harvest seeds?

danih

Looking advice on how to get seeds from foodstuffs, flowers etc at home.

I have a couple of old apples, a tomato and a pepper in the kitchen, thought I would experiment with them.

I was also looking at a bunch of flowers I was given recently, I would love to have some of these growing in the garden.

I was thinking that if I strip the seeds from the ripe fruit/veg/flowers, I could dry them on kitchen roll on the radiator, then store them in jars until I'm ready to use?

What do you think?

Al1x

Its worth a go. Our daughter is growing a tree from some apple pips.

I did the same with some peppers, they did grow into plants but then sadly got attacked by slugs so don't know if the would actually grow peppers.

Butterfly_Brain

Remember that most commercially grown food is from F! hybrid seeds and they don't usually grow well from seed.

If you want to grow seeds from plants have a look at real seeds site, plus they give lots of advice on saving seed

http://www.realseeds.co.uk/

Sayva

Unfortunately it's too late to sow either tomato and pepper seeds in the UK this year and still get fruit before the plants die unless you have special artificial lighting and heating. They will store as you say until sowing time next year though.

Apples never grow "true to type". What that means is that if you plant the seed of a Bramley or a Golden Delicious or any other type, what grows from the seed will certainly not be the same (and probably not taste as good). All orchards are made from cuttings one way or the other; usually through grafting.

Tomatoes usually self pollinate, so they will grow true to type.

I have no idea about peppers (they won't grow well outdoors in the UK anyway; you need a greenhouse, conservatory or big south-facing windowsill)

As Butterfly Brain points out though, most stuff commercially grown is grown from hybrids... too complicated for me to explain how these work but they won't grow true to type. read Darwin's Origin of the Species if you're that interested

Also, if these items were bought from supermarkets; even if they do grow true to type - they'll be rubbish! Supermarkets pay by weight which means the farmers are forced into growing the varieties which produce the most fruit and weigh the most. Weight in produce is mostly water, and the higher the water content the blander the taste. It's also rare that a variety that produces lots of fruit will also produce a good tasting fruit. (I'm classing tomatoes and peppers as a fruit because technically they are even though we class them as vegetables in the kitchen)

A perfect example of this is the wild strawberry. You'll sometimes find this when you're out in the countryside, or you can buy seed from some suppliers. The fruit is tiny; about the size of an orange seed, the plant doesn't produce many fruit but the taste is out of this world... it has far more flavour than 'Elsanta' which used to be the supermarkets' favourite variety of tasteless strawberry... they may have found something even bigger and even more tasteless this year - I haven't looked!

I must admit I've never bought from Real Seeds, but I have heard of them before and they do sell good non-hybrid seeds that will taste great. Treat yourself to a pack of tomato seeds for a couple of quid and you'll get great tasting tomatoes that you can save the seed from year after year and never spend another penny on tasteless supermarket tomatoes again!