In wanting to save your own vegetable seeds from your hard-earned garden, that brings up another issue though - how long will these seeds keep? Do seeds of any kind have an expiry date, and if they do, where is the expiry date found? How can a person who is attempting to collect their own seeds know about the expiry dates and how long these same seeds will last? Okay, so maybe we have figured out that seeds have no expiry date, so how do we store them so they will keep? What temperature do these seeds need to flourish and survive? To my understanding, the preserving needs (for lack of a better word) are different for each vegetable, so we must be careful when we are saving seeds.
If you wish to collect your own seeds, this can be accomplished - remember that old adage - 'if at first you don't succeed, be persistent and keep trying and eventually you will get it right'! I think beans, corn, peas and a few other plants in your home vegetable garden would be beneficial to save the seeds, as well as easy on the noted plants in your garden.
Just let the seeds dry on the plant and they should be easy to preserve, right? What about the temperature they must be stored at? Do some research so that you are not feeling that you wasted your time okay? So, how would you collect aubergine seeds? Aubergines are flowers that are mainly self-pollinated, but can be crossed by insects.
They don't appear to go into seed; in fact, usually they just die at the time of the first frost in your area.
So how does a person collect seeds from these beautiful plants that are beneficial to your home vegetable garden? This brings up another issue - what about cross-pollination when you are collecting these same garden seeds - how can this problem be avoided? What harm can this problem do to your seed collecting efforts? What about your broccoli, kale and/or cabbages? It is a well-known fact that these plants won't cross with turnips, or other members of brassica oleraceae family.
To my knowledge, they are mainly self-incompatible - in order to get seed, insects have to carry pollen from one plant to another to pollinate the flowers.
Due to that simple fact, you can't simply grow your broccoli or cabbages for seed in an insect proof cage to avoid crossing, so what do you do? If you are collecting seed, you do want seed purity don't you? To me, that is very beneficial.
These are only a few points to consider if you are willing to collect seeds from your own vegetable garden to use next season.
There are more points to consider - too many to go into here, but think long and hard and ask yourself if it is worth the money you save - it is, if you have the time, the space and lastly, and most importantly, the patience.
However, at this point in my life, seed collecting every year is not at an option.
Have you given any thought to collecting your own garden seeds, and if so, what would this endeavour entail for you as a home vegetable gardener.