in today's episode we look at a simple
but important activity of saving your
seeds for the next growing season we
will take a look at saving gourd seeds
followed by saving cilantro seeds and
then okra seeds and finally saving
amaranth seeds
so let's start with gourd seeds so
depending on the temperatures in your
area gourd plants generally die by about
end of summer maybe the beginning of
winter and then what you do is you just
open up the gourds once they've dried
now you can leave a few gourds to dry on
the plant and that way you can use them
to harvest their seeds
and then what you do is just remove the
seeds they come right out just create an
opening at the end of the gourd and then
just shake the gourd a little bit and the
seeds come right out and as you can see
here this is a very important activity
at the end of your growing season
especially when you're growing
heirlooms now remember that you cannot save
seeds from hybrid plants but plants
which are heirloom plants like the one
you're seeing right now are plants that
you can propagate by saving your seeds
it's very important that you save seeds
for some plants now you cannot do it for
all your plants but i would recommend
that if you're using organic heirloom
seeds to grow your plants you should be
saving your seeds for the next season
now let's look at cilantro seeds we
covered this in our monthly video as
well but you leave some cilantro to
flower to bolt and go into seeds like
these and what you can do is once the
seeds become dry like you're seeing here
you just pick them right off the plant now
cilantro is mostly grown for its leaves
so you have to ensure that you leave
some plants just so that they can produce
seeds now cilantro seeds are also used
as a spice
it's called coriander when used as a
spice so some people do grow it for the
seeds as well but if you're like me
mostly growing them for the greens you
should save your seeds every season and
here's what it looks like
okra now let's look at how to save okra
seeds we grew this okra variety called
the nombo giant okra and this is a
heirloom variety produces great pods and
instead of buying seeds every year what
i thought was I'll just go ahead and save
the seeds from this plant so as you can
see here when the pod dries you can
leave a few pods to just dry on the
plant as soon as the pod dies or it
becomes dry and brown in color you can
just harvest the pod and then you can
dry it for a couple of additional days
in the sun I wont recommend keeping it
in direct sun but at least in partial
sun so that it becomes dry but even
otherwise you can't go wrong even if you
just harvest your pod from the plant
you will get a pod which is ready for
seed harvest what I recommend is you
just take a knife and just scour
along the edge and that will open up the
pod
don't go too deep you might end up
damaging the seeds
and once the seeds are out i recommend that you
just put in a plastic bag you get these
plastic bags that you can see here on
your screen you can buy these at amazon
i will provide a link to this product in
the video description below and these
are very handy for storing seeds they're
small packets they in fact come in various
sizes small as well as large and you can
store see it very easily in them they
seal so that there's no moisture that
goes into them when you store the seeds
and once you've collected all your seeds
for your vegetables just make sure that
you label them correctly this is the
okra normal giant variety and store it in
a cool and dark place you do not want
your seeds to be exposed to sunlight or
moisture now let's take a look at saving
amaranth seeds now amaranth is another
plant that is grown for seeds as well
in fact when I posted my amaranth video a
lot of here to asked me how to save the
seeds and as you can see here the flower
of the amaranth plant is the one that
actually produces the seeds you can see
here tiny seeds already started
developing in these flowers and as you
can see here the flowers do have a lot
of seeds inside them
so the way you harvest the seeds is just
take a large aluminum tray or a large
container and then place your harvest on
it and then shake the plant vigorously
so that the seeds fall out of the
flowers now you can do this at any stage
of the plant but the longer you wait the
more seeds you will get and then you just
blow away the seeds husk just slightly
blow towards the seeds and what happens
is that the husk just flies out and
what you're left with is a nice good
quality amaranth seeds that you can
conveniently store in your seed packet
so as you can see here these are a lot
of seeds will give you a lot of amaranth
plants and this is how it looks like in
the seed packet and a little bit of
huskies ok i just recommend that you
remove as much husk as you can but it
should be ok if you store a few husks
along with your amaranth seeds
so there we have it folks
that was our episode on saving your
seeds from your vegetable garden I hope
you liked this episode and i hope you
start saving your seeds at least from
the next season we'll see you again soon
happy gardening