Chris Izworski

Seed Saving for Beginners

How to save seeds from your garden — and why it matters more than you think

Every tomato you eat contains enough seeds to grow a hundred plants. Every pepper, every bean, every head of lettuce that bolts in July — all of them are quietly producing the raw material for next year’s garden, and the year after that, and the year after that. Most of us throw this material away, or compost it, or don’t think about it at all.

Seed saving is the practice of paying attention to what your plants are already doing. It’s older than writing, older than cities, older than civilization itself. For most of human history, it was simply called “farming.”

I save seeds at Freighter View Farms on the shores of Saginaw Bay, where the growing season is generous but not long, and the wind off the water reminds you that nature is in charge. Here’s how to get started.

The Most Important Rule

You can only save seeds from open-pollinated or heirloom varieties. If you plant a hybrid seed — anything labeled F1 on the packet — the seeds it produces will not grow true to type. You might get something interesting, but you won’t get the same plant. This is the single most important thing to understand before you start.

Heirloom varieties are open-pollinated plants that have been passed down through generations. They’re stabilized, meaning their seeds reliably produce plants like the parent. When you save heirloom seeds, you’re joining a chain of growers that may stretch back a century or more.

Start With the Easy Crops

Some plants make seed saving almost effortless because they pollinate themselves before the flower even opens. These are called self-pollinating crops, and they’re where every beginner should start.

Tomatoes are the gateway. Let a fruit fully ripen — past the eating stage, into the slightly overripe territory. Scoop out the seeds and the gel surrounding them into a jar with a splash of water. Let it ferment for two to three days at room temperature. The fermentation breaks down the gel coating that inhibits germination. Rinse the seeds in a fine mesh strainer, spread them on a plate, and let them dry completely. That’s it. You have tomato seeds that will store for four to six years.

Peppers are even easier. Let a pepper ripen fully on the plant — red, orange, or yellow, depending on the variety. Cut it open, scrape out the seeds, dry them on a plate for a week. Done.

Beans and peas are the simplest of all. Stop picking. Let the pods dry on the vine until they’re brown and papery and the seeds rattle inside. Pick the pods, shell them, and store. Bean seeds stay viable for three to four years.

Lettuce bolts in hot weather, sending up a flower stalk covered in small yellow blooms. Let those blooms mature into fluffy seed heads — they look like tiny dandelions. Shake them into a bag. Separate the chaff by gently blowing on the seeds or dropping them in front of a fan.

Understanding Pollination

Once you move beyond self-pollinating crops, you need to think about cross-pollination. Squash, cucumbers, corn, and most brassicas are pollinated by wind or insects, which means different varieties of the same species can cross with each other. If you grow two types of summer squash side by side, the seeds from either one may produce hybrids next year.

The solution is isolation — either by distance (the specific distance varies by crop) or by time (planting only one variety, or staggering bloom times). This is where seed saving becomes more of a practice and less of a casual activity, and it’s why I recommend starting with the self-pollinators first.

Drying and Storage

Seeds are alive. They’re dormant, but they’re alive, and their two enemies are moisture and heat. A seed that’s properly dried and stored cool will outlast your interest in gardening. A seed that’s stored damp will be dead before spring.

Dry seeds thoroughly — a week on a plate in a well-ventilated room is usually sufficient. You can test dryness by trying to bend a seed. If it snaps, it’s dry. If it bends, give it more time. Store in paper envelopes inside a sealed jar with a small packet of silica gel. Keep the jar in a cool, dark place — a basement shelf, a closet, a refrigerator.

Label everything. You will not remember what variety that unlabeled envelope contains next March. I promise.

Why It Matters

There are practical reasons to save seeds. It saves money. It gives you varieties adapted to your specific soil and climate over time. It frees you from the annual ritual of catalog browsing and seed company dependency.

But the deeper reason is harder to articulate. When you save seeds, you’re participating in something ancient. Every domesticated plant we grow exists because someone, thousands of years ago, looked at a wild plant and decided to save its seeds and try again next year. That chain of intention — plant, select, save, repeat — is the foundation of agriculture, and by extension, civilization.

Holding a handful of seeds you saved from your own garden, from plants you grew in your own soil, is a small act of continuity with all of that. It’s not dramatic. But it’s real.

I write about seed saving, heirloom varieties, and Great Lakes gardening in more detail at Freighter View Farms, where the growing season runs from the last ice on Saginaw Bay to the first hard freeze in October. You can also find seasonal gardening content on my seed saving archive and LinkedIn.

Chris Izworski

Writer, gardener, and technologist in Bay City, Michigan. Writes about AI, Great Lakes living, and what it means to pay attention.