How many seeds to save per plant/variety?

General Discussions
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Say I have six different whole fruits, each with 200 seeds, to add to the gene pool; that’s 1200 seeds for one crop…Too many to plant in my available space.

If you have a small garden, how many seeds do you typically save from each fruit or crop? Do you do it by a certain number, or percentage? I have a bad relationship with numbers, and my brain is having a weird hangup with this math problem. (I’m worried that if I save too few seeds from each fruit, I’ll miss out on valuable genetics-- such as with corn, where each kernal could be a different cross. But saving all seeds is completely impractical).

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I tend to save seed according to my available storage space. Quite a few envelopes of seed will fit into a shoebox. I either give away the extra seeds, compost them, or throw them in an unused part of the garden just to see what comes up.

Are you only saving as many seeds as you plan to sow in the next season? Most seeds are viable for at least a few years, so saving more than you need for the next season is one way to keep a larger pool of genetics available. Let’s say you grow out some seeds from the six whole fruits (pool 1) and save seeds from their fruit (pool 2). In the following year, sow seeds mainly from pool 2 but also include some pool 1 seeds to include their genetics. Hope that makes sense!

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If you have 200 seeds from one fruit and only need 20, you could also sow 180 of them way too early, or water them way too little, or with some other major stressor, and see if anything survives. If so, that’ll be a great plant to save seeds from.

And meanwhile, the rest of your seeds from that fruit can be grown in any way you normally would.

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Six fruits… Hmm…

If you can grow out 10 plants a year I’d save like 60 seeds, ten from each fruit. My reasoning is that you have enough for redundancy… late frost and you have to replant… early frost and you don’t get any seed that year… in a few years you can plant some of this beginning seed to mix up the genetics a bit…

If possible bulk save the rest of the seed and you can try experiments like direct seeding… seeding in wild areas… seeding where you’re pretty sure critters will eat them but they could grow there… Stuff like that.

Also if someone else is working on a landrace of that as well people might be interested in seed trade. Or if you want to just give it away.

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You could bulk them together (with a higher percentage from the 3 very best ones), keep the 60 from Kadence’s example for your garden, and save the rest to send into next year’s seed exchange project.

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What I’m currently doing is saving 20 seeds from each fruit I like best, and setting aside all the rest for either sharing or testing for drought or cold tolerance.

I’ll probably give away approximately 50% of the ones I saved (either to neighbors who are gardeners, or to people in this community). I’ll probably use approximately 25% to see if they can manage to survive and give me a fruit with viable seeds if I plant them weeks before the last frost date. I’ll probably use approximately 25% in a bed that’s deep mulched with no irrigation (in a desert) to see if they can survive and give me a fruit with viable seeds. Even if they don’t, if either of those populations survives enough to gasp out a male flower or two, that might be valuable pollen in the population.

For instance, I went outside today and strewed around a bunch of tomato seeds. Without bothering to cover them, or anything. If any of them survive, they’ll get their seeds saved, and their seeds will be planted preferentially next year! If none of them do (which is likely), no biggie, I’ll be planting my main crop after the last frost date.

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It does make sense, thank you!

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That blows my mind a little, I didn’t even think about how genuinely useful extra seeds could be

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@KadenceLunemann Using the extra for wild experiments is really enticing, as I have really “crappy” areas of my yard that I’m dreading trying to grow anything there

@julia.dakin Very true; I’ve got to remember about the community angle

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Yay! I’m glad I could be helpful!

Assuming I save about twenty seeds from each fruit, that will still leave me with way more than I want to plant in a year. I may not even plant one seed from every fruit, since I have so many of them. (I mean, I have sixty mature zucchinis a.k.a. marrows, and I don’t need sixty zucchini plants . . .)

My plan is to have three boxes, and all my seeds need to fit into one of them.

Box one is slightly smaller than a shoebox. It goes in my fridge, and it’s my seed stash. Everything I want to keep for my personal use goes in there.

Box two will be much smaller. It’s for archiving past years of my garden. My computer got fried by lightning when I was a teenager, before I knew about surge protectors or understood the importance of backups. I have since had other surprise computer failures. So safely archiving my creative works is important to me. Seeds that come from my garden are creative works.

Box three is the largest. It sits on a bookshelf at room temperature, and contains all extra seeds that I don’t need. Those are the ones for sharing, and for sowing in unfavorable conditions to see if I can shake out any magnificent survivors that I want contributing genes to my landrace. I plan to rotate all the seeds out within a year of putting them in, so they will always be fresh.

And speaking of plants that survive harsh conditions – here’s a thought to consider.

In Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, Carol Deppe says that a lone survivor might have had better genetics than the other plants around it, or it may have just been lucky and had slightly better conditions. She’s absolutely right.

But there’s a third possibility too, one that I think wasn’t well understood when she wrote that book around the year 2000, and it may be profoundly important.

Epigenetics can be influenced by environmental factors, and they can be inherited. When you get a plant that survives tough conditions that kills others around it, you may not be discovering a diamond in the rough – you may be creating one.

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From varieties or F1 crosses you wouldn’t need as much as they are genetically quite identical, although I still prefere to have extras. Especially F1 are valuable and those could be shared for someone to grow their own F2 seeds. If you are talking about seeds that are already mixed genetics I would save as much as possible/reasonable depending on crop, but you dont need to save from those that do not perform as well expect if you are just getting started. I generally sow about 30 seeds for each plant I want and cull the weakest. I would also sow preferentially from those plants that were the very best and use the extras next year or share. From those plants that do ok I could just sow more tightly than others and do some hard selection. Each seed has the potential to be the next big step so I would rather give everything a chance. Something like tomatoes it’s not maybe as practical to collect all seeds, but something like watermelons you will collect them anyway. Also good to consider that maybe not all seeds are viable for some reason.

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Oh, wow, you sow thirty seeds for every one plant you want? That’s a lot!

How do you do that? I’m curious about your process. If I like it, I may want to imitate it.

Do you direct seed? How do you prefer to judge which ones are the best? It seems to me that if you have thirty plants in a space where you want one, you might have to cull most of them when they’re small. How do you choose which one to keep?

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@UnicornEmily Many I will presprout in cooler conditions and sow seeds that sprout first so that will do some selection. Seedlings I will let nature do selection (or show me the ones to select) by using cool temperatures. I will sow them also with space to grow so I dont have to make selection that early. Maybe 2-4 per hole and holes spaced out or lines. For transplants I have trays that start from 2,5cm (1 inch) so I can quite effectively screen. I do prefer direct sowing so I will try to move towards that as much as I can and let cool conditions make selection. Using trays isn’t as equal conditions as it could be and will run out of space eventually as I will need more space to screen. Next target is direct seeding tomatoes that is not something that would be normally done here. Will do some trials with peppers too next year to see if I could get them make viable seeds with little help early in the season. Starting to get so many seeds that using them isn’t problem. Just try to make sure that even in worst case conditions are good enough to get viable seeds.

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Super smart. :smiley: That sounds like it may be very similar to what I’m planning to do with squashes and tomatoes this year. Like you, I want cold tolerance in case of worst case conditions. Climate change is giving us crazier and crazier weather every year. I’d love to have plants that can shrug off something nuts like a frost in July or whatever.

I also want cold tolerance for normal circumstances because of season extension. Every extra week at the start and end of the growing season helps with food production.

When you say you presprout them in cooler conditions, how do you arrange that? Do you presprout them in a refrigerator? Oh, also, which crops? Warm season ones or cool season ones?

My current plan is to sow about 50-100 seeds from every squash and tomato phenotype I like and have extra of about six weeks before the last average frost date, under deep mulch, and see what comes up and does well. If any of them do, and especially if they survive all the occasional light frosts I’m sure they’ll be hit with, I’ll be stoked, and I won’t plant any more of those phenotypes this year. I won’t thin anything out that survives, unless it turns out to be awful for some reason. I don’t mind selecting for plants that can handle ridiculously crowded conditions. (Grin.) I’m planning to let the weather to do all the selecting for me.

With the new varieties I want to try and only have a few seeds of, I’ll be more careful and sow them after the average last frost date, like I’m supposed to. But assuming those live and give me abundant seeds, their descendants will get the same treatment next year too, muah ha haaaaaa.

That’s my current plan. What do you think?

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I have cooler conditions inside naturally so mostly is just not to give them extra heat as is recommended. I do use termometer and try to see what place would have reasonable temperature depending on species, but it’s more about not giving the best conditions than about stressing to the maximum. Too cool might also have trouble with molding. They will get more cool training once they are sown. I did make some trial last year on how cool temperature can be to sprout watermelons and melons. Some melons sprouted within reasonable time in around 16-17C, but none of the watermelons (about ten days so might have done so later). In 17-19C some watermelons sprouted and melons even better. That gives me some confidence that they will come through when I plant them if temps are like that.

I think your plan sounds reasonable, but cant really know your climate. How hard you last frost typically is and what the weather is like before that? Will they start growing fast and are maybe too big if and when frost comes or are they just barely get going and stay somewhat protected? I tend to go by steps and try to get some kind of idea of timetable. Like this year I direct seeded watermelons and melons in about 4m2 area. Did have plenty of seeds, but only left 4 strongest each while I had some 70 in total from transplants. Of direct seeded 3 watermelons made fully ripe fruit just in time and of melons one or two made ripe fruit just barely. But because I know seeds will be viable before full ripeness I know that there is some room to play with to get atleast viable seeds so next year I will only use direct sowing. Now I dont have to deal with frosts as growing season takes time to get started and by that time chance of frosts is very minimal. In your case I might be a bit more carefull. Maybe have main sowing closer to last frost for getting seeds and have smaller patches earlier to get idea how they do. Also having them on mounds might help a bit as cold air goes low. Over crowding probably works for you, but I have to make most of my season so I have to make some culling in order to give them best chance to make fruit also.

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I have about 180 frost-free days, so I can always resow if nothing comes up. The challenge for me is water. Those 180 frost-free days are 90-100 degree weather and almost entirely rainless. The vast majority of our precipitation comes in the winter as snow. If I can nudge my warm season crops to be able to handle mild frosts when they’re small without dying, they’ll have greater access to water in the soil to germinate them and help them get established when they’re small.

We only get light frosts, no hard freezes, for the last four weeks or so before the last frost date, so I think it’s possible to get warm season crops that can handle those light frosts and take advantage of the 70-80 degree weather during the day and the water in the soil to establish themselves.

All the more so because my friend’s Early Girl and Sweet 100 tomatoes sailed through three light frosts with no damage whatsoever. My Romas died. And they were all transplants the same size, and we live on the same street. And she didn’t protect hers at all, and I did protect mine. So I’m thinking it’s not that much of a stretch to think that I can find (or create) tomatoes and squashes that can deal with a mild frost, and will only die if a hard freeze happens.

Some of the ones I’m testing for cold hardiness, I’ll just leave out in the soil. Others, I’d like to put under milk jugs to serve as mini greenhouses and provide a wee bit of extra frost protection. I’d rather they be able to survive light frosts while young without any protection, but I know that’s not easy to find, so if they can’t, squashes and tomatoes that can take a light frost only when under a milk jug would be an acceptable compromise.

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Oh, yeah. I ought to mention that my only tomato plant that survived last year was a Roma! I direct-seeded it, it came up after the last frost, and it grew three ripe tomatoes (as well as thirty that didn’t quite ripen before the first frost). It handled the first three light frosts in October with no issues, didn’t even look damaged, and it didn’t die until the first hard freeze a month later. Of course I saved those seeds. So yeah, I think I have a reasonably good chance of growing tomatoes that I can direct seed before the last frost date, and get a good harvest.

Almost all of the beans I planted before the last frost date died too, but there were three lima bean plants that were awesome. Light frosts? No big deal. Very little water? Yeah, okay. Mostly shaded because the squashes grew over top of them? Sure, why not? I’ll probably plant their seeds in February, like I did with the previous generation.

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By the way, I’m not sure if overcrowding actually works for me, but I know I want it to, because I have limited growing space, and there are so many things I want to grow. I will say that I seem to be able to get away with overcrowding, probably because my garden is in full sun and my summers have really hot temperatures. Some of my neighbors use shade cloth to protect their plants from 14 hours of searing sun at a high elevation. Me, I think that’s a lost opportunity. I’d much rather overcrowd my beds and let the plants who can’t handle full sun here get partially shaded by the plants who thrive in it.

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I can’t count the number of times I have heard or read “They won’t sprout at (random number).”

Maybe 5 or 6 years ago I started sprouting peppers in an unheated greenhouse in February. Yes they took longer to sprout. I did the same for tomatoes and sweet potato seeds. After a year or two they do just fine and don’t seem to mind the cold.

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I was just thinking that if those that are sown early dont make there would have been some good plants that are lost if they die completely. That’s why I thought there should be reasonable chance of survival. If adaption is too big it might never come. I wasn’t that worried about tomatoes as they would come from stem/roots even with some damage. Squash I’m a bit more unsure about. I have some experience in killing them even in above freezing conditions. They dont like too much if ground gets too cold, but it’s hard to imagine how stressing it would get in your climate. Might be that warm days make so much difference that cold nights aren’t problem atleast till freezing. I’m slighly doubtfull that they would have any meaningful frost tolerance, but you will have to test it to know.