Seed saving in Seattle: How I collect, dry, and store seeds from my garden

From sweet peas to my last tomatoes, and the one class that taught me how.

Next year's garden, and I didn't buy any of it.

Right now there is a terracotta saucer on my potting bench with next year's garden in it, and a photo box in my office that keeps filling up with seed envelopes. Sweet peas, fava beans, Scarlet runner beans, lupine, mustard greens, marigolds, ashwagandha and even a few tomatoes. I didn't buy any of it. Seed saving in Seattle is easier than most people think, and fall is the time to do it, before the rain gets to the pods.

Everything I know about it, I learned in one class: Seed Saving with Will Bonsall at the School of Traditional Skills. Will has been saving seeds on his homestead in Maine for more than 50 years. The class is about three hours of video and a 58-page guide, and it covers tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, corn, the two-year crops and a lot more. If you want to go deep, that is where I would start. This post is the short version, what I do with the seeds from my own garden.

Seed saving in Seattle starts with the right seeds

Before you save anything, check where your seeds came from. Look at the old packet or your seed order. Open-pollinated and heirloom varieties come back true from saved seed. F1 and hybrid varieties don't. The seeds will grow into something, but probably not the plant you loved. The same goes for a tomato or squash from the farmers market or your CSA box: if you don't know the variety, you don't know what you will get next year.

Keep your seed packets, because they are the easiest way to check. My ashwagandha started from an organic seed packet from Banyan Farm in Oregon, so I know exactly what I planted.

Keep the packet. It tells you whether your saved seeds will come back true.

Then save from your best plants, the healthiest ones that did well in your garden. Every year you do this, your seeds get a little better suited to your own beds and containers.

When to collect seeds in Seattle

The rule is the same for almost all of my fall seeds. Let the pods or flower heads dry on the plant until they are brown and papery, and collect them on a dry day.

Sweet peas: leave a few of the last flowers on the vine and let the pods turn brown. Dry pods rattle when you shake them. Soon after that they twist open on their own, so don't wait too long.

Fava beans: the pods turn black and leathery, and the plant looks like it died. That is exactly what you want. Pick the pods, shell them and keep the biggest, nicest beans for seed.

Scarlet runner beans: same idea. Leave the pods on the vine until they are dry and the beans rattle inside. Fresh out of the pod, the beans are pink and purple and almost too pretty to plant. As they dry, they turn dark, almost black, with red streaks. Bees carry pollen between runner beans, so if you grow two kinds side by side, next year's beans may be a mix.

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  Fresh out of the pod. Almost too pretty to plant. Almost.

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  The same beans, dried. Darker, harder, and ready for the photo box.

Lupine: the fuzzy pods turn brown and then pop, and the seeds land all over the bed. Collect the pods as soon as they turn brown. Lupines cross with each other easily, so next year's colors may surprise you.

Lupine pods pop on their own, so I get to them first.

Mustard greens: let a few plants flower and go to seed. The thin pods turn tan and dry. Cut the whole stalks and shake or rub the pods over a bowl. The seeds are tiny, so do this somewhere you won't lose them.

Marigolds: my whole system is a vase. When the flower heads are completely brown and dry on the plant, I snip them off and drop them into a dry glass vase on the greenhouse shelf. The seeds are the long, thin, dark slivers inside each head.

My entire marigold seed saving system.

Ashwagandha: the seeds sit inside small red berries, each one wrapped in a papery husk. Wait until the husks are dry and the berries are bright red, then pick them, squash the berries, rinse the seeds and let them dry, the same way you do with tomatoes.

The seeds are inside the red berries. The papery husk tells you when they're ready.

Our fall rain is the real challenge here. If the weather turns before your pods are dry, cut the whole stalk and let it finish drying indoors. Pods that sit in the rain will mold, and so will the seeds inside.

And yes, garlic is in my seed saucer too. Garlic you save as whole heads, not seeds, and I have talked about garlic enough this fall to last us both until spring. If you want to plant your own, it is all in when to plant garlic in Seattle.

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Tomatoes: not too late, if you still have some

Tomato seeds are the exception, because they sit in a jelly coat that keeps them from sprouting. You get rid of it with a little fermenting. Squeeze the seeds and juice into a jar with some water and let it sit for a couple of days. Honestly, mine mostly just sat in water for a couple of days, and it still works. It may get cloudy and smell a bit, which is normal. Then rinse the seeds, keep the ones that sink, and spread them out on a paper towel to dry. Write the variety right on the paper towel.

Fermenting, or at least sitting in water for a couple of days. It still works.

The label goes on the paper towel before the seeds do.

Is it too late for this in late October? Only if your tomatoes are gone. If you still have a few on the vine or ripening on the counter, like I do, you can still save the seeds this week.

How I dry them

In summer, I dry seeds in my greenhouse, where it is warm, dry and out of the rain. Whole stalks, like lupine, go into paper bags instead. When the pods pop open, the seeds stay in the bag and not all over the floor.

Whole stalks dry first. The seeds come out later.

Big seeds like beans are dry enough when you can't dent them with your fingernail. Small seeds should snap, not bend. If you're not sure, give them another week. Seeds that go into storage even a little wet will mold, and then all that waiting was for nothing.

How I store and label them

Once the seeds are completely dry, they go into paper seed envelopes, and the envelopes go into a photo box. My boxes are sorted by plant family, and each envelope gets a growing note too, like where it grew best. The box lives inside the house, in my office. Not in the greenhouse and not in the shed, because seeds want cool, dark and dry, and our winters are anything but dry.

Label everything with the plant, the variety and the date. In October you think you will remember. By March, a brown seed is a brown seed.

In October you think you'll remember. By March, a brown seed is a brown seed.

One warning about my seed saucer. Sweet peas and lupine are flowers, and their seeds are not food. Sweet pea seeds look a lot like garden peas, but they are toxic, and so are the seeds of most garden lupines. Label them clearly, store them away from your kitchen seeds, and keep them away from kids and pets.

For fava and runner beans, one extra step: put them in the freezer for a few days before they go into the box. If a bean weevil laid eggs in the beans, the cold takes care of it.

What I'll sow next year

Probably everything on my table again, except the garlic.

Carrots, beets, kale and leeks only make seed in their second year, so they stay in the ground through the winter. That is next year's experiment.

If you still have a few pods or tomatoes left in your garden, go check them this week, before the next rain.

While your seeds dry, the rest of the garden still needs a little attention this month. I put all of it on one page, the free November Garden Checklist: what to protect, what to harvest and how to put your beds and containers to bed, with Zone 8b-9a timing.

Get the free November Garden Checklist

Happy fall gardening. Let me know if you need help, I'm here for you.

Jackie