SAVE SEEDS

April is an ideal time to collect and save seeds of many edibles. Why spend money on plants when you can grow them for free? Set aside your best-flavoured tomatoes, capsicums, beans, peas and melons to save the seeds from. Seeds from fleshy crops like cucumbers, courgettes, pumpkins, melons and tomatoes store well if you remove the pulp and wash and dry them.

Allow a couple of lettuces to go to seed, then pick the entire flowering stalk head after flowering. Beetroot reliably produces viable seed too, as do celery, parsnips and carrots. All of these set large numbers of seeds.