Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán Master Gardener’s Guide to Storing Seeds for Next Season’s Harvest As a gardener, there’s something deeply rewarding about harvesting seeds from your own garden and using them to grow next year’s crop. Not only does it save money—avoiding those $1.50 to $7 per packet costs—but it also allows you to preserve the unique characteristics of the plants you love. Whether you’re saving seeds from cherished heirloom tomatoes, vibrant nasturtiums, or your favorite melons, proper seed storage is key to ensuring they remain viable for the next growing season. Here's how to do it right. 1. Start with the Right Seeds When choosing seeds, opt for heirloom or open-pollinated varieties. These types of seeds will produce plants true to type, meaning the plants you grow next year will be just like the ones you enjoyed this season. Hybrid seeds, while intriguing, may not yield the same results as the parent plant, leading to surprises in your garden. While
Cukes Ready for Pickling
The wildlife ate just about all my seedlings this year, and I wasn't prepared for that. Plus, the feral cats used my prepared beds for cat litter boxes, so I had to prepare new beds for food and use those cat-litter beds for wildflowers this year. It worked out. I'll be more prepared next year.
This year so far, we have numerous cucumber plants and two rogue volunteer tomato plants. Both are producing, but we don't know what they're producing yet. They are definitely two different tomatoes, but I think they're both grape tomatoes. We'll see.
We weren't sure the cucumbers were getting pollinated, as they were slow to grow their fruits, but we're seeing progress now. Most of the plants are producing larger varieties, about eight inches long and seven inches in circumference. The photo above says it all. Still they're good enough to make some bread-and-butter pickles, and that's what I did yesterday. I didn't take photos of the results, but I will for the next post.
I have two recipes. Inspired Taste offers the first recipe, and it's the one I used for the first batch. They didn't specify a type of vinegar for that recipe, so I used Bragg's organic apple cider recipe, and it was tasty. I'm also not a fan of the spices they suggested, as it's difficult to pull pickles from a jar without something coming attached, like a whole clove.
I'm not a fan of sugar, so I'm going to try another fridge recipe without the sugar from Live Eat Learn. Not sure how it will taste, but I'm willing to try. I mean, our cukes are so large and they're almost a pound per cuke, so we'll have plenty to experiment with.
Do you have a favorite pickling recipe? Can you share? Thanks!
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