General Guidelines to Seed Saving

Remember the adage "What you reap, so shall you sow." Well, that can be taken quite literally in the world of seed saving (with the exception of plants that easily cross-pollinate like the "easy" and "difficult" seeds to save). If you harvest small tomatoes, you're likely to get small tomatoes. If you harvest the first tomatoes of the season, their offspring will be more likely to produce earlier in the season.

When choosing which seeds to harvest consider the following:

• Vigor
• Taste
• Size
  
• Ability to tolerate drought, wind or other extreme conditions
• Ability to compete with weeds

• Early-, mid- or late-bearing fruit (whichever is desired)
• Long storage life
• Late to go to seed or bolt
• Good fruit texture
• Disease resistant
• Productivity

• Cold hardiness
• Resistance to insect pests
• Larger fruit or flowers
• Attractiveness
• Color
• Shape

After you save the seeds, make a note of why you chose these particular seeds, where you grew them, and when you harvested them. This process will help you to learn from your plants and to start creating the varieties that work best for your location.

Seed cleaning

• Most seeds can be cleaned using a variety of screens of different mesh sizes. You can sometimes pick up different sieves at thrift stores that do the job for many crops when working on a small scale.
• If you are saving seed for your community, having a set of different screens such as these is useful.  The Seed Garden book will tell you which mesh sizes to use with different crops. 
• If you are at a community level of seed cleaning, this do-it-yourself seed cleaning machine is super helpful.