Harvesting Flower Seeds to Save

This article discusses the best kinds of seed to save (hybrid seed or open pollinated seed), how to develop a seed strain of your own through careful seed saving, and describes in step by step detailed directions how to locate, collect or harvest the seeds you want to save. This is part of a series on Basic Seed Saving for Flower Gardeners. You may also be interested in learning why we save seeds in Saving Flower Seeds. Or, if you need directions on how to store the seeds — the best way to keep them until planting time — see How to Save and Store Flower Seeds . If you have concerns about the germination rate of seeds you have saved, you may want to see How to Test Seed Viability. Follow the directions below for deciding which seeds to save, where to find the seeds on the plant, and how to collect the seeds from the plant.

Which Seeds Are Best to Save? Hybrid vs. Open Pollinated Varieties

When selecting the parent plants from which you collect the seed, be sure they are an open pollinated variety. With hybrids, very often the hybrid plant produces seeds that are not viable (will not germinate), or the progeny will be quite different from the parent plant. With open pollinated varieties, the seeds you collect should produce fairly consistent seedlings from generation to generation.

Select and Save Only the Best

As with any harvest, your best seeds come from your best plants. Select the parent plants based on overall health and vigor as well as other characteristics you deem important. For example, you might want to select for a certain color or size bloom, or for a certain plant height or habit, or for demonstrated disease resistance. The more carefully you select the parent plants from year to year, the better your seedlings will be.

Developing a Seed Strain

Repeated selection for a certain trait will increase the uniformity of your seedlings. Eventually, if you are careful to cull out rogue plants and are consistent with your efforts, you will develop a seed strain unique to your garden, adapted to and optimized for your growing conditions, and also with the inherited traits you prefer.

When to Collect the Seeds

Successful seed savers are patient and observant gardeners. Wait for the seeds to mature and dry before you harvest or collect them.

Stop Deadheading! If you are accustomed to dead heading your flowers (regularly removing the faded blooms) either to keep things tidy or to encourage additional blooms, you will need to stop doing that so the plant can develop its seeds.

Finding the Seeds on the Plant

To locate the seeds, look carefully at your flower. The seeds form in the flower’s ovary which is a bulge located at the base of the flower. On a rose, for example, this looks like a miniature apple and is called a rose hip. When ripe, the color changes from green to red.

Typically, once the flower fades and dries and the petals fall off, you will quickly see the now swollen seed pod or capsule. Milk weed plants, for example, have large decorative seed pods that begin green and eventually dry out and crack open to release the seeds with their downy fluff. Poppy plants, another distinctive seed pod, have large rounded pods favored for use in dried arrangements.

When the seeds are ready for harvesting, they may rattle inside the pod or the pod may begin to split open ready to spew the seeds onto the ground. Try to collect the seeds before they drop to the ground and before the pod has begun to break down or rot or deteriorate due to weathering.

On some plants, such as marigolds and zinnias, the flower remains intact while it dries and seeds form at the base of the petals; collect these when the flower begins to shatter, pull it apart gently to reveal the seeds.

Or, you may have a flower such as Gaillardia (pictured) which makes puffy seed balls similar to dandelions. For ease of harvesting, collect the puffs just before they begin to break apart. If you wait too long, the seeds will drift away on the breeze.

Observe Your Flowers

If you observe your flowers carefully ,you will soon learn to see when the seeds are mature and ready to be collected or harvested for saving. I hope these easy directions on how to identify, locate and harvest the seeds from your garden will encourage you to give seed saving a try.

This has been Part II of a three part series on Basic Seed Saving for Flower Gardeners:

Saving Flower Seeds

Harvesting Flower Seeds to Save you are here

How to Save and Store Flower Seeds

All Flower Gardens Articles So Far

copyright 2006 Barbara Martin