 As a beginner gardener you may be intimidated by the thought of saving seed but it is such a easier-than-you-think skill and critically important because it allows you to maintain control of your food source and what you get to plant out each season. We're gonna be talking today about why it's so important, how to identify when the seed is ready to save, as well as how to go about doing it. Yes and I'd like to add in as when I was a beginner gardener I was very intimidated by saving seeds and it probably took me a few years before I ever started doing it but then I realized how easy it is and as far as you getting your free seed pack with that one seed pack you can turn that into dozens or hundreds of seed packs and you don't need another one from us if you learn this basic skill of how to save seeds. So what you're seeing right now is sort of the end stage of the garden. Here in Florida it's mid-April which is kind of the equivalent of the end of the summer in the northern climate so we're past like having tons to eat and we're actually in the more of the seed saving stage and so what I'm really excited about is we have seeds in multiple different stages that we're gonna be able to show you today. So when you are letting things go to seed it's the end of season a lot of people have concerns that they they want to stop it and it's just not part of the natural process. Once things decide to go to seed whether it be from temperature cues daylight as the days start to shorten it cues the plants in like hey we need to reproduce. There's not much we can do to slow that process down and we don't really want to because we need to save some seed. So as we go through this process different plants are gonna bolt or go to seed at different times so identifying when it's time to save that seed is important if you harvest it too early the seed may not be viable and if you wait too long it may do what's called self-seeding which just means sending out a lot of volunteers not the worst thing in the world but not as much in control of how you save those seeds. Either either self-seeding can be wonderful or keeping a little more controlled in order to harvest. Now one quick question with a lot of these plants if they're starting to bolt just a little bit you can be pruning that back to continue flushing out greens right? So it depends on the plant so a lot of our herbs and stuff can take pruning so if we want to buy a little time with some of our basals and such you can prune those back and it will extend your harvest season but certain things like the radish for example or even your mustards when when things bolt and go to seed it completely changes the flavor profile of the plant so you're going to find that they don't taste quite as good they usually tend especially with the leafy greens to get a lot more bitter the leaves get tougher with the root vegetables like radish it's going to make the root which is what we would harvest a lot harder and woodier so it's just not as as appetizing. So once they're starting to bolt it's time to start saving seeds so should we start with this beautiful radish right here? Yeah so when you have a plant that's bolted the first thing you're going to see is not the seeds it's going to be the flowers all of these are going to pollinate themselves you don't have to be concerned about trying to cross pollinate or do anything like that sometimes when you first start searching and googling about seed saving it gets a little bit like next level or extra steps that aren't actually necessary so just letting nature do its thing. At this point these leaves or these flowers are being pollinated by bees and when that happens they will eventually start forming the seed pods which you can see just starting to form along here. Yeah we have the flower well we have the bud then the flower then we have the very small seed just getting started and then the larger seed pods so this is kind of the earlier stage really early stage here right? Yeah this is the very beginning and it kind of does show you as a like a walk through so this is leave it be we are doing nothing with this plant at this point there's no viable seed to save we're going to be looking for nice thick fat seed pods as well as a brown color to the seed pod before we're going to consider saving seed from it. Yeah and before we move on to that actually we have this radish here as well which is which is probably like a week or two behind what would you say from here to here? I'd say at least two weeks. Two weeks so you can see this is in still a little bit more of the bolting stage it's not leggy yet the flowers are just starting to come out and you know I'll still eat it's definitely a much rougher green but for me I'd still be cooking these up and everything but this is definitely on to the seed saving stage. One of the fun things that I always like to do and especially when you're late in season and just trying to get the last of it out of it these flowers are all edible and they make a beautiful fun addition to your salad so they taste just like the plant itself so if you're eating a radish it's going to have a zip like a radish flavor with the kales the same way so it's it's just a fun flavorful addition you can use them as garnish in your salads or on your plate or you can even my daughter will pick like entire flower salads in her palm and just like it's just a fun way to involve the kids in the garden. And if you hear Patrick laughing behind the camera it's all good that's Patrick and Victoria oh there's a lady but lady beetle ladybug yeah they're back there enjoying the garden with us so and I just want to say like how many seeds so in your in your free seed pack you get about 20 is it 50 radish seeds how many seeds do you think you'd get from this one plant so you're probably looking at 500 if not better if you were to allow this fully to mature and this is kind of like garden economics right so we don't have to let all of our our plants go to seed but it is important to save maybe you know an eighth so if you plant out 10 radishes eat eight of them for you believe to to save seed from you always want to leave at least two if not more of plants it allows for better cross pollination you'll get better seed it also allows genetic mixing so that you don't end up with something over time showing up in your plants yeah but that is important to think of you're not having to sacrifice much to be able to save an insane that's sacrificing anything yeah some people could look at it as like well I could have eaten that radish but saving that one radish can turn into 500 radishes for you and your community so I'm incredibly excited about seed saving I mean receiving this pack you know it's called the power of the seed pack because with this one pack you can grow a lot of food but if you get into seed saving we're talking about you being able to start giving packs to people all throughout your community so it's super exciting so let's see let's see some other plants that are in the seed in the seed stage so over here is cilantro and a lot of times we don't connect the dots especially with our herbs as far as fresh herbs and seeds so a lot of people will use coriander that's cilantro seed they're the same plant it's just eating the seed which is ground up or eating the herb which is fresh so this is going to look a little bit different when it bolts or goes to seed so you're going to have not as much leggy growth it's going to stay a little bit more compact they stay kind of in place but the leaves get really frilly I use the leaves as an indicator that there is a change in bolting because sometimes especially when we're new to gardening we may not know if that's like a natural part of it or what not so typically when plants go to seed they're going to change their leaf shape a lot you've got these tiny little leaves here on the radish yeah which is completely different from this one here yes and the same goes here so this is our normal cilantro leaf a little yellow but and then this is what it looks like when it is in seed or in bolting so completely different look to it and the same goes so regardless of where the leaf the the plants seed pods are forming or the shape of those seeds anything in this green stage is not ready yet we need to wait for it to start to turn brown before we're looking at saving seeds yes so and cilantro is in the beneficial insect attractant mix so you'll generally only get one or a couple cilantro seeds but that's the key let that go to seed they're in the beneficial insect attracting mix because they do attract insects so you actually want to let those go to flower and go to seed harvest to them and then next year you can have a lot of cilantro so I want to talk a little bit about saving seeds from the basil and in the basil mix you've got up to five different basils you've got your standard Italian you've got Thai you've got holy basil you've got a lemon basil and then you've got the red ruben and of those which is would you say the hardest they're not all the same for saving seeds right yeah so they're all of these we say it is easy to save seed and it is but there are stuff that's easier to save seed from than not so things like arugula and radish super super easy if you're questioning your abilities start there if you're a little bit more confident or just willing to play and explore and have fun then something like basil is a good like halfway points you're going to be able to save seed it's a little bit more nuanced as far as when you're catching it at just the right save stage if you're wanting to take the seed inside with you and that's an important point just to say in the seed saving guide we have a list and it tells you exactly which seeds are the easiest more middle level and the hardest so you can see which seeds you want to try saving and which not yep so if you're questioning if you're going to be able to pull it off one option is to just let nature take its course I am a I'm a huge believer in a soil seed bank which basically means allowing the plants to self seed so the soil seed bank is basically just allowing the plant to take its natural course so instead of us trying to kind of control the situation and catch it at just the right point and take the seeds inside to save to replant the next year if you're guessing when it's ready just let it go let them flower let them produce their seed pods and let it distribute those seeds as it sees fit yes so the term for that is a self seeding annual and well some some annuals just our self seeding it's like you can't stop it they're gonna keep coming back year after year and that can be an incredible thing so here in Albert's yard he has a plant called Ethiopian kale it's growing everywhere and arugula also a really wonderful self seeding annual so you want that I mean just let these seeds go let them burst and then you'll get to know these plants and then just have spots where they're coming up and you say hey I didn't have to do any work the earth did the seed saving for me and the planting and then you get to harvest yeah I have I have arugula for example that I planted you know three or four years ago in the garden and I don't save the seed from it I just let it do its thing and it moved itself a bed over and I didn't mind where it chose in the bed so I just let the plants that popped up there do its thing and then the ones that were in the walkway I just pulled up an eight and I haven't planted it in three or four years so I guess what a lot when you allow things to self seed it's a little unruly or like not less planned or formal but it's it's way less work and it's just as effective volunteers is another name if you ever hear of that volunteers they've volunteered themselves so basil here we have we have your standard Italian basil which honestly these plants were not super successful with because of the downy mildew but I'd say do you think these will still be able to get seeds out of them so they weren't super successful in that regard but save seeds and next year hopefully they'll be really successful so what do you want to say about the basil so if you're trying to maintain your basil throughout the season let's say it's halfway through your growing season and it starts to bolt pruning can't help we're going to go over how to prune and when to prune and all that in a different video but once you are ready for it to do its thing you would just simply stop pruning out the flowers and at that point it's going to go through its natural evolution now basil is in the list as far as like what's easiest to save and what's not as easy to save the the basil's halfway in there because as it as it's flowering at the top it's also got viable seed at the bottom and it's not as like obviously brown as the thick pods so this is maybe a little bit early but as soon as it gets the lightest yellow to it that means it's already put out at seeds so they're really good volunteers that one's maybe just a touch touch early i don't know that i see any that have opened yet but so they're going to be hard to identify the holy basil is the one that is going to be a really prolific self-seeding annual in a lot of gardens but the genovese basil is one that's easier to actually harvest save and harvest the seeds would you say i would say they probably all are close to the same as far as that it just depends on your climate and everything as to what's going to perform best holy basil comes from more of a warmer climate a little bit more drier the genovese is going to tolerate a little bit cooler temperatures so it just depends on where you are as to what's going to do best which is kind of a beautiful thing about how you send out multiple varieties because out of the five maybe four rocked it in your garden i'm in one dinner and that's okay yeah that's the idea of having five different types of basil in your pack is that some we're going to do well and some aren't and it creates that diversity so that's a little bit about basil and we have to mention the weeds a little bit this here is one of my favorite weeds and this is personally this was gondies favorite vegetable and not only is it wonderful for eating but it produces a lot of seeds this is one of the few ones that actually produces a seed even while the pod is still green and it's got all these black black seeds inside of it so wow just in this one seed pod there's enough there's enough seed right here there's probably a hundred seeds right there enough to start a small purslane garden and you can also eat these seeds the whole plant at this stage purslane is the highest in omega-3 fatty acids out of the plant kingdom so it's really good nutritional healthy fats so there's and there's no purslane in your seed pack but they'll probably be purslane in your garden um so we want to show a little bit of arugula i'll just go ahead and harvest this here is sort of the this is the next stage beyond the radish this is arugula you can see the white flowers on top and with this you can actually see how the pods have gone from that smooth to actually being able to see basically it looks like an outline of the seeds in the pod this is probably a week out from your final stage which is when you're going to be saving it from so the pods are going to start to bulge um and then once they turn brown you're good to go and it's time to start saving seed if we save it at this green stage the seeds may may germinate but it's very likely that none of the seeds are viable at that point so inside of here you can see that the seeds are still green you want to wait till those seeds have gone from green to brown or to dry and whatever color their final stages brown black some are reddish um so again this arugula is about a week off from being brown and ready to harvest this is the next stage that we're looking for and this is like perfect seed saving time frame the pods are brown they're brittle so they break apart easily if we were to do that and the whole stem is at that stage in the very beginning you might have you know three or four that started to turn but the rest are still green so at this point i would say this is perfect seed saving you can even tell if you're uncertain you can always break open a pod and check the seed color and it is a nice it's a nice red color so this is this is ready to go and the seeds are just falling right out just falling right out of the pod so that's looking beautiful so just from a few seed pods of one plant there's more there's more seeds than you get in your pack just from a few pods and we're going to show you now how to process this and how to save them for next year but before doing that i'm just going to scatter these out into the garden and we'll see if we're having more arugula coming back from that probably will it's just that easy here i have some arugula actually i gotta be honest this is actually Ethiopian kale but the seeds are the same you work with them the same most of the brassicas are the same but from the seed pack if you were working with your arugula this would be the exact same way so these were drying these were they could be harvested just like this or they could have been harvested and left to dry for a little while but you can you can hear they're nice and crispy the seeds are actually falling right off into there and so what i'm doing is i'm just going to crush up these pods i'm just trying to crush up real well so that i can get these seeds to pop out of the pods and one thing i'll say is you don't have to get them all they're so abundant and with some of these self seeding ones you can just take this and then just wander around the yard and scan scattered around the yard so for now i'm just going to do that and then at the bottom of this you'll see we've got we've got the pods which are called chaff and then we've got the seeds in there so a shallow bowl is going to be ideal if you want to be like if you want to be winnowing but with this i can just basically take the chaff off the top i kind of think of it like a popcorn if you want to get the kernels and they settle to the bottom and it's all mixed together so i always toss the bowl of popcorn you can toss the seeds to get it to separate yes light from the heavy and shallow trays are going to be key for that so i've just removed most of the chap and now i'm going to actually blow this lighter stuff and there's still a little bit more big stuff so you can see there's still a little more chaff in there that's fine you could easily store it for a year with that chaff but ideally for longer term storage you do want to remove that because it can hold on to moisture and there could be insects now they do have a lot of equipment that you can purchase for something like this you can do screens you can have fans you can have different sieves where they sort out the different size seeds but for most home scale or small scale gardening this will do the trick you don't have to spend the money on anything there you go and imagine how much seeds you get from your one little pack of arugula easily you can be getting this amount of seeds from one arugula plant or one mustard plant so that one plant from that one pack so from this one pack if you save one or two plants you can easily get this amount of seeds this really shows that the absolute value in saving some of your seeds because you can turn your one pack into like dozens hundreds of packs for future years and for years to come this is something that allows you to maintain this gift of the seed pack as long as you choose to there's no outside resources or inputs needed this is something anybody can do and achieve now a lot of people when it comes to seed saving they worry about like getting the exact same variety for future years across pollination separation the good news is as a beginner seed saver you don't have to worry about any of that you might get a slightly different variety next year but you're going to get dill you're going to get radishes you're going to get turnips they're just going to be a little different so you don't have to worry about that the easiest ones to start with if you just want to start with the easy ones are arugula mustard radish turnip dill and cilantro i would say out of this pack those are the easiest ones on the other side of things carrots are very nearly impossible for a beginner gardener it's totally doable but for all intensive purposes i would say just let that one alone and not bother with that quite yet but also too the ones that can be a little tricky are lemon balm oregano and even kale needs some different inputs and cycles and it's just not the easiest to save seed on a beginner level so those are probably the ones where you might not bother focusing this first year maybe reserve a few extra seeds from the pack for the following years planting until you feel a little bit more comfortable moving for things and as far as storage is concerned i already mentioned dry is key key but aside from that you want things to be in general cool and dark as well so you don't there are fancy ways to do this but literally underneath your bed on the top shelf of your closets somewhere that's naturally going to be dark naturally going to be temperature controlled in your home you know a garage not a good place they get super hot garden sheds although it kind of sort of makes sense in your head not a good spot and another thing that's really common is having them in either the fridge or the freezer and while it is temperature controlled and colder does technically extend the shelf life it's also an incredibly humid and moist environment so unless you have those seeds going into a sealed jar completely dried potentially with some sort of like dehumidifier packs or something like that i would not advise that unless you are sure that that container is fully sealed yeah and all of these are going to store for a good year just in your house like like at least said in your pantry or in your you know dresser drawer and most of them will store for a few years so there's really no need to put them into the fridge or the freezer that's really more like seed banking you know keeping stuff for the long term but for next year and the year after it's definitely not needed now if you want more details on this like which ones are the easiest how to store them you know some more tips the seed saving guide is going to have all that information for you and we are incredibly happy and excited to be providing these packs to you it brings us an incredible amount of joy but i think it would bring a lot more joy if next year you didn't need us if next year you uh mostly grew from the seeds you saved and of course if you start to exchange seeds with others in your community you start to use the seed libraries you start to connect with local seed growers you use the facebook group uh to exchange seeds with others you know eventually we would like to not send seeds in the mail at all anymore because you all have just become your own little hubs all over the country so anything last you want to say it's all about building the community and thinking about the future yes that is really the true solution to all this the solution is not which plant it's not the seeds it's the community building your community of people but also your community of plant and animal relatives and that means not just working with the 20 seeds in this pack but eventually starting to explore and expand and try and just experiment and have fun with it and give yourself grace yes so yeah start small this pack is a great way to start small but in years ahead you'll be growing maybe even a couple hundred different plant friends