When we started gardening this year I hadn’t really thought much beyond learning more and what produce we could get out of it. But, as the season continued I started thinking about next year and, being cheap, I started wondering if I could save seeds from this year’s garden instead of buying more. Turning to my good friend Google, I started researching how to save seeds for our more unique garden items.

The first I looked for was Calendula. I’m not sure why I started there exactly, except that there weren’t many seeds in the seed packet. Not only that, but the Calendula seeds had looked really odd and I couldn’t come up with where on the plant they would be. It turns out, as the petals wilt the center is surrounded by seeds. Now, these seeds don’t look like any others you might have seen, or at least not like any I’d ever seen. But, once I knew where to look they were remarkably easy to harvest. Some had dried on the plant, others I dried in the house and then stored the dried seeds in a small plastic bag. (Plastic isn’t ideal, I’d prefer to use small envelopes so as to prevent moisture building, but the coin envelopes just seemed pricey – see, I’m cheap.)

Once I figured out how to harvest Calendula seeds I was excited to see what else I could save. I next looked into radishes and garbanzo beans. These are both rather easy – they have pods which form on the mature plant and the seeds inside the pods are dried and saved for planting. Granted, we didn’t plant radishes for eating (we planned on them flowering to attract pollinators) so all our plants flowered and then formed pods. If you were growing radishes to eat and still wanted to harvest seeds, you’d need to let a couple of plants flower so they form the pods.

Next, I started researching the herbs. These are a bit trickier as their flowers, and therefore seeds, tend to be significantly smaller and not easily harvested right off the plant. From what I’ve read, the best way is to clip a few of the flowering stems and put them in a paper bag (lunch bag size) and hang to dry. The paper bag helps with moisture control, keeps out light, and prevents seeds from being lost as they fall off the drying plant. I’m still on the drying stage with my herbs, so I’m not sure how successful it will be.

With any luck I can harvest seeds from most of my plants this year. I still plan to buy seeds for spring, but hopefully they will be more for back up as well as to increase the variety in our garden.