An extract taken from The Floral Dream By Olivia McCord
Seed saving has been a part of human society since we first started farming thousands of years earlier. It was essential to ensure crops would grow the following year. Seed companies and plant breeders have cross-pollinated varieties and collected new seeds that has led to the rise of a plethora of new varieties of flowers that are now available.
But it wasn’t until my son showed an interest in growing sunflowers that I truly realised the joy of seed saving and collecting. The first season we bought a pack of sunflower seeds from the local plant store and carefully sowed them. During the season we picked the best flower and placed a ribbon around its stem, leaving the flower head to go to seed and brown. What I didn’t realise was how many seeds one sunflower head made, so once it was fully dried we carefully dug out all the seeds and stored them. The following year I brought out the seeds that we had stored and we sowed them and waited. He couldn’t believe it when sunflowers grew and now repeats the process each year.
Tips on Seed Saving
1. When choosing what plant to save seed from you want to ensure it is deemed as open-air pollinated rather than a hybrid or F1. Hybrid or F1 seeds have been bred specifically and are unlikely to come back true to their parent plant or might not even produce viable seed.
2. Seed companies have isolation distances or use a type of physical barrier such a bee netting around the plant. This is to stop cross pollination from different varieties. For example if you are growing multiple varieties of zinnia in your garden, unless you physically create a barrier around it bees will pollinate the zinnia with pollen from all different varieties of zinnia. Whilst this is an issue for commercial growers as you will not know what hybrid you might end up growing I think this is the most exciting and delightful part for a home grower to see what characteristics come through. Dahlias are particularly special in this way. No dahlia grown from seed will be true to the parent it comes from. This is how new varieties are made so have a go and see what you can grow.
3. When choosing what to save you will want a strong healthy plant that will pass on good characteristics. I tie a ribbon around the stems of the flowers I like the most whilst they are in full bloom as once they all turn to seed it is very difficult to remember which particular flower you liked.
4. Timing. You want to wait until the flower has dried and turned into a seed head. This is usually when the seed head has turned brown and crunchy. You can gently squeeze it to see if there is any water still in it, but ensure you don’t leave it too long on the plant as the seed will naturally disperse.
5. When you are harvesting, choose a dry day and take clean snips into the garden. Snip the seed head as close to the top as possible leaving as little stem as you can and place it into a clean, dry paper bag, ensuring you only harvest one variety of flower at a time as the seeds may fall out into the bag and you don’t want them mixing.
6. You will want to spread the seed heads out on a tray using a paper towel underneath to absorb any moisture. Place them in a warm, dry location out of the direct sunlight for roughly a week until the seed head is completely dry.
7. Once fully dried you want to separate the seed from the chaff. Chaff is made up of the flower petals, stems, dust and dirt and can make up a lot of the material. You can carefully pick through the seedhead breaking the seed from the cone and extracting it from the chaff. This is a fairly easy process for most seeds.
8. Once I have separated my seed I like to place it into a small paper envelope with the name of the variety and date of harvest clearly written on the front. Then store it in a cool, dry space out of the direct sunlight.