do you want to know on how to save seeds for your cucumbers in this video, I'm
going to show you how simple it is to save your cucumber seeds
let's get started on saving some cucumber seeds for you one of the things
that you have to do is to make sure that the cucumber plants are actually ready
to save your seeds depending on what type of cucumbers you have you may have
some pickled cucumbers which they're the really smaller ones those are the ones
that they're they grow you know really small there's also slicing hue cumbers
where they grow a little bit larger there's you know kind of stuff in
between that they have very different degrees of it so it may be different for
each one as far as what you when you add the best time to actually pick them is
but one thing that you want to have in common is you want to make sure that
they are mature so on this particular plant this is a national pickling a
national cucumber brand so this one these ones are really the small their
ideal size is the small one so the mature ones is gonna be really large
this is ideal for picking this off this is one that I did specifically save for
seeds so what I suggest to do is to is to you you want to keep picking them so
they're the right size for your cucumbers that you actually eat but it
is always nice to have at least one plant that you don't pick any particular
cucumbers off of and you just leave it just for the seeds maybe one or two just
in case one of them goes a little rotten or something but you want to have at
least one that you're picking that you that you want to save just for doing the
seeds some people like to do this at the beginning of the season that way they're
you you're kind of guaranteed that you're gonna have it some people kind of
wait to the end on this particular plant for this one I just wanted to at least
show you one of the plants and I'm actually gonna use for this to show you
the seeds so I leave this on and this is perfect for picking for the seeds so I
just always I do is I'm just gonna take this guy off right here and this is
definitely ready for seeds the next step we're gonna actually show you I'll show
you in the kitchen inside so that you can see exactly on how I do it
but just so you know this is this is the color that you're sort of looking for
and it's very large this is larger than they normally would come so this is
perfect for the seeds all right so now that you've actually selected deep
the best possible cucumber that you can out there or is that you want to make
sure you have a an open pollinated or an heirloom variety cucumber ensures that
you're gonna get the same type of plant each and every time that you plant it so
every seed every offspring of it will be the same as its parent there are
different types of cucumbers there are like hybrid versions of cucumbers and if
you've saved the seeds from that you may not get the exact cucumber that you want
that you they grew the original parafilm and that's because those are across bred
and sometimes the offspring or the the seeds from the those particular types of
varieties well exhibit the the attributes of the their different
parents so that might not necessarily be the same you can still grow them you
know I don't generally don't save the the hybrid ones because you just never
know what you're gonna get when you plant them I prefer to always have the
open pollinated or ALM seeds so this particular variety is a national
pickling cucumber and these generally are very you know you don't want them to
get this large there you actually pick them when they're much smaller but
obviously when we're saving the seeds we've got to make sure that we get the
mature one for this but this is perfect for forgetting the seeds so let me show
you exactly what what I do to extract the scenes from there alright so one of
the things that you're gonna need your you should gather is is just a knife and
a spoon is also helpful the other thing that that you want to do at the it's
kind of at the last step of it is you just want to have some place to store in
your season I love these these particular envelopes there are basic
coin sorting envelopes I think you can find these at the bank or at least I
used to have them at the bank but you can get these online on Amazon I'll I'll
post a link below pretty much you get a whole box of these and then this thing
will last you for quite some time and then the other thing that that's helpful
is a colander a bowl that you're basically
placing all the seeds in and I'll show you kind of the step that I use for that
and then also it's recommended to have some paper towels or if the better off
is if you have coffee filters and that will base that will allow you to dry the
seeds at that point once you get to that stage and that will just absorb all the
moisture for it all right so let's see what we do here for when I do for this
cucumber some people will cut off the top and and depending on the variety
they'll just kind of scoop in because they're afraid that they're gonna cut
open the seeds I I don't really do that too much i what i do is that i do slice
it down the very edge of it and then and then i just kind of pry it open if i can
because that will help that will help it so that you just extract the seeds you
know damage that much but honestly I've never found too many seeds that I've
damaged from just doing that but you this is another way you just kind of
slice it down and then what I do is I just scoop out the center and this is
gonna go flying everywhere so just be careful with this so as you can see I
scooped just get most of it out here into the pulp
all right now I find the best way is is just using your hands and try to get as
much of the seeds out of this as possible because you want to break all
this stuff up and I'm going to show you a trick once you break it up I try to
get as most of the seeds I can if I can get rid of this the innards here I do
that as well but you'll see this little method that I
have that's really gets some these seeds really going here so I'll do what I'll
do is I'll speed up this video with the magic of the magic of video editing so
you don't have to see this exact step
okay so as you can see I separated most of the pulp inside there's still a
little bits and everything on here but this next step that I'll do will ensure
that that you will not carry all this stuff in there and this will make it
drying out much easier so what you will need for this is a bowl and I just fill
it up with water and I dump everything in there and I'll show you what it looks
like after I do this little trick okay so I just put everything in in the bowl
and I wanted to show you what the kind of what happens when you do this so
you're gonna get some of the the pulp in here and most of the stuff that you're
gonna want to get off is gonna be floating there's actually some seeds
that are floating and there was a those seeds you actually don't you don't want
to have as well you want to have the ones that are on the bottom so what I do
and what I'll do in this next step and you can see is I'm gonna pour the very
top layer out just in the sink without letting all the stuff on the bottom go
and then I'm going to keep adding water into it until most of the the stuff is
done so I'll show you I'm gonna do that you might need to do this about three or
four times before you get rid of all the pulp in there and to make it a little
bit much easier to clean so I'll show you what it looks like once I do that as
well okay so this is what it looks like most of the stuff has come off of
there's still a little pulp that's in here but it did get rid of a lot of the
stuff that that was kind of floating around and just some seeds that may not
be viable because they're floating so at this stage what you want to do is you
want to strain this out and put it in a corner so just some kind of a type of
colander that you want to do and strain that out and then we're gonna go ahead
and put this on our either the coffee filter or some paper
towels so that we can let it dry okay so as you can see I did strain out the the
seeds and the water and kind of get rid of a little bit more pulp now you mean
still have a little bit that's attached to it and that's okay because what will
happen in this next step it is we're going to put this on the towel and this
is going to need to dry because you cannot one of the things about saving
seeds is that you you must have the seeds must be come pretty much dry there
has to be not very much moisture this is okay if it's just a little bit of
moisture like enough to keep the seed alive but on the outer part of it you
definitely want the sea to be a much drier so this process is is necessary
otherwise what will happen is this seed will rot and you'll get some other
problems with it if you try to grow them just like that all you doing is you're
putting this the seeds on a paper towel the best one is actually the best one to
use is a filter as a coffee filter they don't seem to stick to those sometimes
the seeds will actually stick to the to the paper towel but you can still you
can still get them off as they dry I tend to just space them out so at this
point what you want to do is you want to keep this in a dry area I wouldn't leave
these outside unless you're continually monitoring them but I would I leave it
indoors so that it does dry you want to leave it about seven probably about
seven days and that will ensure that they're drying out to store the other
thing that you will need like I said is your some type of place to put your
seeds in and you want to ensure that you label it so I I always put the the name
of the variety as well as the year that I saved the seeds that will help you if
you have more than type of cucumbers which I do and this
will help keep them separated so I know which one is which so we found this
helpful for you I will have a link right up above and it's actually it's actually
a link for some of the other seed saving tips and I have for other vegetables and
herbs so go ahead and take a look at that let me know what you think of that
particular series also you could please give us a green thumbs up let us know
that we're making great videos for you and if you could also hit this subscribe
button down below that's that little that's a little bell over there hit the
bell see also get notified as well and we also do have a website called garner
thumb comm where we have lots of tips tricks hacks all the other stuff that
you want to read out there for you for your vegetable gardening needs well done
thank you for watching and I hope to see you in the next video