Get veg seeds for free!
Now’s the perfect time to collect seeds from your crops. It’s easy and you’ll save £££s on buying seeds next year. Nic Wilson shows how
September is a time of abundance in the vegetable garden, with lots to harvest. But it’s also a time when many of your plants are running out of steam and setting seed. Rather than this being a bad thing, your plants are providing you with next year’s veg seeds – for free! It’s quick and easy to save seed from commonly grown vegetables, such as peas, chard and lettuce. It’s environmentally friendly, and I’ve found saving my own seed benefits wildlife too, attracting birds like goldfinches to our garden to feed on the ripening seed heads – there’s always plenty left for us.
When saving seeds, choose strong, healthy parent plants without any signs of pests or disease. You can also select for desirable traits, for example, saving seeds from tomato plants with particularly prolific or sweet fruits.
Keep it pure and simple
Some vegetables, like squashes and courgettes, are particularly likely to crossfertilise, meaning your saved seed can produce plants that are a hybrid of their parents. You can reduce the chances of cross-pollination by growing only one variety so that pollen is less likely to be transferred between plants of different varieties by insects or the wind.
You can also cover the plants you want to collect seed from with insect-proof mesh and pollinate by hand. If you haven’t done this, don’t worry. Not all vegetables crosspollinate, and even if yours have crossed, they’ll almost certainly still be worth growing – you could get a fantastic new variety!