| The most important thing you MUST do before attempting to save seeds is: Make sure your seeds are NOT hybrids. They will either say hybrid or F-1 on the seed packet if they are hybrid. If they say "heirloom" or "open pollinated" that means they are NOT hybrid. The seeds produced by plants grown from hybrid seeds aren't good for saving.
Lettuce
I'm not much of a salad fan, so I was thrilled to let my lettuce go to seed. That meant I didn't have to eat it. After enough procrastinating on harvesting the lettuce for a salad, I saw it begin to grow taller and planned to let it go to seed. I didn't realize how long it would take. It took an obnoxiously long time. I think it already looked like it was going to seed before I left for Cuba (May 5) but it wasn't until late June that I was able to collect seeds. It's still producing seeds, so I haven't pulled up the plant yet.
The good news if you want to save lettuce seeds is that it is easy to do. Even if you have two different varieties of lettuce planted right next to each other, there is very little cross-pollination, if any. More serious seed savers can take some precautions to make absolutely sure cross-pollination doesn't occur.
A lettuce plant that has gone to seed
The seed heads on the top of the plant
I collected both seeds and "feathers"
Seed to Seed recommends shaking the seed heads into a large grocery bag to harvest the seeds. I just pulled out the seeds with my fingers and placed them in a clean plastic container.
A better seed saver than me might take care to clean his or her seeds to separate the feathery white bits ("feathers") from the actual seeds themselves. I didn't bother. The way I see it, it won't hurt anything if I plant the feathers along with the seeds. Seed to Seed recommends using "a fine mesh screen that will allow the seeds to pass through but will restrict the feathers" to clean the seeds. Lettuce seeds keep well for three years if they are kept in a cool, dark, dry location.
Arugula
When the weather warms up, arugula gets too spicy to eat. I was told that if I left the plants alone, they would go to seed and even re-seed themselves. They did go to seed, but I decided to collect the seeds so that I could re-seed them myself (when the weather is right).
Arugula relies on pollination by insects. If you have different varieties of arugula you want to keep separate, you have to separate the two varieties by 1/2 mile or use a technique like caging to keep your varieties pure. But I didn't have more than one variety, so I didn't have to worry about that.
Saving arugula seeds was easy, but it involved a lot of waiting. After the plant bolts and flowers form, you'll notice little seed pods all up and down the plant. At first these are green, then red, and finally they dry and turn tan. When they finally dry, it's time to collect the seeds.
Arugula that has gone to seed
When each plant dried, I picked the entire plant and then removed each pod of seeds one at a time. It was easy to empty the pods into my little plastic container. Then, I transferred the tiny seeds into a little plastic bag. I'll plant them in the fall when the weather gets cool again.
Some of my arugula seeds
Beans
Many, but not all, beans are the same species: Phaseolus vulgaris. This could spell trouble for a seed saver, because it means that many types of beans can breed with one another and produce viable seeds. However, in most cases, you'll be okay. If you're concerned about keeping varieties of seeds pure, then don't plant different varieties next to each other AND keep an eye on each individual bean. If one bean plant is cross-pollinated with another variety, its beans will NOT show any sign of cross-pollination. But the next generation will. So that's where you have to look to find out if your bean varieties got mixed up by meddling bees or other pollinators.
I planted a number of snap beans (I typically call them green beans but I planted them in green, yellow, and purple) as well as some yellow eye beans I got from a friend. I picked the green beans fresh and ate them, so there are no saved seeds remaining there. I let the yellow eye beans dry on the plant, which is the right thing to do if you want to save seeds, and then I picked them. You can see a few of them in the picture at the top of this post. I immediately planted the majority of the beans that I harvested because I want more beans!
Calendula
Calendula, a flower that grows well as a companion to tomatoes, will not STOP making seeds. I've got several Pacific Beauty calendula plants in my garden, and a few of them really got a jolt of nitrogen from the cover crop (hairy vetch) I planted before planting them, so they are HUGE. I've been harvesting and drying most of the flowers, taking care to leave buds on the plant so that more flowers will form. I feel like I go out there a few times a week with the scissors to harvest and dry more calendula flowers. The dried flowers can be used medicinally in a salve or for tea.
The flowers I don't harvest all go to seed. To me, calendula seeds look like little bugs. Each flower makes several seeds. I wait for the seeds to dry before collecting them. I like to wait until I can grab a seed head and have all of the seeds break off into my hand. I'm sure there's a more efficient way to collect the seeds, but I've been individually putting the seeds in my plastic bag where I am saving them, and then tossing whatever's leftover back into the garden or the compost pile.
A bag of calendula seeds with a seed head on top
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