Teaching how to save seed at home is an important part of our work, and we’ve now sent out 400,000 sets of instructions for this. It’s great to hear back from so many of you who are keeping your own seed now.
If you haven’t tried it yet, do have a go. You just need to read our leaflets to be sure that the varieties don’t cross, and do check out the instructions for drying your seed properly. If you just air-dry it it will suffocate when you put it in a sealed container.
One thing that always causes questions are peppers and chillies. People usually grow several different sorts, but they all cross like mad, so if you want to keep your own seed, this is a problem. You don’t want giant chillies or sweet peppers the size of a pea the next year!
Here’s how to keep pure seed even if you are growing several types of pepper/chilli in the same greenhouse. You will need:
- some sandwich-bag twist-ties
- an old pair of tights
- a sewing machine
- scissors
- tiny clothes-pegs, used for craft and ‘scrapbooking’ (look on ebay, about £4 for 100)
and twist-ties
The marked fruit is the one to keep seed from – it will not have crossed with the others as no insects could get to the flower. Remember though that the seed is no good until the fruit is red-ripe.
This is really easy BUT it only works because you are using Real Seed.You can’t keep seed from F1 Hybrids! (Which is why we don’t sell them)
