How to Preserve Vegetable Seeds

Ripe tomato seeds

Saving your own vegetable seeds is a great way to save money on your vegetable garden start up costs each year. It is also a way to keep heirloom plants going. Just make sure that you choose the best of the crop for seed saving.

Things You'll Need

• Paper towels
• Envelopes
• Pen

Instructions

1. Let the plants that don't produce fruit, blossom. This would include carrots and lettuce or other leafy vegetables. After blossoming, the seeds will form. Let them ripen on the plant until they are dry. Cut the seed head off and shake the seeds off into a dry envelope.

2. Allow seed producing plants like beans and peas to keep a few pods on the vine to dry. When it is brittle and dry, remove it and save the seeds in a dry envelope.

3. Pick ripe fruit bearing plants like tomatoes and save the ripe seeds. Place them in a paper towel, fold it up and place in an envelope. Some fruits like peppers and cucumbers and summer squash are usually eaten unripe. Allow these to ripen and then pick out the seeds.

4. Mark each of the envelopes with the date of the next planting. For example, seed saved the summer of 2008 will be marked--packed for spring 2009. List what the seed is and any important characteristics, like extra large orange Roma tomatoes.

5. Store the envelopes in a dry dark area that is pest- and rodent-proof. A simple idea is to place them all in a large manila envelope, seal and mark as vegetable seeds. If you have a digital camera, you can add prints of the kinds of seeds you saved.