You looking for a simple way to save all your squash seeds in this video I'm
going to show you how simple it is to save your squash seeds
okay for saving your squash seeds you want to again make sure that you are
selecting a mature squash plant because you want the seeds to grow to their full
capacity stores peak so when you're selecting them in your garden you want
to make sure that you know what the mature variety looks like and I would
like to let it get as big as I can as possible so typically what I do and I
recommend you to do is to just pick one plant on the on your squash plant and
just make sure that you let that go because for some types of squash you
want to you want to actually pick it when it's very young because the flavor
just the taste in this in this particular one we're doing this is a
crookneck squash you could also do this for just your green zucchini one like a
black beauty's zucchini there's you can also do the same type for your winter
squashes but this one mainly focuses on the summer squash the the same methods
are used for the winter squash as well so the winter squash you generally don't
pick them until the - they are mature so I have a few just a
few of the crookneck squash but these are also you know any kind of yellow
squash and the zucchini squash you might notice that they that they will have
different differences so this is a young these two are a pretty young squash so
these are perfect for eating and these are more what I would pick if I want to
do a stir-fry or some kind of squash dish I would pick these ones these ones
are still the same crookneck and you can notice that they are a little bit
different this one is is a little bit lighter in yellow color and this one is
a almost like a orange color for that so as you can notice one of them is much
bigger and the color is orange so this is this is the idea one we can still we
could still save some seeds from here but this is what I would if I was
selecting just the ones for the seeds it would be this one right here
on this one - you know I would let this go a little bit more but I've actually
saved some seeds from something that's a little bit similar to this and they
didn't roll it just finds but I'm gonna leave this the way it is because it does
actually mature a little bit this is the one that we're gonna do for this video
so on your particular variety of squash that you have just you want to make sure
that you're selecting the most mature one the other the other improved that I
would make sure is that you are getting open-pollinated or what's called an
heirloom right and that basically means that the plant is going to be the same
plant so the seeds that you get from here is going to be the same exact plant
that this is it's gonna be the children of the the parent plant are gonna be the
same the hybrid variety of cans they they may
not produce the same offspring each each time because of the way that they cross
pollinated so they may have a different color or they may have a different taste
even though they might look the same they could have some different
characteristics that when they were doing the hybrid stage they were
crossing them together to get the best best of both particular plant so always
stick with the heirloom and the whole component so let me show you what we do
to get that to get the seeds out of this all right so I did want to mention too
one of the things that you need that you will need is is some type of knife to
cut this open this makes it easier for getting these seeds out of here
the other thing you want to have is there these envelopes that you could get
fantastic to store the seeds but you can use anything that that will just keep
the seeds you know somewhat dry and some something that's I prefer something
that's out of the light so that's why I like it something a bit darker I don't
usually like like the clear plastic ziplock so the little small ones I mean
they're fine but you still have to keep them on like this I know that you have a
light and it's still breathable so I that's why I like these ones in there
it's so cheap I bought a box around and probably do save a lot of seeds so what
you want to do is to just cut the ends off
I see this is gonna go a lot of the seeds are gonna be down this and so so
what I do is I can't open half of it like this I don't go all the way through
just be careful if you got a night there I want to be able to not cut all the
seeds in here so I kind of sliced this in half and then I go around I do the
same thing to the other side and the reason that you do this is that it's
going to make sure you don't slice during the scenes now if you do that's
okay that's why there's so many seeds want to say so as you can see that the
open cavity is open another thing you can use is a spoon and when I do is just
kind of scrape all of them there's a lot of seeds in squash seems like most most
rice and squash will have tons of seeds so I'm pretty sure one will do it for
most people if you've seen just the seeds for one parade you don't want to
be plants so make it a good one just to make sure you get a nice big one
so all this for this side too
all right so now that you've got the seeds pretty much extracted out for the
squash seeds I I just try to separate as much of this pulp as I can out of it
it's a little bit easier to do that with the squash seeds as prepared to some
some other plants some of the plants are really hard to separate everything out
but the squash is pretty good cuz they're much bigger seeds and they don't
really have much pain to them so so I just try to get as much of this pulp out
of the way get it all separate out so what I'll do
is I'll fast-forward this so you don't have to watch me do this for like five
minutes
okay so now that you've got it all separated out the next step that I do is
I don't even leave this you know you can use a paper towel if you want or some
type of coffee filter but I just generally I just put right on a piece of
paper because these will just dry right on here
I don't even rinse them off it's just a step that I don't do for - flower seeds
you can if you really want to but these will it be as long as you let these sit
out for a good seven to ten days these take a little bit longer than I than
some of the smaller seeds so I leave these out for about seven to ten days
now I'm not really gonna put any more because I will never use this and
probably five or six years but if you if you obviously need to if you have a
large area that you're planting a lot of these plants then obviously you want to
save as many as you can but this supply right here is more than enough that I
need because I get where these each year so I was probably gonna save next year's
crop for this but I may trade these and that's another thing too for for a seed
saving look for some groups there are some groups out there that will that you
can sign up for and they they like to exchange seeds with other members in
their seed sivir good seats a burro Seed Savers I think is the
I'll post a link up here just to one of the places that I'm a member of I'm
sorry I don't want the name on my head right now
but I've I've done exchanges with with other folks on there and I just wouldn't
offer some of these up and maybe I would make a few packets of this so that
somebody had enough seeds to get started with a few plants and then I would be
able to trade for you know to get something that I was looking for it's a
great way to just meet other people and also learn you know what others are
growing in the area sometimes you might find some really cool varieties of
plants by doing that so I'll post the little I'll post the link to that group
it down in the show notes if you wanted to so at this point this is this is
really what you have to this is all you have to do for this like I said you want
to let these sit out in an area that's gonna get you know some kind of where
they can dry you want it somewhere that it's not moist or humid is it will take
a little bit longer to dry the other thing like I said is you want to have an
envelope and what I always do is at the name and what it is on here and you want
to have the different type of variety that you're having because you know if
you grow in several different plants don't squash and you know which one gave
you want to pull out here and then I also put the date the year on there so
there you have it I will also what I'll also do is I'm
gonna link a link to a playlist right above and that playlist is all of my
other seed saving tips that I have for other vegetables other herbs well if you
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hacks and all that other good stuff up there well thank you for watching I
really appreciate it and I'll see in the next video