How To Save Cucumber Heirloom Seeds

Step by Step on How to Save and Store Heirloom Cucumber Seeds:

Heirloom Cucumber Seeds- After being green your cucumbers for seed will turn yellow and then brown. The skin will become hard, almost like a gourd.  Then it's finally ready. You can store the hard brown fruits in a cool place for as long as a several weeks at this stage.  That enables you to wait until all your seed cukes are ready and then process them all at once.

Getting Out the Seed: Cut each cucumber fruit in half, trying not to damage any more seeds than necessary as you do it.  Spoon out the seed together with the surrounding pulp into a nonmetal  container (glass or crockery).  Let seeds and pulp sit and ferment at room temperature, stirring twice a day.  After 2 to 4 days the jellylike pulp that had been clinging around the seeds will change into a think liquid that lets them go.  It's ready for the next step when most of the seeds are at the bottom of the dish and the liquid above is pretty much clear.  Don't worry about the seed that are still floating.  They are doing that because they're hollow, no good and wouldn't grow any way.  Skim and dump those seeds.  Don't get in a rush and skip this fermenting process because it destroys seed-born disease--a very important step in saving cucumber seeds.

Rising and Drying Cucumber seeds:  Finish the seeds by filling your container with cool water, letting the seeds setting to the bottom and pouring off what's left.  Do that several times.  Now spread out the seeds to dry, no more than 1 layer deep, in a place like a sunny window.  Don't use artificial heat like a oven or a heat lamp, that could hurt or kill them.  Figure on at least 2 days for them to dry, and then you can store.

Storing the Heirloom Seeds:  Label them with the year, their variety and the characteristics you selected them for.  It's a long time until next spring or the spring after that, and you're may to forget if you don't record it.  Store seed in a cold, dry place.  Don't panic if they freeze.  If the seeds is dry, freezing not only won't hurt but may even improve the crop.  Our Cucumber Heirloom Seeds can easily germinate for 10 years or more.

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How To Save Heirloom Carrot Seeds

How to Save Heirloom Carrot Seeds:

Carrots are insect-pollinated biennials that will cross with other varieties and with wild carrots.  So it is very hard to get pure seed where wild carrots (Queens Anne's Lace, etc) grow or within a mile of other flowering carrots.  

Crossing with wild carrots will results in whitish, fiber, non-sweet roots. You have to over winter your prospective parents.  Choose your best plants and mark them.  In the fall break or twist off the tops leave only about a inch of green stem.  Store those buried under the ground deep enough so they won't freeze.  Mark your spot.  In the spring set them out in rows, with the crowns level with the ground, and off they'll go again. 

The second year they become inedible because they send all the food out of the root in the seed stalk, and the root gets woody.  The seeds don't come or ripen all at once.  First they come on the main stem and then on the branches.  Wait until the greenish color disappears from the seeds and the branches they hang from.  then cut the stalks, air -dry further, rub out the seed by hand and screen.  Sift or winnow there, rub out the seed by hand and screen.  Sift or winnow out the sticks, etc. A dozen carrot plants would probably give enough seed for your family.  

Our Heirloom Seeds will stay healthy and germinate at least 7 to 10 years when stored correctly.

We invite you to order our Non-GMO Heirloom Seeds TODAY.  Get your 15,000+ Heirloom Seeds Package specifically designed for those Preppers, Survivalist, Garden Enthusiast and of course people like us i.e. your down to earth Homesteaders. 

How To Save Cabbage Heirloom Seeds

How to Save Cabbage Heirloom Seeds

Cabbage is an insect-pollinated biennial that will cross pollinate with other varieties, unless you have them at least 100 years distant.  So if you're neighbor is growing GMO or Hybrid Cabbage beware you might be getting your Cabbage Heirloom Seeds contaminated thru cross pollination. 

• Choose the best plants in terms of their size.  You want to save some of your biggest yielding Cabbage plants so that you can save their seeds.
• Mark them, and carefully store them alive through the winter in a container of soil or laid close together on a shelf in your root cellar.  
• Some plants are self-sterile, so grow about 6 of them.  Plants must be chilled enough to break dormancy before they'll grow the seed stalk.  Set out the next spring.  The branched, flowering seed stalks grows up the middle of the head after it splits wide open.  
• It helps to speeds up the process by making a cut 1 to 2 inches deep x on the top of the cabbage head to start the splitting  Support the seed stalks (they grown as tall as 5 ft.).  
• Cut stalk when pods are changing color.  (they don't all get ripe at once, which makes it a tough call).  
• Dry on paper or cloth. Strip pods, put into a bag, and beat.   

Following the steps above will ensure that your Heirloom Cabbage seeds will be viable 5 years or more.

We invite you to order our Non-GMO Heirloom Seeds TODAY.  Get your 15,000+ Heirloom Seeds Package specifically designed for those Preppers, Survivalist, Garden Enthusiast and of course people like us i.e. your down to earth Homesteaders.