Every September, some of the most useful seed in Missoula is already in your garden. Saving seeds from open-pollinated plants that thrived in your yard this year costs next to nothing, takes an afternoon, and lets you select, year after year, for plants that do well in your soil, your microclimate, and our short Montana season. Keep varieties from crossing, save from enough plants, and over several seasons a variety can shift toward what works in your own backyard.
Save From the Right Plants
Two rules decide whether seed saving works or disappoints.
First, save from open-pollinated or heirloom varieties, not hybrids. Hybrid seed packets say F1 on them, and seed saved from a hybrid will grow, but the plants segregate into a grab bag of traits from the parent lines, so most will not match what you grew and you cannot predict which way they will go. Open-pollinated varieties come close to true when they have not crossed with another variety, meaning the offspring resemble the parent. If you are not sure what you planted, check the packet or your notes before bothering.
Second, save from your best plants, not your first failures. It is tempting to save seed from the lettuce that bolted first, because that is the one with seed heads in July. But that selects for early bolting, the exact trait you do not want. Mark your best performers, the tomato that ripened earliest, the lettuce that held longest without bolting, the beans that shrugged off the heat, with a piece of yarn when you notice them, and save from several of those rather than a single plant.
The Easy Ones: Beans, Peas, Lettuce
If this is your first year saving seeds, start here, because these crops mostly self-pollinate and their seed needs no processing at all.
Beans and peas: leave pods on the plant until they are brown, dry, and rattling, then shell them out. If frost threatens before the pods dry fully, pull whole plants and hang them somewhere dry to finish. A seed is dry enough to store when a fingernail pressed into it leaves no dent and it cracks or shatters under pressure instead of squashing. If it still dents, give it another week somewhere warm and airy.
Lettuce: a bolted lettuce plant turns into a small dandelion factory, each little fluff carrying a seed. Once the flower heads go feathery, cut the whole stalk into a paper bag and shake. You will get hundreds of seeds and some chaff, and the chaff does not matter for home use.
Dill, cilantro, arugula, and most flowers work the same way: let the seed heads brown on the plant, then bag and shake. This is also a moment to leave a few heads standing, since finches work seed heads hard in fall and the pollinators that carried your squash all summer appreciate a garden that does not get stripped bare in September.
Tomatoes: Worth the Extra Step
Tomato seeds come wrapped in a gel coating that inhibits germination, and the traditional way through it is fermentation, which sounds like a project and is actually three days of benign neglect. It is optional. Some Extension guides simply dry the seeds on a paper towel or screen, but fermenting cleans them more thoroughly and may reduce some seedborne disease.
Squeeze the seeds and pulp from a dead-ripe tomato into a jar, add a splash of water, cover it loosely, and leave it on the counter for two or three days, stirring when you remember. A layer of mold forms on top. That is the process working, dissolving the gel the way it would inside a fallen tomato in nature. Good seeds sink. Pour off the mold, the pulp, and the floating duds, rinse the sinkers in a strainer, and dry them on a ceramic plate or a coffee filter. Paper towel works too, though the seeds stick to it.
Peppers are easier: scrape the seeds out of a fully ripe pepper, one that has turned its final color, and dry them. No fermentation needed.
The Ones to Skip Your First Year
Squash, pumpkins, and cucumbers cross-pollinate enthusiastically. Bees carry pollen freely between squash of the same species, and seed-saving guides suggest anywhere from about 800 feet to half a mile between varieties for pure seed, which in town means your neighbor’s mystery zucchini may now be part of your seed line. Crosses between different squash species are uncommon but possible, MSU Extension notes. The seed is still viable, but what grows from it is a lottery ticket. Fine if you enjoy surprises, frustrating if you wanted the variety you had. Corn and brassicas have their own crossing complications: MSU suggests at least 200 yards between brassica varieties and at least a mile for wind-pollinated corn. There are ways around all of this with isolation and hand pollination, but they are second-season skills.
Also skip anything from a diseased plant. Several tomato and bean diseases ride on seed, and saving them replants the problem.
Missoula also has a seed-saving community worth plugging into, and fall is when it is most active. Hands-on seed-saving classes turn up around town from time to time, local growers sell Montana-grown seed at the markets, and the informal seed swaps that happen around town in late winter run on exactly the envelopes you are filling this month. Seed you saved from a good Missoula garden is currency in those rooms, and some of the varieties that circulate through them have been grown in this valley for years.
One habit that separates the seed savers whose stock improves from those whose stock drifts: save from more than one plant. Seed from a single lettuce or bean plant narrows the genetics each generation. Collecting from several of your best plants of a variety, five to ten for beans and tomatoes if you grow that many, keeps the line vigorous while still selecting for what works in your yard. Cross-pollinated crops need more, and corn needs 50 or more plants to stay healthy.
Dry Hard, Label Everything, Store Cool
Seeds keep based on how dry and cool they are stored, and Montana’s dry air is an advantage here. Spread seeds in a single layer out of direct sun for a week or two until fully dry. Then into paper envelopes, labeled with variety and year immediately, because nobody remembers which envelope was which by February. The envelopes go in a sealed jar or tin somewhere cool, dark, and dry. If you keep the jar in the refrigerator or freezer, make sure the seed is thoroughly dry first and let the jar warm to room temperature before opening it. Done properly, tomato and lettuce seed stays strong for four or five years, beans and peas for three or so, by MSU Extension’s figures, though estimates vary by source.
Next winter, when the catalogs arrive, you will already own seed with a Missoula season behind it, something no catalog sells.
For more on choosing what to save and keeping it viable, see heirloom vs. hybrid seeds for Montana gardens and how to store seeds over winter in Montana.
Sources
- Montana State University Extension, Harvesting and Saving Garden Seeds
- University of Illinois Extension, How to Save Seeds
- University of Vermont Extension, Seed Saving
- Colorado State University Extension, Storing Vegetable and Flower Seeds
- University of California Master Gardener Program, Saving Seed from the Three Sisters and Tomatoes