Gathering and saving your own seed is one of the special satisfactions of gardening. It's not a matter of economics, but more a matter of spirituality, a way of cultivating that feeling of inner rightness and being a beneficial part of the world around you. I know very few gardeners who don't have the urge to collect seed and store it away. Probably the urge dates back to when seed was difficult to get and the failure to successfully gather and store it could lead to a failed harvest with all its dire consequences. Some seeds, like those of the Sunflower, are a harvest in themselves. And nowadays people also save seed solely as a preventative measure, to protect treasured heritage varieties of particular plants that aren't grown commercially in large numbers. If you're interested in being a part of saving Canada's seed heritage, check out the Seeds of Diversity Canada website at http://www.seeds.ca/home.html .
Is the Seed Worth Saving?
Not all seed is suitable for saving. The first question to ask yourself when you're looking at a particular plant and thinking of collecting its seed is whether the plant in question is a hybrid. If it is, there's no point to collecting seed from it; hybrids are cross-bred plants that do not come true from seed. That is, if you do save seed from one, it will produce plants of many different types that may or may not resemble the parent plant. Only the seed from open pollinated (non-hybrid plants) will breed true from seed. The easiest way to find out if a plant is a hybrid or open pollinated is to check the seed package (if you've grown it from seed), or the plant's tag (if you purchased it from a nursery); if the package or tag says "F1 hybrid", you're out of luck. (Many vegetables are F1 hybrids, including almost all corn.) If it says "F2" , then you'll be able to save seed from it.
As the seeds of open pollinated plants produce replicas of their parent plants, gather seeds only from those plants that are robust and disease free.
Avoid Contamination
Many plants will cross-pollinate if conditions allow; that is, the pollen of one plant is transferred to another. Crops that normally cross-pollinate include the cole crops (cabbage, broccoli, mustards, collards, kale, kohlrabi, cauliflower, turnips, radishes, and Brussels sprouts), members of the squash family (summer and winter squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, and melons), and carrots, parsnips, beets, chard, spinach, and corn.
