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saving veg seed
growalottie
Posts: 10
in Fruit & veg
Sorry, silly question time again! Can we save seed from the veg we are growing on the allotment? If so how, I have tried to do a search but there is so much to sift through I got a bit overwhelmed so pointers to any good info on this, or any advice you can give us is appreciated. We are growing mostly salad veg, ie toms lettuce radish, and some carrots, beans, chard, squash, cougettes, parsnips.
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Basically, if it flowers there should be seed (some of the new fancy varieties arent so good) so instead of picking all of these things you just leave them to produce a flower stalk, then wait for the flower to become fruit/seed pod, let it ripen then pick.
The squishy stuff like toms have to be put through a sieve and are a bit messy, squash is messy too, but at lest they are a decent size!
Never done courgettes, but i assume you let one get big like a marrow,then take the seed out as per squash
Beans are easy to save. Carrots and parsnips would take up the ground for two years so no worth it.
_F1 seed will not come true to type.
Courgettes are easy, just slice open and take them out, dry them off, that's it. Ready to go in the ground now (bit late now tho) or next year.
I don't know about the others except salad, you need to let one bolt (run to seed/go in to flower) In regards to tomatoes, if you just let a few drop onto the ground, you'll usually see at least one plant. This happens usually by accident. I'm not sure how you manually harvest them, re, drying out and what not, but I'm certain youtube will have a video on it for you. (that's how I learnt how to harvest courgette seeds)
Thank you all. Will check Carol Klien out and hadn't thought of looking on youtube. Maybe after reading about the bitter courgettes maybe I won't do those. Will squashes go the same way as their flowers are similar?