The Simple Way To Save Seeds From Your Garden This Year
Updated: Sep 4
How To Save Seeds
This article walks through how to save seeds from flowers. Flowers are a great intro to saving seeds for beginners. In order to save many vegetable seeds, light research would need to be done for the best way to do that based on the variety of plant.
For flowers, the process of saving seeds is basically to let the plant dry, pick the seeds, and ensure they are dry before storing long-term.
Why Save Seeds
Saving seeds is a great way to save money in the garden. You can save seeds from many plants, but this post is going to cover marigolds & nasturtium.
In addition to saving money, saving seeds is a perfect way to get seeds to swap with other gardeners. Seeds that are harvested at home will be better suited for your climate the next time you plant them. Meaning, for me here in Colorado, these seeds will grow better next year since they have already grown here.
The seeds I’m sharing in this post require no special tools. Essentially, it’s just wait until they are dry, bring them home, let them sit for a few days to ensure dryness, and then put them into storage. It really is that easy!
How To Save Seeds From Marigolds
For marigold seeds, seed collecting could not be easier. When the flowers dry, you will start to notice them looking dry and shriveled. The marigold seeds should easily pull right out of the flower head.
Dried marigold seeds are very black with a little white. If your marigold seeds are pale white or feel wet, they are not ready and should not be saved.
Here’s a video showing how easy marigold seeds are to save:
How To Save Seeds From Nasturtium
Nasturtium seeds are almost as easy as marigold seeds. Though they can be a little tricky. The seeds will start at the base of the flower and are green. As the mature and dry they turn brown and fall off the flower.
This means that you need to really watch your nasturtium plants for signs of seeds being ready. Check the base of plants daily towards the end of your growing season. You will start seeing seeds. Only collect the brown seeds.
Here is a video showing how to collect nasturtium seeds:
Store-Bought vs Saved Seeds
Saving seeds in the end saves money & also opens doors to trading seeds with others. Buying seeds sometimes allows for more variety in the moment, but you can easily end up with too many seed packets.
When debating if I will save seeds or buy seeds, I ask myself if I want to grow this again or not. If not, then I don't worry about it. If it's something that I enjoyed growing and don't want to spend $2+ on, I will at least save some seeds. For items that I think are unique/special and people may be open to trading (or using to seed larger areas), I will save as many seeds as I can!
How To Save Seeds From Your Garden
Many other seeds, such as zucchini or tomato seeds, can be more complicated to save for different reasons, including cross-pollination and the extra steps some seeds require. Personally, I find some of these seeds too complicated to save, so I focus on saving "easy" seeds such as flowers or herbs.
Storing Saved Seeds
My preference is to put seeds in an envelope and label it with the year I saved them and the plant name. Generally, I do not go into great detail for saved seeds. Utilizing my Excel seed library allows me to gather all the details without having to write or fit it all on a label.
Check out my article on organizing seeds where I share more details about how I store my seeds.
Will You Save Seeds?
Will you save seeds from your garden? Let me know below! If you are wondering how you should label your saved seeds, check out my post on how to read seed packets for inspiration.
I encourage everyone to save a few seeds every year. You don't need to save many from each plant - a few seeds from each plant should do!
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