Why Save Seeds
Saving seeds is a super economical way to propagate next season’s garden and allow you to save your seed money for fun new varieties rather than re-buying the same exact seeds each year. Collecting your own seed also allows you to begin adapting a particular cultivar to your exact environmental and soil conditions. Saving seed from the best producing or tasting plants overtime will ensure your garden is more and more bountiful year after year!
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General Seed-Saving Tips
Before going to the effort to seed save, make sure your plants are open-pollinated or heirloom varieties. This will ensure that your next planting is “true to seed,” which means the seed you planted will grow into the same plant you had the year before.
Avoid saving seed from a hybrid plant. Hybrids are a cross of two different parent varieties and seed saved from them will not reproduce the exact same plant the following year. If you do save and replant a hybrid seed, don’t expect the same exact plant, leaf, or fruit next year!
If you are growing more than one variety of a particular veggie, you will want to prevent cross-pollination. (That is unless you want to experiment with creating your own unique cultivar!) In small homestead gardens, our favorite method is little mesh gift bags that we slip over the blossoms just before they bloom to prevent pollinators from spreading unnecessary pollen. If the plants is not self-pollinating, take a paintbrush or q-tip to do the job yourself.
How to save lettuce seed
Typically I don’t wait on my lettuce to go to seed. As soon as it bolts and gets bitter I rip it out for my favorite summer vegetables. Plus, bolted lettuce is not the most aesthetically appealing plant. But this past year we were given some beautiful speckled, spotted, red, funky-shaped lettuce plants that tasted as good as they looked beautiful. Enjoying those spring salads so much, we decided to allow those plants to remain a bit longer in our garden and produce seed for our fall planting.
Our lettuce flowers definitely cross-pollinated, since we originally had not planned on collecting seeds. So it will be fun to see what new funky varieties and characteristics appear in the second generation of lettuce seed. That’s one of the cool things about saving seeds is creating your own new varieties whether accidentally, as in our case, or on purpose.
Despite how quickly lettuce bolts as soon as the weather turns warmer, it felt like it took forever for the cute little yellow flowers to pop out their dandelion-like seeds. We checked the drying flowers several times a week in our impatience. Save yourself some angst and just wait for the fluffy seed heads to pop out. Ought to be a saying about seeds like there is for a pot of water: “A watched seed pod never forms.”
Collecting lettuce seed is so simple and quick after the fluffy seed tops pop out. Less than 5 minutes and you will have plenty of seeds for your next planting.
Step 1 – Collect lettuce seed heads
Lettuce pops out fluffy seed tops similar to a dandelion. Attached to the other end is the small sliver-sized seed you want to save. Pull out a few of the tops and check the maturity of the lettuce seeds attached at their base. Lettuce seed can be a variety of colors from nearly white to a dark grey brown. Collect the mature seeds into a bowl or baggie. I found a baggie worked better as the slightest breeze can blow away your lettuce seeds like a dandelion!
Step 2 – Dry and winnow
If you had as wet a spring as ours, you may need to allow your lettuce seeds to completely dry a few days indoors before removing the fluffy tops and storing for your next planting. If your lettuce seed is already dry, skip straight to the winnowing process.To winnow, simply, spread your seeds on a shallow plate or bowl and gently blow away the chaff. I’d recommend doing this step outside to eliminate any need for cleanup indoors.
Step 3 – Store in a cool dry place
As with all seeds, you’ll need to keep your lettuce seed in a dry location to prevent deterioration or premature sprouting. We like using these self-sealing packets to organize our seed storage. In our experience, lettuce seed begins to lose viability fairly quickly compared to other garden seeds. Expect a gradual decrease in germination rate after 6-12 months in storage. If you discover your seed is a bit older come planting time, just sprinkle the seed a bit heavier for better success.
Want to learn more about saving your own seeds? Check out our other posts for tips and tricks to collect seeds and economically grow your garden year after year.
