Can I Save My Own Vegetable Seeds?

Saving your own vegetable seeds in order to plant them again the following year (or even later) is a very worthwhile and rewarding activity. It’s something that has been practiced by gardeners and home-growers down through the generations.

Although not every seed or food type will be suitable, reusing vegetable seeds in this manner can lead to great tasting food and hardier, more adaptable crops. 

Heirloom and Hybrid Seeds Explained

You may have noticed vegetable seed varieties being referred to as ‘heirloom’ or ‘hybrid’. The difference between these two types is key to understanding the benefits of saving vegetable seeds. ‘Heirloom’ isn’t just a fancy name; it refers to one of the defining characteristics of these seeds.

Heirloom vegetable seeds have been passed down and shared from generation to generation of farmers and among wider communities. Heirlooms retain the quality and original traits of the plant that the seed was taken from. This is often referred to as being ‘true to seed’.

By contrast, hybrid varieties (often referred to as F1) are essentially ‘modified’: meaning parent plants with different, desirable characteristics have been combined.

This practice has developed as a way of adding important qualities like disease, drought or pest resistance to food crops that might otherwise be susceptible to those things. Other factors include optimising a 'healthy' colour or appearance for shop/supermarket display, as well as more uniform, consistent harvests.

Hybrid varieties are particularly important at the level of commercial food growing, as it takes a lot of the unpredictability and potential pitfalls out of growing food crops at scale. However, the optimisations mentioned above can sometimes come at the expense of taste, with vegetables losing some of their more distinctive qualities in favour of dependability and predictability.

People also argue that the increasing reliance on hybrid varieties has lead to a loss of genetic diversity in our vegetable crops. When less and less is left to chance, vegetable crops don’t have the chance to adapt to local climates naturally and over time. 

When it comes to saving seeds, hybrid varieties are generally not suitable. This is because when you replant the seed from a hybrid, the result can be a plant with wildly different characteristics to the parent plant - and often undesirable ones. If you’re looking to produce a plant with the same qualities, it’s not going to happen with a hybrid. 

What are the Benefits of Saving Vegetable Seeds?

• Seeds may not seem like the most expensive outlay in the field of gardening, but costs can build up in the long run. Saving seeds to use again is a good way of reducing your expenditure. 
• Watching robust, healthy-looking plants grow from seeds that you’ve saved and planted yourself is a very rewarding experience, and one gives you a fuller appreciation of the natural garden life cycle. 
• Food crops grown from heirloom or open-pollinated varieties result in crops that become more and more resilient over time as they adapt to your local climate and growing conditions. In turn this can reduce the amount of time spent on irrigation, fertiliser and plant protection measures.
• Getting involved in seed-saving groups or exchanges is a great way of fostering community and interconnectedness. Many allotment groups have a tradition of seed-swapping, and it’s a great way of discovering vegetable varieties with delicious tastes. 

Seed Packet Storage Tin

View Product

Open Pollinated Seeds

Open-pollinated seeds and heirloom seeds are two descriptors that you’ll hear a lot when it comes to saving seeds, but they’re not completely the same thing. An heirloom variety must be open-pollinated, but not all open-pollinated plants can be heirlooms.

Open-pollinated seeds come from plants that have pollinated naturally: either they are self-pollinating or they’re pollinated by birds, bees, insects etc. What this means is that when you replant the seeds, you will end up with a plant that has the same characteristics and qualities.

Open-pollinated varieties tend to take longer to mature, but they’re popular with gardeners and growers because of their diversity and adaptability.

Cross Pollinated Plants and Seed Saving

Cross-pollination is where pollen from one plant is transferred to another. This can happen via insects, pollinators (like bees) or even the wind. When two plants cross pollinate, the genetic material of both plants mixes and produce a seed with characteristics from both. This resulting mix can be unpredictable, and it’s what you want to avoid if you’re in the business of saving seeds.

Having said that, you can save seeds from cross-pollinating plants: it just requires a bit more care and attention.

Ideally, you should avoid growing more than one variety of the same crop - e.g. stick to growing just one cucumber variety in your garden. Plants in the Cucurbitaceae (or gourd) family are particularly notorious cross-pollinators. Aside from cucumbers, this also includes squash, pumpkins, zucchini and watermelon.

Even when plants are not regarded as cross-pollinators, the process can still occasionally happen: so in general it’s good practice to stick to this principle if you intend to save seeds. 

Other ways of trying to prevent cross-pollination include crop covers, netting or tying paper bags around susceptible plants, and trying to put some distance between potential cross-pollinators in the garden. 

Tips for Saving Seeds

• When choosing the particular plants that you’re going to harvest the seed from, look for plants that are particularly vigorous-looking, that have proven to be particularly hardy or the ones that taste really good. The last option comes with a ‘but’: it’s not always possible for you to harvest the plant for food and save seed at the same time, and often you need to choose one or the other.
• The thinking behind choosing the best plants is poetically simple: if you save and re-use seeds from a hardy, disease-resistant plant, the next year you will also be rewarded with a hardy, disease-resistant crop. 
• You don’t have to save seeds only from your own homegrown produce either. Any time you buy heirloom varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, melons etc from a vegetable market, make sure to save the seeds. These varieties take really well to seed-saving and will reward your efforts in spades.

What are the Best Crops for Beginner Seed Savers?

• broad beans
• lettuce
• peas
• peppers
• tomatoes
• runner beans
• rocket (arugula)

Good Luck!

That should give you a good idea of where to start when it comes to seed-saving. It’s a very rewarding activity and may well give you a whole new appreciation for some foods that you might take for granted. The above examples aren’t the only candidates for seed-saving, but they are good bets for beginners. You can also save seeds from melon, squash, carrots, broccoli, beets and numerous other crops - some of these do involve a fair bit more difficulty, so start with the easier ones and see how you get on.