Many gardeners are aspirational when it comes to saving seeds even if there are some good reasons to skip it. If you’re gardening year round, you don’t always have time to let plants go to seed so you can harvest them because they’re taking up too much space. Plus, each plant needs its seeds saved in a different way, and you need the space to actually do it in a way in which you’ll be able to actually identify and use the seeds later.
But with seeds rising in cost in recent years, I’ve become even more motivated to save seeds where I can. While I’m not going to leave the celery long enough to produce seed for me, there are all kinds of plants you can easily save the seeds from without sacrificing space or waiting around a long time.
Most of your summer vegetables are easy to steal seeds from
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For the first year, I produced every single tomato from a seed I saved last year. This has two benefits—obviously, I saved a ton of money on seeds. Each packet of tomato seeds runs me almost $6, plus shipping. But because I saved seeds myself, I just took them from the tomatoes I liked the most, the ones that did the best in my garden. This results in a stronger garden and it’s as easy as putting just one of your tomatoes aside and scooping out the seeds.
The same is true of your tomatillos, peppers, and squash, including those pumpkins. You didn’t want to eat the seeds anyways, so just put one fruit aside and scoop out the seeds.
Some seeds are incredibly simple because the vegetable itself is the seed; we’re talking about peas, string beans, pole or bush beans, soybeans, or garbanzo beans. Take the best looking ones and just set them aside.
Garlic is a reliable crop I tell everyone to grow, but it is so expensive at the garden store—usually around $30 a pound. Instead, just use some of the garlic you harvested in July as your seed for this year. Take your largest cloves, saving the smaller cloves to use in the kitchen.
Perennial foods have the space and time to go to seed
The annual plants above have to make way for new crops each season, but my perennial plants have permanent residency, so letting them go to seed is easier. In fact, as they go to seed, the artichokes, fennel, and asparagus will become their own magnet for pollinators like bees. While I harvest the first few artichokes from each plant, I leave everything else to flower for the bees. As the flower opens, the bright purple choke becomes a place bees like to sleep overnight. Then it will begin to dry out, and what was once purple will become the seeds for next year. Simply cut off the flower, and then once dry, pull out the seeds, which look like tiny quills.
Fennel will first flower, producing bright yellow pollen you can use to dust food with, like chevre. Those flowers open, and eventually become fennel seeds. You can eat fennel seeds raw, but these can also be stored to plant more fennel.
Asparagus, a spring crop, grows up into tall ferns that look like—you guessed it—asparagus ferns. They, too, will eventually grow seeds as you get closer to fall. You can harvest them or simply allow them to fall into the soil as they dry. They’ll result in new plants next year.
Annual flowers and herbs are the trickiest
Some flowers, like sunflowers and nasturtiums, make your life easy. Nasturtiums produce seeds all the time (which are delicious pickled), that can be harvested or left to self-seed. Sunflowers do a lot of the work for you, going to seed over the season. So long as you’re able to save the heads from the squirrels, you can bring them inside to dry, and the seeds come out easily. Poppy heads, if allowed to dry, will become tiny poppy seed-shakers. Just tilt the head upside down, and the seeds will spill out.
The more expensive flowers like zinnias, strawflowers, and daisies take longer. Allowing a few flower heads to stick around long enough to harvest seeds will benefit you, though, if you have the room.
Some herbs, like cilantro, are prone to bolting, which means they’ll go to seed early in the season, and you can harvest the seeds easily. Dill and basil will do so later in the season, but still well before the frost. Unfortunately, most everything else, from sage to oregano, will have to wait for later in the season. Some herbs like rosemary, are perennial and never seem to go to seed and others, like lemon verbena, will take too long to harvest before the frost.