MOSES LAKE — Cold weather is on its way, and the next few days might be the last opportunity of the year to save some of your favorite vegetables to grow again next season.
Seed saving is a popular practice for gardeners wanting to repeat some of their favorite, or best-producing, plants in the garden again next spring.
Mark Amara, a member of the Washington State University Master Gardener program in Grant and Adams counties, discussed on Thursday some tips for storing vegetable seeds you have collected from your favorite plants.
“Most seeds can be saved,” Amara said. Gardeners “can take the seeds that they’ve collected off any vegetable plants.”
The majority of vegetable seeds can be categorized as dry seeds, he said. These can be stored in a cool, dry place after letting the seeds dry out completely. About 95 percent of vegetable seeds are in this category.
Seeds from vegetables such as tomatoes, cucumbers or squash are considered wet seeds because of their condition inside the plants. These seeds involve a different approach for preparing them for storage.
The process starts by placing the seeds in a glass container and covering them with water for a few days.
“This ensures that the seeds that are diseased usually float to the surface, and you wait a couple of days until there’s kind of a mold that forms over the top,” Amara said. “You rinse that material off, collect the seeds from underneath from the bottom of the pile, rinse them off and let them air dry.”
Once dried, you can scrape off any scum that may have collected on the seeds and then store them just as you would dry seeds, in a cool, dry place, he said.
Some vegetables, including potatoes, onions, garlic and leeks, can be stored for next season themselves, rather than the seeds. Ensuring these vegetables are stored in a cool, dry place is key to preventing them from getting moldy, Amara said. Preferably, he said, you would not keep them in a cupboard or a main part of the house because that would be too warm for the vegetables. A shed, barn, or garage that won’t get down to freezing temperatures works well.
Keep seeds from your best-growing plants, Amara said.
“If you had a problem with some of your plants in the past, or they were diseased, you want to get rid of the worst and keep the best,” he explained.
The Ephrata Public Library has a seed library that is maintained by the Master Gardeners and library staff. People can come and borrow seeds at the beginning of the growing season, propagate their own plants, and return seeds in the fall.
“It’s a way for people to try new seeds and collect some at the end of the season and return them to keep the process going,” Amara said.
Seed saving offers a great way to make sure those tasty items you mastered in your garden this season can return next spring.
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October 24, 2020 at 03:00PM
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