Saving cucumber seeds ensures you have the same plant for next season. There are many methods you can use to ensure a prosperous garden each year, and saving seeds from heirloom or open-pollinated varietals is a wonderful way to almost always guarantee a plant's vitality. To soak up any moisture, place a silica gel packet in your glass jar and replace it every six months. Remove the seeds and let them ferment in a pail for three days the same as tomato seeds to remove the gel around them. Pumpkins and melons: seeds need to be washed and set aside to dry for a week or so before storage. This post may contain affiliate links. Label and store your saved cucumber seeds in an envelope, breathable cotton bag or a glass jar in a cool, dry place. Harvest the overgrown cucumber and cut it in half lengthwise. Saving your own seeds also helps to preserve genetic diversity, as well as feeding the bees and butterflies with a familiar pollen of yesteryear. Use the scissors, knife or bamboo sticks from your collecting kit to harvest the ripe seeds. To pollinate the flowers you'll harvest for seeds, first use a small brush to collect the pollen from a bagged male cucumber flower. In order to save seeds from cucumbers, you must let them thoroughly ripen on the vine. Put the quarters into a bowl of tepid water, and rub the seeds out with your fingers. You can also keep seeds dry using rice kernels. (By comparison, a cucumber or zucchini must go long past ripeness, ... Mr. Greene advised, save its seed, in case supply is short. It will look bloated and yellow, quite unbecoming, but with a treasure inside, something like this: Step 1 – Harvest the overgrown cucumber and cut it in half lengthwise. Here's how. For successful seed saving, you must assure seed purity. Save Seeds from the Best Plants. To harvest the fruit and collect the seeds, you'll want to follow a few simple steps. Read More. Squeeze or spoon the seed mass into a waterproof container (glass, jar, plastic cup, or deli container). Place the seeds in a bowl, or jar, and cover the seeds with water. Their land and their life’s work is aptly named ForestCreekMeadows. At this point you can safely remove the bags from all your cucumber plantsâjust make sure you keep the female fruit tagged so you remember to harvest it for seed and it doesn't end up in a salad by mistake. Any debris or unviable seeds will again float to the top, making them easy to skim off and discard. Add enough water to equal the volume of the seed mass, and put the container in a warm spot out of direct sunlight. This can take anywhere from 1 to 3 days, and will smell like a gently fermenting cucumber salad. Cucumber seeds take a little more effort. Step 4 – Set the bowl aside and leave it in a warm space – to allow fermentation to begin. The seeds are enclosed in a slippery jelly like sack to keep them from sprouting inside the moist fruit. Furthermore, it is useful to know that cucumbers are both wind and insect pollinated and it just so happens that cucumbers can be hand pollinated when necessary, just like squash and pumpkins. Only harvest mature seeds from the healthiest plants. It’s actually a pretty cool idea. Store dry seeds in a cool garage that is frost-free. If you save seeds from a hybrid variety and replant them, you likely won't get any cucumbers. Ground vines should be planted about three feet apart. Once you learn how to properly save seeds, you can share them freely and spread the knowledge too. Leave them in the water until the pulp separates from each individual seed. Slice your cucumber in half long ways, and scoop out the seeds. Follow on Instagram and sign up for their newsletter for more inspirations on living a sustainable life. By selecting seeds from plants with the best qualities, you can tailor the specific conditions in your garden, allowing for a fruitful harvest for years to come. Most of the time, the result is a … Step 6 – Place seeds on a paper towel or screen until they are thoroughly dry. 6. That includes all the heirlooms. If stored properly, your cucumber seeds will remain viable for 10 years. Read on for tips about collecting seeds from melons. Allow the seeds and pulp to mold for a few days, and then wash off and dry the seeds like above. Stir the mixture daily. They have flowers that are self-pollinating and seeds that require little or no special treatment before storage. The Spruce uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. Hybrid plants are created by cross-breeding select “parent plants” with desirable characteristics. The first step is to choose your best-looking tomatoes. A dark closet in a cooler part of the house or a dry, cool basement are both good spaces to store seeds for a year or two. Once properly dried, seeds can also be sealed in airtight containers and stored in … The same holds true for almost any other trait. Once dry, store the seeds in an air-tight storage bag or a Mason jar and label them for next year's sowing. They will enlarge and turn yellow. As the seeds ferment, the pulp separates from the viable seeds. Place seeds on a paper towel or screen until they are thoroughly dry. And if you harvest and save your own cucumber’s seed, be aware of the fruit’s parentage. Rinse the good seeds a few more times, then strain them and place them on paper towels to dry. Once approximately three days have passed, you'll notice that some of the seeds have begun to sink to the bottom of the container. To harvest a cucumber for seeds, means that it will no longer be small and green. Non-viable seeds will float to the top, the rest will sink. Strain the seeds, helping to remove any remaining viscous seed cover. Remember you should only save seeds from open-pollinated (OP) tomatoes. The time to save cucumber seeds is when the fruit on the plant is ripe. Rinse the good seeds a few more times, then strain them and place them on paper towels to dry. It may sound like extra work but the results can be extremely rewarding and save you money in the process. This can take anywhere from 1 to 3 days, and will smell like a gently fermenting cucumber salad. Copyright © 2020 Rural Sprout on the Seasoned Pro Theme, 10 Attention Grabbing Heirloom Vegetables to Grow This Year, How To Hand Pollinate Tomato Flowers To Triple Fruit Production, Here’s our tutorial for saving tomato seeds. You can save 100+ seeds from a single cucumber ready to grow again next year. Here’s our tutorial for saving tomato seeds so you can try it for yourself. Allow the seeds to completely dry out for a week or longer depending on size. Leave them in the water until the pulp separates from each individual seed. Step 7 – Label and store your saved cucumber seeds in an envelope, breathable cotton bag or a glass jar in a cool, dry place. Happy Gardening – Jim and Mary If you have done your research on open-pollinated varieties and heirlooms well ahead of planting time, you’ll know that hybrids are to be avoided if you would like to save any sort of seeds for the following garden season. Tomatoes, peppers, beans and peas are good choices for seed saving. You want to save seed from the finest fruit, so that next year's plant will have good genes. Herein, lies the difference. You find a chart listing how long seeds last, as well as seed storage tips right here! If stored properly, your cucumber seeds will remain viable for 10 years. Similar to saving tomato seeds, you'll want to set the container aside (uncovered) in a warm spot that ideally maintains a temperature between 70 degrees Fahrenheit and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep the Seeds Dry Using a Silica Gel Packet or Raw Rice It's essential that the seeds remain dry while being stored. Cucumbers, on the other hand, require a … However, some people use this method every year so they don’t have to save seeds or plant a garden. This means that cross pollination can be an issue in a smaller garden, and definitely within an allotment or community garden. It's important to keep an eye on the cucumbers you'll be harvesting throughout the season to ensure they don't look like they're diseased in any way. Scoop the pulp contents into a small bowl or mason jar, then add enough room-temperature water to cover the pulp and seeds, which will help remove their gel coating. Cut the cucumbers lengthwise to expose their seed. Squashes and cucumbers cannot cross pollinate. Re-bag the female blossom until it ripens into a fruitânot only is that a great reward for all your hard work, but the presence of a cucumber assures that your hand-pollination methods worked. Sources of open-pollinated vegetables seeds include Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Seeds of Change, Seed Savers Exchange, and Territorial Seed Company. How to collect and save vegetable seeds: Beans, peas and corn: remove husks and allow seeds to dry out – this may take a couple of weeks, then remove casings and store. If you save seeds from a hybrid, the next generation reverts to the various parents. It is extremely rewarding to plant them year after year, with the same delicious results. It would be nice if it was as simple as scooping them out, washing and drying them off. There are seeds inside, ready to be saved. Saving Seeds for Next Year. Cucumber seeds will last up to 5 years in proper storage – to be safe, plant them and save seeds again as often as possible! To complicate things even further, cucumbers cross-pollinate easily with other cucumber varieties, which can impact the success of future harvests. It all started at a young age with a love for the outdoors, followed by a keen interest in goats, which turned into a love for raising ducks and mangalica pigs on the Plains of Hungary. Some seeds are easier to save than others. If you are looking to expand your garden next year, saving seeds is the most cost-effective action you can take. Since most home growers don't operate large-scale farms with that much available space, isolation for cucumber seed collection requires a few nuanced measures, following by pollination and finally harvesting. Once a day, stir the mixture thoroughly. So, if you’d like to save your garden seeds, plan to keep different varieties of the same family apart, or isolate them during their reproductive cycle. The first step to saving cucumber seeds is to isolate your plant before it fruits. Some cucumber seed packages come with up to 10 seeds in them – an entire cucumber could have as many as 100 seeds! Also, be aware that some seeds can transmit disease. But you won't know this from the seed package. All of your seed saving expertise will be in vain if you try to save hybrid seeds. Mark 1 or 2 early good fruits on each plant to leave for seed, and then pick and eat later fruits. Currently she is homesteading in northern Romania, amidst charming haystacks, with her husband and homeschooled daughter. They should stay on the vines until the vines are dead. You have to wait out the year to see, and even save from year to year, and not many people have the time or space to do this. Professional seed savers recommend separating cucumber varieties by at least half a mile when planting in order to prevent crossing. For example: arugula, cilantro, and lettuce seeds are easy to save because you just let the plant form flowers and go to seed, wait until the seed heads dry, and then harvest the seeds. Melons are members of the cucumber family, and they are open Never save seeds from a diseased plant. Many viruses, including the prevalent mosaic virus, can be seed borne. You can save ten years worth of cucumber seeds, once every ten years! Shake seeds into … Another (more in-depth) way to isolate your cucumber plant involves building a cage to enclose the entire plant. Larger populations will increase the chance that a variety will maintain a higher level of genetic diversity, which is more important for long term seed saving and/or when growers regenerate their seeds often (say every 1-3 years). 5. This puts you at risk of spreading the virus to next year’s plants through this year’s seeds. Every gardener and homesteader knows, or will quickly find out, that cost tops the list of reasons to save their own garden seeds. Before saving cucumber seeds, you'll first need to make sure you are dealing with an open-pollinated or non-hybrid variety, otherwise known as an heirloom. Once the fruit is done, melon and watermelon seeds simply need to be washed, dried and stored for next year. The cucumber must also stay on the vine until it is past an edible stage. Cucumbers and cucumbers too. Step 5 – Strain the seeds, helping to remove any remaining viscous seed cover. Place a tiny bit of warm water in a bucket, then place all of the seeds in there as well. She is an avid organic gardener who can often be found eating nourishing “weeds” and making herbal infusions, just as she can be seen planting native trees to help others around the world to lower their carbon footprints. They need to be pollinated by insects or the wind (or hand-pollinated by the gardener) in order to set fruit. If you only knew how! Once completely dry, your seeds can be stored in envelopes or a glass jar with a clear label specifying the date and variety. The reason you’ll do this is to remove the gel coating that surrounds these types of seeds. Put the harvested seeds into a large bowl, and add an equal amount of water. Take cucumbers, for example. Step 2 – Scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon. To remove the seed, cut into quarters lengthwise, avoiding the core, and pull apart. Once all (or at least the majority of) your seeds have sunk, add additional water to the container to clean them. Cheryl Magyar is a sustainable life designer and environmental freelance writer with more than twenty years experience of living a simple life close to nature. Then, gently place the pollen onto the stigma in the center of the female flower. Since its my first year saving these seeds I will test the unfermented seed to see how it compares with the cleaned seed. They are considered wet seeds. If you’re dealing with plants that have tiny seed-producing flowers such as basil, snip the entire stalk to let the seeds fall naturally into an envelope or container. How to Save Seeds for Next Year Step 3: Don’t Eat Everything! For vertical vines, plant seeds one foot apart. If you suspect that your pepper plant was infected with a disease, whether it be viral or bacterial, don’t save those seeds. If you save seed only from the biggest tomato of the bunch and replant them year after year, you’ll eventually end up with seeds that produce plants on which all the tomatoes are bigger. However, no two fruits or vegetables are alike, so when it comes to saving seeds, each varietal is different. Harvesting unripe seed doesn’t work, and immature seeds never germinate. Once dry, store the seeds in an air-tight storage bag or a Mason jar and label them for next year's sowing. And again: ... Leave some to develop for next year’s seed supply. Though squashes and squashes can. The good news is, a monster zucchini full of mature seeds can still be eaten, cored and stuffed. Even if next year’s crop emerges and turns into a similar looking cucumber, it will not be exactly the same – the original characteristics will have morphed. Allowing the cucumber to then sit for about 2 more weeks before harvesting its seeds will greatly increase the seeds viability. A Couple Points to Consider. 3. This is a good indication that fermentation is occurring, which further rids the seeds of their gel coating and separates poor seeds (the floating seeds) from the viable ones (the sunken seeds). Stir the contents at least once a day. (See : How To Save Heirloom Tomato Seeds) And once all of your vegetable seeds are saved and stored, you will be armed and ready for planting your garden next year – with zero expense! Collecting Seeds from Melons. Once you've identified the female blossoms, you can bag them individually in spun polyester or cotton bags, which will prevent insects from pollinatingâand therefore crossingâthem. You'll notice that the cucumber will be larger than its usual harvest size and will start to soften on the vineâit may also change slightly in color from green to yellowish, another good indication that it's time to harvest. Next season, plant your saved seeds one inch deep. 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