Growing Guides · 9 min read
Seed Saving Without Tears
Which crops will keep their word, which will cross, and how to label things so next-year-you believes you.
Saving seed is mostly paying attention. Some crops keep their word faithfully; others cross with the neighbor's planting and hand you a surprise next year. Both are fine, if you know which one you planted.
The reliable ones
Lettuce, bean, pea, tomato, and pepper self-pollinate. Save them freely: pick the healthiest plant, not the earliest, and let the fruit go well past eating stage. Tomato seed ferments in a jar of water for three days, dries on a plate, and keeps five years if it stays cool and dry.
The crossers
Squash, corn, and the brassicas cross with anything of their kind within a bee's commute. If the neighbors grow squash, your best seed comes from hand-pollinated fruit you tape shut the evening before it opens. Corn needs a block of at least a hundred plants to keep a strain honest; that is why we lend corn seed by the scoop, not the packet.
Labeling so next-year-you believes you
- Paper envelopes, pencil, and the date. Ink fades, plastic sweats.
- Write the year the seed was grown, not saved. They differ by winter.
- One line on the packet: what you did differently. That line is worth more than the seed.
Return seed to the bench in a labeled envelope and it enters the register under your name. Forty-one of the forty-eight strains in this season's register were returned by borrowers.