp of 115' will not kill enzymes, but I just looked and there's nothing in it about drying seeds. I did not know that tomato seeds needed to be fermented.
We do. We have a fabulous tomato that we don't see in seed catalogues. Sadly it didn't produce as much as normal but we kept the seeds. This is a meaty and not very seedy tomato. We put the seeds on a paper towel and later in a tiny specimen jar. We have other seeds from squash and sometimes plants just come up like weeds the following year. Who know carrots could do that? We do eat a lot of food that grows wild. Burdock is not a horrible weed. My sheep love the leaves and the roots make a phenomenal vegetable and broth that has natural magnesium in it that is great.
I'm a new gardener and I'm experimenting. It doesn't qualify as saving seed I suppose, but I'm reserving one big bed for wildflowers. I let them bloom and then come to seed and hopefully drop their seeds before I pull up the dead plant. Maybe they'll come back next spring. I'll still spread new seed in the same bed and just see what happens.
That is allowing the plants to reseed themselves. We do that with lettuce, some mustards, and Japanese chrysanthemums but it doesn't allow for any selections, as everything reseeds thus doing a self-selection for what survives best, not necessarily what looks or tastes the best. Fermenting "wet" seeds like tomatoes and watermelon improves germination, as the seeds are coated with a germination inhibitor to keep them from germinating inside the wet matrix. Fermenting removes the inhibitor and thus improves the germination rate.
I'm a slow leaner. I'll probably never know what you know about gardening. I did do something right this year. I'm getting a steady supply of nice, small and very delicious tomatoes. I staggered the plants' sprouting so that I should be getting tomatoes well into the fall. I'm a tomato addict.
I save tomato seeds by just washing and letting them dry and then placing them in an envelope and labeling. Next year I’ll be trying some new varieties since I’m getting in a rut with the old and might be missing something I haven't tried yet.
I once saved seed and experimented with hybrid tomatoes. It was interesting what variety of tomatoes I would get. One of the best flavored came from one that after 3 years of keeping seed from the best tomatoes, mutated into a double tomato that looks like bull testicles for lack of a better explanation. They looked goofy but sure were strong with flavor and very dark red when ripe. Before the first frost, I tried frying some of the green ones and they were almost toxic they were so strong. I gave 5 six gallon buckets full of green ones to a neighbor that made relish, jelly, and a vinegar-laced concoction that reminded me of my mother's "chow chow." I had to leave the house when my mom made it and also when she opened a jar of it. Anyway, my folks always saved seeds from everything. They always stayed with the old standard varieties They also didn't separate the seeds from fruit. I remember picking apricots and plums and having to save and keep the best ones as picked even though they looked juicy and tempting. They believed the surrounding fruit was the best starter fertilizer. I must say my storing whole tomatoes, allowing them to ferment, and planting the entire fruit the next spring, did produce some amazing tomatoes. It was extra work separating the plants when they sprouted, but sure made nice tomatoes and were consistent year after year when I stayed with old standard varieties.