Seed Saving Tips: Droughty and Soggy Seeds
Interested in saving seeds?
Generally speaking, you either have desiccated seeds or damp seeds. Saving garden plant seeds involves collecting desiccated seeds from mature pods and capsules or fermenting damp seeds to remove the pulp. Equally crucial to having good seed material is drying and storing so that they can germinate for months (or even years).
The following excerpt is from Will Bonsall’s necessary guide to radical, self-sufficient gardening By Will Bonsall. It has been adapted for operate on the Internet.
(Unless otherwise stated, all photos courtesy of Will Bonsall.)
Droughty vs. damp seeds: collecting and storing seeds
Figure 6.12. If moved indoors before a challenging freeze, cucumbers can continue to ripen for several weeks before processing to improve quality.
The most frequently asked question about saving seeds is: How can I tell if my seeds are ripe enough? Very crucial because Immature seeds will not store well or germinate.
We must remember that for our purposes “ripeness” means that the seed embryo is fully developed; the seeds may appear full-size but still be juicy and underdeveloped (leek seeds are an example).
Seed Saving Tips
Often when saving seeds you can’t have your cake and eat it too – you get either seeds or food, not both. However, there are a few exceptions.
For example, zucchinis (cucumbers) and courgettes are eaten in their unripe stage, and those you want to save for seeds must be left to ripen well beyond their suitability as food.
On the other hand, winter squash and pumpkins are eaten when fully ripe anyway, so a pumpkin with seeds is also an edible pumpkin and vice versa (as long as you keep it pristine).
In fact, the quality of pumpkin seeds improves as they are stored in the fruit – this is called post-ripening – so it is best if you do not process all of them during harvest, but remove and save the seeds of each fruit as you operate it.
However, at some point, depending on the variety, seeds may begin to germinate inside the intact fruit.
Working with desiccated seeds
Seeds are sometimes classified according to how they are processed: damp or desiccated. Most of them are dried and processed using a combination of methods called threshing and winnowing. For these seeds, the degree of dryness is a measure of their ripeness.
Devices can be purchased to measure the moisture content of seeds, but for our purposes it is simple to determine by following a basic rule: are the seeds and their surroundings (pod, bract, etc.) crisp and brittle?
Moisture content measurement
For example, do the pods crack rather than bend like leather? Does all the garbage disintegrate into dust and other things that can be blown away? If not, leave the plants until they are fully mature. If rain gets them damp, let them desiccated again.
If a frost is imminent and you’re not sure whether your bean seeds are ready (unlike pea seeds, damp beans can be ruined by a challenging frost), you have a decision to make: Can you cover the plants to protect them from frost, or harvest them even though the pods are a bit leathery?
If you choose the latter option, it’s better to pull out the whole plant, roots and all, rather than harvest the pods. The seeds may be able to draw a little more life force from the parent plant, enough to finish ripening.
Next time, plant earlier or operate a season-extension strategy to avoid such worries.
Management of mature seeds
What about an overdose? Generally speaking, the term “expired” is a meaningless term, much like jumbo shrimp or contemporary art. If the seed is ripe, it’s just ripe and that’s all.
However, there are concerns so that it doesn’t crash to the ground, which is a real problem with brassicas and parsnips, or be eaten by birds, especially composites such as salsify and sunflower.
And if the seed stalks grow so vast that the seeds or pods end up on damp soil, they may either rot or sprout. But the seed itself cannot become “too ripe.”
Avoiding potential problems
I have developed several strategies to avoid the problems mentioned above. When I notice that the brassica seed stalks have reached the stage prone to splitting, I leave them alone until the next morning.
The seeds are then no less ripe, but the pods will become slightly damp overnight and can be handled with little or no loss.
I harvest them by tearing the pods off the stems and placing them in a vast paper bag, or even just cutting off the entire stems or plants if they aren’t too tangled. I leave the bag open to the air until the pods are as desiccated as they were the previous afternoon, and then I start processing them.
When the salsify seeds ripen, I cover the individual heads with pieces of gauze, but only after a long period of pollination. In extreme cases of persistently damp weather I have covered the plants with some kind of canopy, but this is very sporadic; what gets damp will desiccated again.
Working with damp seeds
“Soggy” seed crops, i.e. those that contain seeds in juicy fruits such as tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins and zucchini, require a slightly different approach. For each of these fruits, there are slightly different clues to determining when the seeds have reached maturity.
Tomatoes and Peppers
The tomato should be ripe enough to be eaten, or, better yet, overripe to the point that it can be thrown at a bumbling artist or political opponent. It is very sporadic for a fruit to ripen so much that a seed sprouts within it.
Despite what I said earlier about unripe seeds, tomatoes and peppers are a bit more forgiving. I regularly picked green tomatoes, full-sized and shiny but still green, and ripened them in a shining window when the bud was fully developed.
Similarly, peppers: Ideally, the peppers would turn their ripe color (usually red, but sometimes yellow or chocolate brown) on the plant, but an early frost forced me to pick them green or semi-green and then ripen them indoors, which was a success.
Cucumbers and Zucchini
Figure 6.13. Scrape the insides of the cucumbers into a bucket or other container where the seeds can be fermented. Photo courtesy of Joe Hodgkins.
As for cucurbits, of course, cucumber or pumpkin at the eating stage are useless for seeds. The cuke should be left to become a gloomy yellow-orange blimp, or better yet, brown and mesh like a melon.
And speaking of zucchini, you know those giant, inedible prize winners at the fair? You get a photo.
With zucchini and tomatoes you have a sticky goo made up of amniotic sacs, similar to frog eggs in function and appearance.
You could just lay the whole thing out on a rack or paper towel and it would eventually desiccated, but that would be a huge mistake.
Moisture retention: negative or positive?
You see, this gel is designed to retain moisture, which is very helpful for seeds that need to germinate in a miniature period of time but not for seeds, which may need to be left dormant in the package for several years.
It also provides an ideal substrate for the growth of spores of various diseases, such as fungi causing seedling blight. Hmm! Perhaps it would be a good idea to get rid of these things, but how?
Let the fermentation do the work
It turns out this goo is easily decomposed by a miniature fermentationwhich not only doesn’t damage the seed, but actually leaves the seed coat impregnated with lots of antibiotics and probiotics that actually protect the seed from those bad coots. How simpatico!
Commercially available seeds are usually degelled by exposing the seeds to a hydrochloric acid solution. This sterilizes the seed coat but destroys all the probiotic benefits. The market doesn’t have time to let nature take its course, but maybe you do.
How long does it take for the seeds to ferment to the right point? A few days; some say that traces of mold will appear on the surface, others say that fruit flies will start to notice it; I say when your significant other shouts at you, “Get that stuff out of here!”; this is quite a reliable indicator.
Seed Mix Management
When the mixture reaches the breaking point, take a bowl or cup of ugly glop and place it in a glass jar along with several times its volume of water. (I occasionally grow cuke seeds commercially, in which case I operate 5-gallon plastic buckets, or 18.9 liters.)
Mix the mixture well, breaking up any lumps with your little finger – yes, your hands will smell gross, but that will go away within a few weeks. If you prefer, operate a long-handled spoon.
As it spins in the jar you will notice that some things spin down and others spin up.
Floating seeds
The bottom is mostly plump seeds, with some denser flesh behind them, especially bits of flesh attached to the seeds. The top foam consists mainly of pulpy fibers filled with gas. If there are seeds mixed with the floating shell, either they are attached to some featherlight pulp, or the seeds themselves are not good, filled with buoyant gas; there is no loss there.
Figure 6.14. This bucket of fermented cucumber seeds is stout enough to process.
Especially with cucumbers, I always have a lot of floating seeds; what’s disturbing is that such nice, plump seeds spill out with the scum.
If you need reassurance, save some and desiccated it separately: watch it shrink to empty husks that will blow away with the gust. The plumpness, like a child’s smile, was the result of gas.
Completion of the fermentation process
Don’t be a fanatic with this first decant; be satisfied with pouring out half of the stout slurry. Then repeat this process again and again; each time the dull liquid will become thinner and clearer, and the good seeds will sink faster (previously they were slightly carried away by the thicker muddy water).
When the water is pristine enough to suit you, place the seeds in a strainer and give them a final frosty rinse, then spread them out on a tray or sieve to desiccated.
Storing different types of seeds
Wait a few days to be sure. As with other seeds, it is better to have them too long than too miniature, as long as they are protected from mice. The fluffy tomato seeds will form lumps that can be easily “separated” by rubbing your hands together.
A desiccated film remains on the cucumber seeds, which can be easily peeled off and blown away, but be careful: The tips of the seeds can sting your hands badly if you rub them challenging. The same applies to melons, although they do not require fermentation, like dry-processed pumpkins or peppers.
As with tomatoes and peppers, ripe cucurbit seeds continue to draw their life energy from the placenta. Although the pumpkin fruit may be fully ripe at the time of harvest, the seeds will be even better if you leave them in storage for a few weeks before selecting the seeds.