Grow
Seed Saving Guide & Tracker
How far apart varieties need to be, whether the seed comes out wet or dry, when it's actually ripe, and how long it keeps — plus a private log of everything you've saved.
My seed saving log
Self-pollinating
The flower fertilizes itself before it opens, so varieties rarely cross. Easiest seed to keep true.
Insect-pollinated
Bees move pollen between plants. Varieties of the same species cross readily — isolate, cage or hand-pollinate.
Wind-pollinated
Pollen travels on the breeze for long distances. The hardest group to keep pure in a small yard.
Wet processing
Seed lives inside juicy flesh. Scoop it out, ferment or rinse the pulp away, then dry hard before storing.
Dry processing
Seed dries on the plant in a pod, husk or head. Let it go brown and brittle, then thresh and winnow the chaff off.
Crop-by-crop reference
Storing what you saved
- •Cool, dry and dark beats everything else. Add the storage temperature (°F) to the humidity (%) — under 100 means good keeping.
- •Seed must be bone dry before it goes in an airtight jar. A dry bean or pepper seed shatters instead of bending.
- •Paper envelopes inside a sealed jar with a silica pack, kept in the fridge, roughly doubles the years listed here.
- •Label every packet the day you jar it: crop, variety, year saved, and how many plants it came from.
- •Never store seed in a hot garage or a sunny windowsill — heat swings kill viability faster than age does.
- •Run a 10-seed paper towel germination test each spring and log the rate so you know how thick to sow.