Seed Saving

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      This is a sampling of my seeds I saved this year from my garden. Watermelon, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, Horticulture bush beans, Okra, Roma paste tomatoes, and Scarlett Runner lima beans.
      Saving seeds is a sensible thing to do as a gardener. If it wasn't for this custom there wouldn't be any open pollinated heirloom seeds left. Seeds can get costly, so it pays to do this as well. Keeping a few things in mind, as you go through your garden season, can give you what you expect from your own seeds year after year.
     Heirloom seeds and Plants to start with. Heirloom in the seed world means a cultivar  handed down from generation to generation, carefully tended and selected, to being 100 yrs old and older or merely originating  before 1951 just before the hybrid varieties became common. But they must be open pollinated. Open pollinated means just that, pollination open to being pollinated by natural uncontrolled means (wind, insects, animals). I am not an authority on botany so I'll leave it at that.
    Select your fruit by health and size from an open pollinated plant. I just wait until it gets very ripe. In the case of okra, I had a few that I missed cutting so I allowed those to completely mature on the stalk. I noticed that we seem to eat our produce before it is actually ripe. Peppers for example, they should probably be red (or yellow) before they are mature. I wouldn't save a seed from a plant that had any sort of blight or funky problem. An important thing I learned many years ago in my first garden of my own, was in growing winter squash: in the same patch I grew long necked pumpkin, spaghetti squash, and butternut squash. I had a most amazing variety. I didn't save any seeds from those mutants, but I did learn what happens when open pollination isn't managed.
   Save the seeds in different ways by allowing to dry before molding etc. With tomatoes I just opened it up and spread the pulp out onto a paper towel or other absorbent material. Watermelon and winter squash do well the same way. Some people wash them noting that the seeds that float are no good. I accidentally saved summer squash seeds by letting one grow and start to rot on the vine. Consistent observation will keep you from letting the fruit go to far. If it warms up too much in the fall, those seeds will start to sprout again. Corn and beans can be left on the stalk/vine until completely dried.
   Label and Date after you dry your seeds and store them in mason jars in a cool place or even the freezer.

   Vegetables like kale, garlic, onions, and carrots, etc require a bit of space to go to seed. They are perennials, meaning they won't produce a flower until the second year. The flower becomes openly pollinated and forms a seed the next spring. My mom is quite successful in seed saving mustard greens by selecting a few plants in different locations ( all it takes is one dog and one mole and your year's supply's all dug up). I had good luck having a lettuce bed and just letting the lettuce bolt, which actually is an annual. It goes to seed pretty quickly, as well as cilantro.  The seeds came up again the following spring on their own, we call these volunteers. Cherry tomatoes and even regular tomatoes do that too.
    This, on saving seeds, is only a drop in the bucket of what you can do and learn, whether it be for preparedness, hobby, economics, or biodiversity. I just hope I have encouraged you to get started and do it yourself.