HOW TO SAVE YOUR SEEDS FOR THE NEXT SEASON
but important activity of saving your
seeds for the next growing season we
will take a look at saving gold seeds
followed by saving cilantro seeds and
then okra seeds and finally saving
amaranth seeds so let's start with gourd
seeds so depending on the temperatures
in your area gourd plants generally die
by about end of summer maybe the
beginning of winter and then what you do
is you just open up the goods once they
have dried now you can leave a few goats
to dry on the plant and that way you can
use them to harvest their seeds
and then what you do is just remove the
seeds they come right out just create an
opening at the end of the gourd and then
just shake the goat a little bit and the
seeds come right out and as you can see
here this is a very important activity
at the end of your growing season
especially when you're growing heirloom
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now remember that you cannot save seeds
from hybrid plants but plants which are
heirloom plants like the one you are
seeing right now are plants that you can
propagate by saving your seeds it's very
important that you save seeds for some
plants now you cannot do it for all your
plants but I would recommend that if
you're using organic heirloom seeds to
grow your plants you should be saving
your seeds for the next season now let's
look at cilantro seeds we covered this
in our monthly video as well but you
leave some cilantro to flower to bolt
and go into seeds like these and what
you can do is once the seeds become dry
like you're seeing here you just pick
them right off the plant now cilantro is
mostly grown for its leaves so you have
to ensure that you leave some plants
just so that they can produce seeds now
cilantro seeds are also used as a spice
it's called coriander when used as a
spice so some people do grew it for the
seeds as well but if you like me mostly
growing them for the greens you should
save your seeds every season
and here's what it looks like
okra now let's look at how to save okra
seeds we grew this okra variety called
the number giant okra and this is a
heirloom variety produces great pods and
instead of buying seeds every year what
I thought was I just go ahead and save
the seeds from this plant so as you can
see here when the pod dries you can
leave a few pods to just dry on the
plant as soon as the pod dies or it
becomes dry and brown in color you can
just harvest the pod and then you can
dry it for a couple of additional days
in the Sun I want to come and keeping it
in direct Sun but at least in partial
Sun so that it becomes dry but even
otherwise you cannot go wrong even if
you just harvest your pour from the
plant you will get a pod which is ready
for seed harvest now what I recommend is
you just take a knife and just cover
around along the edge and that will open
up the pod don't go too deep you might
end up damaging the seeds
once the seeds are out I recommend that
you just put it in a plastic bag you get
these plastic bags that you can see here
on your screen you can buy these at
Amazon I will provide a link to this
product in the video description below
and these are very handy for storing
seeds they're small packets the in fact
come in various sizes small as well as
large and you can store seeds very
easily in them they seal so that there's
no moisture that goes into them when you
store the seeds and once you've
collected all your seeds for your
vegetables just make sure that you label
them correctly this is the okra number
giant variety and store it in a cool and
dark place you do not want your seeds to
be exposed to sunlight or moisture now
let's take a look at saving amber and
seeds now amaranth is another plant that
is grown for seeds as well in fact when
I posted my amaranth video a lot of you
had asked me how to save the seeds and
as you can see here the flower of the
amaranth plant is the one that actually
produces the seeds you can see here tiny
seeds already started developing in
these flowers and as you can see here
the flowers do have a lot of seeds
inside them so the way you harvest the
seeds is just take a large aluminum tray
or a large container and then place your
harvest on it and then shake the plants
vigorously so that the seeds fall out of
the flowers now you can do this at any
stage of the plant but the longer you
wait the more seeds you will get and
then you just blow away the seeds husk
just slightly blow towards the seeds and
what happens is that the husk just flies
out and what you're left with is a nice
good quality amaranth seeds that you can
conveniently store in your seed packets
so as you can see here these are a lot
of seeds will give you a lot of amaranth
plants and this is how it looks like in
the seed packet and a little bit of husk
is okay I just recommend that you remove
as much husk as you can but it should be
okay if you store a few husk along with
your amaranth seeds so there we have it
folks
that was our episode on saving your
seeds from your vegetable garden I hope
you liked this episode and I hope you
start saving your seeds at least from
the next season we'll see you again soon
happy gardening
