Raising your own seeds can be rewarding and fun

Should they stay, or should they go?

With the resurgence in interest in self-reliant living, I get more frequent questions on saving and storing seeds.

Previous columns talked about seeds storage, but with the fall harvest season, it's time to take inventory of what you have and what you might want to add.

Storing seed is part of any self-reliance and food storage program. With tough economic times and the recommendation to increase our intake of fresh fruits and vegetables, selecting and storing seeds is a way to stretch your budget and improve your well-being.

Adding a can of seeds to your food storage is not enough. Decide what seeds you want to store. While you might eat almost anything if times were tough enough, my advice is to start with a list of what vegetables you like to eat

A time of stress is not the ideal time to get acquainted with new foods.

To that list, add a second column of what is productive in your garden. It won't do you much good to store avocado or papaya seeds if you live in Utah.

Next, determine if your plant is pollinated by wind or by bees. It is much easier to get seeds to come true when plants are pollinated by wind. These plants are usually pollinated from the same flower that forms the seeds, so there is not much danger of cross pollination.

The last criterion is whether or not your plant is a hybrid or an open-pollinated plant. Hybrid seeds come from dissimilar parents, and if you plant those seeds, the offspring often reverts to characteristics of one of the parents, which are usually not desirable.

So where should you start?

My rule is start with the simple things. If a plant is cross-pollinated by bees you must isolate it from similar garden plants so they do not mix their genetics.

Isolation is done in three ways. It is too late if you did not already plan this, but it will help you decide if the seed from a plant is worth saving.

Isolate plants by a distance of at least 300 feet or by hand pollinating the blossoms and covering them with a paper bag until they mature.

Plants that produce a single crop, such as corn, can be isolated by maturity date. Planting a cultivar that matures three weeks earlier or later than others yields seed that is self-pollinated.