Saving Vegetable Seeds

If you are a gardener who enjoys starting your plants from seed each year, there is no need to buy your seeds each year. You can save your own seeds for next season's garden and get a frugal head start. You may wonder why you should save your own seeds when they are relatively inexpensive. One of my main reasons is that I like particular varieties of fruits/vegetables. Often the seeds are hard to find or more expensive than the more common varieties.

The easiest seeds to save are pepper, eggplant, or melon seeds. You simply need to remove those from the fruit or vegetable and place in a shallow bowl or spread out to dry. This year we successfully grew tomatoes, peppers, and watermelons from seed we saved last year. Tomato seeds are almost as easy to save. In four easy steps you can have free tomato seeds.

First remove the seeds with all of the pulp/membranes attached from your tomato and place in a small bowl with a little water. Let this soak overnight. This allows you to easily separate the pulp/membrane from the seeds.

The next day dump the water/pulp/seed mixture into a fine strainer.

Run fresh water over the seeds to get rid of the rest of the pulp. You should end up with this.

Now dump the seeds onto a folder paper towel or cloth. Separate the seeds so they are not sticking together and allow them to dry several days. Once they are dry you can put them in a container or plastic baggie to keep them safe until next planting season.

Be sure to label your seeds along the way. They all start to look alike. You may rather have 10 slicing tomato plants instead of 10 grape tomato plants. I had close to a 100% germination rate with the seeds that I saved from last year's tomato plants.