Seed Saving Secrets: How to Save, Store, & Share Seeds

In this episode of The Evergreen Thumb host Erin Hoover interviews Master Gardener Kamori Cattadoris about how she saves seeds and breeds plants. Kamori tells listeners how she got started saving seeds and recommends books that have helped her learn how to save seeds over the years.

Kamori goes into detail about the differences between heirloom, open-pollinated, and hybrid seeds and explains how those different types of seeds affect seed saving and whether or not you will be able to save seeds from those plants.

She explains the basics of seed saving, how to select the best seeds from their garden, and tips for preventing cross-pollination. Kamari discusses the steps for harvesting, cleaning, drying, and storing seeds, and ensuring they remain viable for future planting. 

Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced gardener, this episode offers practical advice on building a sustainable garden through seed saving.

• A step-by-step guide to saving seeds
• Are volunteer squash toxic?
• Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, 2nd Edition
• Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, 35th Anniversary Edition: The Complete Guide to Organic Gardening
• Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener’s and Farmer’s Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving, 2nd Edition
• Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners, 2nd Edition
• Rooted Resilience: How to Harvest and Store Crops for Winter – Episode 003
• Surviving Winter’s Wrath: Preparing Your Garden for Winter Weather – Episode 005

[00:00:00] Erin Hoover: Welcome to The Evergreen Thumb, your go-to podcast for up-to-date research-based horticulture and environmental stewardship knowledge to help you grow and manage your garden. Produced by Washington State University Extension Master Gardener Volunteers and brought to you by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.

[00:00:16] Erin Hoover: I’m your host, Erin Hoover, a WSU Extension Master Gardener since 2015 and a certified permaculture designer and modern homesteader. WSU Master Gardener volunteers are university-trained community educators who have been cultivating plants, people, and communities since 1973. Are you ready to grow? Let’s dig into today’s episode.

[00:00:35] Erin Hoover: Welcome to episode 31 of The Evergreen Thumb. My guest today is Kamori Cattadoris, an Evergreen WSU Extension Master Gardener in Pend Oreille County, Washington, and she’s here to talk to us about seed saving, particularly in the vegetable garden. But before she joins us, I would like to go through the October gardening calendar.

October Gardening Calendar

[00:01:11] Erin Hoover: I can’t believe it’s October already. Um, there are a lot of things going on in the garden this time of year. For planning, if needed, improve your soil drainage of lawns before rains begin. Um, hopefully, you kept track of what those wet areas were from last winter and you can work on those now before the rain starts again.

[00:01:36] Erin Hoover: For maintenance, you want to winterize bird baths and garden art to avoid chipping and cracking from freezing temperatures, and be sure to recycle disease-free plant material and kitchen vegetables and fruit scraps into your compost.

If you have been pruning and have anything diseased, either put it in a yard waste bin or even put it in the garbage. Don’t put it in your compost unless you are sure it is going to get hot enough to kill the diseases.

[00:02:01] Erin Hoover: Um, it’s time to drain or blow out your irrigation system and insulate the valve mechanisms to prepare for winter.

Use newspaper or cardboard covered by mulch to discourage winter and spring annual weeds or remove a lawn area for conversion to garden beds.

[00:02:25] Erin Hoover: It’s time to maintain and clean your greenhouses and cold frames for plant storage and winter growth. Harvest those sunflowers. The seeds can be bird feed, or they can be roasted for personal use. Our chickens love them, sunflower seeds. We’ll just put a whole head in there and they’ll clean it up in a minute.

[00:02:47] Erin Hoover: It’s also time to dig and store potatoes. Um, some early varieties may have already been done, but, um, you want to be sure to keep your potatoes in darkness and in moderate humidity.

Discard unused potatoes if they sprout and don’t use those as seed potatoes for the next year.

[00:03:09] Erin Hoover: Filberts and walnuts should be coming ready. Harvest them and immediately dry them at 95–100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Unfortunately, the scrub jay has already stolen all of our filberts for this year, so we’re out of luck.

But anyway, tomatoes, if there is a threat of frost, you can pick any tomatoes that have just gotten a little blush on them and bring them in, and they will continue to ripen.

[00:03:35] Erin Hoover: Make sure that you are checking the fruit often so that you can discard any rotting fruit. And it’s apple season! Store apples at 40 degrees Fahrenheit with moderate humidity, similar to potatoes.

Be sure to keep apples and potatoes stored in somewhat different locations and not right next to each other.

[00:03:57] Erin Hoover: Mulch, uh, the root zones of roses, azaleas, rhododendrons, and berries to protect them for the winter.

Um, stake or trim, uh, bushy herbaceous perennials so that they don’t get damaged by fall and winter winds. Make sure you clean up annual flower beds by removing diseased plant materials and mulch with manure or compost to feed the soil, cover asparagus and rhubarb beds with a mulch of manure or compost, prune out dead fruiting canes in raspberries, uh, um, in Western Washington.

[00:04:33] Erin Hoover: It’s time to harvest winter squash and pumpkins. Keep them in a dry area at about 55–60 degrees Fahrenheit. So, one way to do this, assuming your squash are not too big, is you can actually put them on a higher shelf, say above your potatoes or your apples, since they need a slightly warmer temperature, of course most of us know heat rises.

[00:04:54] Erin Hoover: After your first light frost, dig up and divide summer bulbs like dahlias, gladiolas, and lilies.

For planting and propagation, it’s time to dig and divide rhubarb and rhubarb should be divided about every four years.

[00:05:15] Erin Hoover: Uh, it’s also time to plant garlic. I usually plant right about the 1st of October. If you mulch it with straw or, um, grass clippings or something, as long as it’s not too deep, it really helps suppress the weeds around the garlic.

It’s time to save seeds from your vegetable and your flower garden. Make sure that they are thoroughly dry.

[00:05:35] Erin Hoover: Kamori goes through all of this in today’s episodes. Make sure you label and date your seeds. You can plant and divide trees, shrubs, and ground covers.

This is actually a very good time of year to plant trees and shrubs. Uh, it gives them time to grow and get established before winter comes, but also then they are more resilient when it comes to droughts tests the following year.

[00:06:03] Erin Hoover: Let’s see, for pest monitoring and management. Be sure to dispose of windfall apples as they may be harboring apple maggots or coddling moth larvae. This helps or interrupts the life cycle of those larvae, um, to reduce infestations in future years. Also, rake and destroy diseased leaves from fruit trees like apples, cherries, and roses, or again, hot compost them if you’re sure your compost gets hot enough to kill those diseases.

[00:06:37] Erin Hoover: Spray apple and stone fruit trees at leaf fall to prevent various fungal and bacterial diseases. So this would be your, uh, copper spray for peaches, uh, things like that.

For indoor plants. If you set your plants outdoors for the summer, they should be in by now. If you have problems with low humidity inside, group indoor plants together, and that will collectively help to raise the humidity for all of them.

[00:07:07] Erin Hoover: It’s time to begin to reduce water and to place Christmas cacti in a cool area and increase the amount of darkness or shade that they receive in order to force them to bloom in time for late December.

Make sure to move your fuchsias to a spot where they won’t freeze, but don’t cut them back until spring.

[00:07:26] Erin Hoover: If you are just bringing in your house plants from being outside for the summer, make sure that you treat them for any disease that you see or any insects before bringing those indoors.

You really don’t want those indoors and you don’t want to spread to the rest of your house plants as well. So that pretty much covers the October gardening calendar.

Let’s move on to my conversation with Kamori.

[00:07:46] Erin Hoover: Kamori Cattadoris and her husband Bob have lived on 8.75 acres in northeast Washington for 13 years. She began gardening organically by following Steve Solomon’s book, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades.

Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway describes how to apply permaculture principles to city gardens and prompted her to take a permaculture design course, which informed the design of their current homestead.

[00:08:15] Erin Hoover: Carol Deppe’s Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties inspired her to take seed saving to the next step. Now a WSU Extension Master Gardener, she loves sharing her knowledge and experience with others.

Kamori, thanks for joining me today. Welcome to the show.

Kamori Cattadoris: Oh, thank you. My pleasure.

An Introduction to Our Guest

Erin Hoover: So to start off, maybe you can tell us a little about yourself and what you do, what is your favorite thing to do as a Master Gardener?

[00:08:41] Kamori Cattadoris: Oh, as a Master Gardener, um, well, I’m in charge of delivering education to our community. So I set up all of the classes and find speakers and confirm our venue and all that kind of fun stuff.

Uh, and I also do about half of the presentations because I love that, that’s really the reason I joined Master Gardeners. I wanted to share my passion for gardening.

[00:09:05] Kamori Cattadoris: I’ve been gardening basically, oh, 40 years, 50 years, something like that. It started out with a postage stamp garden and now I’m working on 8.75 acres of which about 2 acres is cultivated in gardens and orchards, so it’s my full-time job now that I’m so-called retired, so. Yeah, so basically I’m sharing my passion.

The Benefits of Saving Your Own Seed

[00:09:31] Erin Hoover: Today we’re talking about seed saving. And so what are some of the benefits of saving seeds from your own garden?

[00:09:38] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, number one, money. Uh, basically my goal now, not when I started gardening, but where it is now, is to try to raise as much of our produce year-round as possible.

[00:09:52] Kamori Cattadoris: And so seeds are expensive, and so seed saving is by far the best way to go for the things that are easy and possible to save seed from, depending on your situation and your growing conditions.

Heirloom, Open Pollinated and Hybrid Seeds and How That Affects Seed Saving

[00:10:03] Erin Hoover: So when it comes to seed saving, what is the difference between heirloom, open-pollinated, and hybrid seeds, and how does that affect the quality of your seeds?

[00:10:12] Kamori Cattadoris: Yeah. So those are very important considerations. So heirloom are varieties that have been passed down from generation to generation.

For example, I just got some Slagel family bean seeds this year from the Slagel family. They, they’re not, they are not gardening anymore, and they wanted somebody who loves to garden too, to use them. And so I gladly did that to keep that variety going. It’s unique. I’ve never seen anything like them.

[00:10:32] Kamori Cattadoris: Um, Open Pollinated, of which heirloom are a subcategory, are simply seeds that are bred to be the parents and the child offspring of the plants that are the same or roughly the same characteristics that you’re expecting.

[00:10:54] Kamori Cattadoris: Whereas a hybrid is a cross, a recent cross between two other purebreds or more sometimes.

When you have a cross, the first generation comes out all nice and uniform and vigorous, good growers. But after that, you get all kinds of surprising results from your saved seed, which is either a positive or a negative, depending on your goal.

[00:11:18] Kamori Cattadoris: So my goal sometimes is, I just want to see what happens when I go ahead and save seed and plant the second generation.

And oftentimes, yeah, some of the plants won’t look like or have the same characteristics as the parents, but some of them will. Then I’ll just save the seed from that one. And then the next year, the same thing, I’ll just pick out the ones that are most similar to the characteristics I wanted. Five or six years later, I’ve got a stable variety that, uh, is very similar to that hybrid.

[00:11:40] Kamori Cattadoris: Now, not all hybrids are the same. Can be a saved seed though. Some, sometimes they’re sterile. So the plant, it really depends on what the breeder did to get the hybrid variety that you’ve got.

[00:12:04] Kamori Cattadoris: But by and large, uh, like with the kales and broccolis and, you know, really common plants like that, most of the time, those are just simple cross-breeding and not, they haven’t done tissue horticulture or, you know, backcrossing or all kinds of fancy stuff.

So you can usually get a decent result, even saving hybrid seeds, as long as you don’t mind the variety and surprises.

Cross-Pollination and Seed Saving

[00:12:22] Erin Hoover: So, when it comes to cross-pollination and seed saving, how, what are some things that you need to be aware of?

[00:12:31] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, there are some varieties, such as tomatoes, beans, lettuce, and peas, which are self-pollinating, and they don’t cross as readily. They will cross, but not as readily, so you can oftentimes have good luck saving seeds from those plants without worrying about having it cross with some other variety that you don’t want it to.

[00:12:50] Kamori Cattadoris: On the other hand, just about, um, everything else does, uh, cross-breed, and so then it just depends on whether you care. So, for example, I grew a whole bunch of kales all together and I saved seed anyway, and I don’t care. I don’t mind the variety of different types of kale.

Then on the other hand, uh, I didn’t want my radishes to cross because there’s quite a bit of difference between a storage radish and one that you just, you know, crisp up and use for a garden salad.

[00:13:18] Kamori Cattadoris: So in order to keep those from crossing, basically I only save one variety of radish seed per season. Uh, and it’s a great benefit that radish seeds actually last a really long time. I’ve had some last as long as nine or ten years and are still viable and produce healthy, vigorous plants. So that means that if I have ten varieties of radishes, I just do one, you know, a different one a year and I will be able to save seed from those.

[00:13:45] Kamori Cattadoris: Of course, you’ve got to keep track of which ones you did and whatnot, but that’s all part of the fun. And I do keep notes. I do keep a journal. So I know exactly what I’ve done from year to year. I didn’t start out that way, but boy, now I do.

Avoiding Cross Pollination with Squash

[00:13:55] Erin Hoover: So what about like with squashes? I’ve heard that there can be a, it’s called toxic squash syndrome where if certain varieties cross-pollinate, they can be bitter.

[00:14:07] Kamori Cattadoris: That I’m not familiar with, so I really can’t respond to that. But what I do with my squashes is, uh, first of all, I always start with, you know, a variety that I purchased. And I only, again, save seed from one at a time.

So, I’m lucky in that I have a really large property and so in the front of my property I plant my single variety of squash that I want to save seed from for this year. And they are just far enough away that I’m pretty sure I won’t get a cross-pollination.

[00:14:29] Kamori Cattadoris: So the rest of my squash then is in the back of our property. Now remember we have 8.75 acres, and it’s a long skinny property. So I can actually get quite a ways back to plant my squash away from the one I’m trying to save seed from.

[00:14:50] Kamori Cattadoris: The other thing that you can do, and I do as well, is there are three different species of squashes, winter squashes especially. And if you plant all those together at the same time, they won’t, uh, cross because they are different species. And so that’s a really nice strategy to keep in mind.

So there are some really good winter squashes besides pumpkin, which crosses with everything, um, that you can sow right alongside your pumpkin and they won’t cross and, but if you want to save seed from pumpkin, then yeah, I have to do the whole isolation routine that I just described because it will readily cross with zucchini and anything else that’s in that same.

[00:15:31] Erin Hoover: So that’s where it gets important to know what the, I don’t know, what the Latin name of your species is, if you’re going to do that.

[00:15:38] Kamori Cattadoris: And luckily, nearly all, I have only had one sample, one seed vendor that doesn’t, but nearly all of them will put the species name right on the packet. You just usually ignore it, right? Because you just want to know if it’s Dark Star or zucchini.

[00:15:53] Kamori Cattadoris: So, um, uh, yeah, so start getting familiar with the three different species and that will help. Uh, one of them is Moschata. I can’t remember the other one. And then Pepo is the more common one. So, anyway, you’ll know, you’ll notice there are different families. And so that’s the main thing to watch out for.

Common Seed Saving Mistakes

[00:16:13] Erin Hoover: Okay. So what are some common mistakes gardeners make when attempting to save seeds?

[00:16:19] Kamori Cattadoris: It’s that every single species is different. And, So what I did was I got a book to help me with all this. So most of the mistakes that I’ve made are mostly in the process of storing the seeds. That’s really the most critical part because, uh, and, but harvesting has also got its tricks.

[00:16:38] Kamori Cattadoris: For example, kale and broccoli and cabbages, they all produce little pods and those pods will shatter and your seed is all over the garden instead of in your nice little envelope waiting for next year. So the trick with them is to harvest them when they’re mature but not totally dried out and then put them in a bag. Put the little pods in a bag and let them finish drying out in that bag and then all you have to do is stomp on them and the seeds fall to the bottom.

[00:17:05] Kamori Cattadoris: But then that storage, uh, is the other big thing because If you, well, I use plastic bags because I’m trying to keep my seeds as long as possible and I’ve got really thick milliliter plastic for that purpose. Now, those are great because they keep the moisture out, but if you have put moisture in, it also keeps the moisture in.

[00:17:27] Kamori Cattadoris: And yes, I’ve had moldy seeds, and so basically drying them out sufficiently is really, really critical. So those really are the biggest problems losing your seed before you ever collect it and then losing it via mold.

Oh, but I should mention bugs because that’s another thing, bugs can attack and eat your seeds before you’ve collected them.

[00:17:47] Kamori Cattadoris: That has happened to me, uh, and I didn’t notice that was happening. I stored some peas one time and there were little bugs in the center of each pea that had eaten up the center. And so they were no good. So that was a big surprise. So yeah, you do have to watch out for bugs.

And oh, by the way, freezing did not kill those little bugs.

[00:18:07] Kamori Cattadoris: They just woke right up and kept right on going.

Clues to Tell When Seeds Are Mature

[00:18:12] Erin Hoover: Right. So you mentioned about, uh, broccoli or brassicas and their seeds, what are some other ways to tell the seed is mature and ready to be harvested?

[00:18:22] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, with those it’s easy. The pods turn darker, they’re bright green and soft when they’re young. They’re duller green when they’re just about ready to pick when I pick them because I don’t want them to be brown and dry.

[00:18:36] Kamori Cattadoris: So they want to have a little tiny bit of moisture still in them and the color has faded to very near that light brown color that pods will get. Uh, and they’re, that whole family, the whole Brassica family is like that. So that’s, what’s nice. So, you know, there’s, most of my garden is a Brassicas, so it makes it really easy for seed saving, except for the crossing, the pollination crossing problem.

[00:18:58] Kamori Cattadoris: That, uh, that does make it tricky. So again, I’ll only save from one variety or one species at a time because otherwise, they’ll cross.

Saving Seeds from Fruits

[00:19:06] Erin Hoover: What about some seeds other than brassicas?

[00:19:07] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, um, then you’ve got problems like, um, tomatoes. Which, basically, those are a fruit, not a pod. So, fruit seeds, and that would also include tomatillos, and probably others, cucumbers, things like that.

[00:19:24] Kamori Cattadoris: Those are actually, botanically speaking, fruit. Those, you just make sure that the fruit itself is ripe. Good and ripe. Uh, maybe even a little overripe. Like you wouldn’t want to eat it, but it’s not rotten yet.

You don’t want to let it get to the point where it starts to rot, obviously, because then it’ll eventually get to your seeds.

[00:19:40] Kamori Cattadoris: Although they’re surprisingly resilient. They can actually last. They’re like the last to go. The fruit will rot first. On the other hand, with tomatoes, if you want to get rid of the little gelatin coat around each tomato seed, some gardeners do, and some don’t. It does, um, cause the seed to remain dormant until that gel coating is removed in one way or another.

[00:20:01] Kamori Cattadoris: Now nature does it through fermentation and so the gardener can do it too. So you actually induce fermentation around those seeds in order to break down that gel coating. And then you need to wash them and dry them, dry them, and dry them because they’ll be quite wet. Um, so those are quite different. Um, what else?

[00:20:21] Kamori Cattadoris: Cucumbers are a lot like that. You know, they come from a wet fruit. So you just need to extract them and let them dry really well. But they don’t have that gelatinous coating that tomato seeds do.

Squashes are really straightforward. Um, they’ve got a hull and so they’re easy to pull out. And beans also are pods, so it’s the same thing there.

[00:20:39] Kamori Cattadoris: You don’t want your pods to shatter in the field, especially if you try growing legumes like, um, chickpeas, which are really delicious and easy to grow, but they shatter really easily and sometimes prematurely, and I’ve had such bad luck with them that I just stopped growing them.

How to Collect Seeds Without Damaging Them

[00:20:59] Erin Hoover: So what is the best way to collect seeds without damaging them?

[00:21:03] Kamori Cattadoris: I’ve never really had a problem with damaging seeds unless it’s, um, leaving them in the sunlight. That will dry them out and age them prematurely. So you want to keep them out of light.

I mean, they’re amazingly resilient. For example, when I’m harvesting beans from their pods, I just line a huge tub and stomp on them.

[00:21:23] Kamori Cattadoris: You know, you would think that that would hurt the seeds, but it doesn’t. It just cracks open the pods and then I can pull off the pods from the top and the seeds are on the bottom and they’re all fine. They don’t even split.

Now maybe it’s different from bean to bean, but the ones that I’ve been using, and I have like 20 different varieties of beans, I’ve never had that problem.

How to Store Seeds to Maintain Viability

[00:21:41] Erin Hoover: So what are some of the best methods for storing to maintain their viability? I know you mentioned the plastic bags.

[00:21:48] Kamori Cattadoris: Right, but those are, again, trickier to work with because you really have to make sure the seeds are dry. So, for example, behind me, I have open containers full of all these different types of seeds that I’m collecting right now because it’s the season.

[00:22:02] Kamori Cattadoris: And I just let them sit there in my working space. Open, totally open with a nice flat bottom so that the seeds aren’t piling on top of each other. And I might not bag them up until January because I just want to make sure they’re dry. But there are tests that you can do if you’ve got a nice cutting board and a hammer.

[00:22:20] Kamori Cattadoris: You can take them and make sure they shatter. If they, if, you know, if you hammer on them and they just kind of flatten and you see any juice or, I mean, obviously they’re not dry enough, but they should literally shatter. Just like a broken glass type of thing. So that would be a good test. I had used that test on occasion when I wasn’t sure about peas.

[00:22:37] Kamori Cattadoris: Because they can take a remarkably long time to dry down. So, because they’re so big.

Average Length of Time that Seeds Are Viable

[00:22:42] Erin Hoover: So I know you’ve said some seeds you’ve been able to keep as long as 10 years. What would you say is an average for my ability?

[00:22:51] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, an average would be two to three years, but you know, it’s really by variety. So for example, I have parsley seeds and celery seeds.

[00:22:57] Kamori Cattadoris: They’re both from the same family and carrot seeds. Those last gosh, a decade or more. Just, even if they’re just in paper envelopes. I mean, they’re just amazing. They have a really long shelf life.

On the other hand, onions are on the other side of the extreme. They may not last more than one year, sometimes two, or three, you’re really stretching it and you might only get like 25 percent germination.

[00:23:19] Kamori Cattadoris: And so I pretty much buy my onion seeds every year. Now, I have trouble saving onion seeds because that’s something we haven’t mentioned yet, but they are biennials. And so they don’t produce seed until the second year.

Now, I live in northeast Washington, which is cold, so not everything makes it over the winter here, and of course, I have critters that, underground critters like pocket gophers, that will munch on the plants, and voles and moles that will dig tunnels through the snow and munch on the plants, and so it’s really hard for me to save biennial seeds.

[00:23:49] Kamori Cattadoris: Although, sometimes it happens and I happily save them. So, I do end up, um, having to purchase seeds. But, um, onions are one thing that really just doesn’t save very long. That would include scallions and chives, you know, all that whole Allium family of plants there.

Methods for Testing Seed Viability

[00:24:04] Erin Hoover: Um, so what are some methods of testing the viability before planting?

[00:24:08] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, I don’t bother but there are methods. The simplest one is simply to moisten a paper towel and spread a set number of seeds, like ten, that you can easily get yourself, um, to calculate a percentage from. So out of your ten seeds after three days to, oh, two weeks, it depends on what you’re germinating, of course, because the germination time varies.

[00:24:31] Kamori Cattadoris: But no less than three days usually and no more than a couple of weeks on average. Then you just count how many germinated. You can very easily see what the percentage is. And probably the rest of your seed collection is about that same percentage. And that’s probably the easiest and safest way to test that if you really want to know.

[00:24:52] Kamori Cattadoris: But what I do is, with each year that my seeds grow, or age I should say, I will plant, well, when they’re fresh, I plant one to a cell when they’re two years old, I’ll plant two seeds to a cell when they’re three years old, I’ll plant three seeds to the cell, and after that, I will just have a big open flat, and I will plant the seeds in a long line, in a big mass, And probably only 25 percent will grow, but hey, I got 25 percent out of it, you know, so it’s just different every year.

The Easiest Plants to Save Seed From

[00:25:22] Kamori Cattadoris: What are the easiest crops to save seeds from?

Well, that would be your self-pollinating plants, and out of those, the ones that suffer the least from any kind of, uh, inbreeding depression would be your tomatoes, beans, lettuce, and peas. Those four. They’re great starter crops for working on. And after that, um, you have some of your cross-pollinating crops that we’ve already mentioned.

[00:25:46] Kamori Cattadoris: Any of the Brassicas. That includes radishes, by the way, which are Brassicas as well, summer squashes, and cucumbers.

Now, those though you again, have to isolate if you want to keep them from cross-pollinating, but otherwise they’re very, uh, non-susceptible to inbreeding depression, which means that for the cross breeders especially.

[00:26:06] Kamori Cattadoris: Now, let’s take corn. That one is pollinated by wind, but they are well known for suffering what’s known as inbreeding depression, meaning that if you save seed from too small a number of plants, they will not be viable and they will most likely be sterile, uh, even if they do produce a plant.

[00:26:26] Kamori Cattadoris: And I have validated that. I was, um, told that 250 plants would be a good minimum. So that’s what I tried and I saved seed from all of those. 250 plants mixed them all up and then tried growing them the next season. They were sterile. They grew. I mean, there were plants, so I got halfway there, but, um, they did not produce any corn.

[00:26:48] Kamori Cattadoris: So I don’t have room to grow 500 plants, which is what Carol Deppe, who is a, a well-known Oregon, uh, plant breeder, that’s what she recommends, is a minimum of 500 plants. Well, I don’t have room for that. That would be my whole garden. So, or no, it would be half my garden to be exact. So I, yeah, so I don’t save seed from corn.

[00:27:07] Kamori Cattadoris: That’s one of the things I have to purchase. So there are some, you know, that’s a really good example of one that I would not recommend ever trying to save unless you’ve got a quarter of an acre that you can devote to corn.

Seeds With Special Storage Requirements

[00:27:19] Erin Hoover: So are there certain seeds that should be stored differently than others that are, you know, like some outliers?

[00:27:27] Kamori Cattadoris: There probably are, like if you’re saving, I’m talking about mostly vegetable seeds, but you know you can save seeds from perennials, but some of them like ones that produce berries It’s often better to save just dry the whole berry and I would do that in you know, and a typical dehydrator that you might have on hand for herbs or whatever just to make sure they don’t mold.

So those need to be dried down but not so that they’re crispy but so that they’re just dry pliable, I guess that’s the word, and that’s the perfect stage.

[00:27:58] Kamori Cattadoris: And then, you can break them open in the Spring and separate out the seeds, or just plant the whole berry, and you’ll get a whole bunch of plants all close together. But most of the time, you can separate them out if you’re really careful, uh, after they have achieved, oh, say, the first set of true leaves.

Um, so that would be the exception. I think is perennials, but you know, mostly with vegetables, you don’t have to be concerned with that. They’re all pretty similar once you’ve got them off a plant, once you’ve got them in your, in your bag. Otherwise, each variety is totally different.

Kamori’s Favorite Part About Saving Seeds

[00:28:29] Erin Hoover: So for you, what’s the most enjoyable part of saving seeds?

[00:28:33] Kamori Cattadoris: I can express it this way. I did a garden tour recently of my garden and some very seasoned gardeners were among them. They walked over to a part of my garden and they went, “Ooh, what are those flowers?” Well, they were carrots. On the second year that had somehow made it through the winter. And I was really surprised that, but, you know, if you just harvest your carrots every year, you wouldn’t know.

[00:28:56] Kamori Cattadoris: So I think that is the biggest joy for me, just seeing what the plant is really like, you know. When they produce seed, they produce flowers and pods and they grow huge, you know, especially like lettuces, they start out as little rosettes on the ground, but they’ll put out enormous spikes, uh, and it just, it’s just a joy to watch the plant just become all it can be.

[00:29:17] Erin Hoover: Yeah. I actually have lettuce in the garden that’s three feet tall right now. Mm-Hmm… Isn’t that amazing how big they got?

I know they do every year. I just let lettuce self sow and I have a never-ending supply of lettuce.

[00:29:31] Kamori Cattadoris: Exactly. I do the same. I love, love, my volunteers. They always do better than anything I plant.

[00:29:37] Erin Hoover: They do. My dill, however, is taking over.

[00:29:39] Kamori Cattadoris: Yeah. Yep. I’ve had to, I had to cut back on dill also.

Tips on How to Start Breeding Your Own Plant Varieties

[00:29:42] Erin Hoover: So, how big of a leap is it to go from saving seeds to breeding your own plant varieties?

[00:29:49] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, interestingly enough, if you are saving seeds, you are already a plant breeder because the number one and foundational technique to plant breeding is selecting and saving seeds.

[00:29:59] Kamori Cattadoris: So even if you just kind of haphazardly select your seeds for saving, you have selected some and not selected others. Or if you’ve got only a small number of plants, that’s also a way of selecting because you’ve limited the number of genetic varieties that’s going to be in your resulting seed mix. So you’re already a plant breeder, so why not learn a little bit more, right?

[00:30:22] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, so I purchased Carol Deppe’s infamous book. She’s informed a whole lot of people, wannabe amateur plant breeders, and that book is called Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties, The Gardener’s and Farmer’s Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving. So it also includes seed saving so you can get both disciplines in one, right?

[00:30:45] Kamori Cattadoris: So she gives you a horticultural class in one book, right? Of course, I should say an entire course and it seems kind of overwhelming when you read all that information but it’s so interesting, it’s so interesting to find out about. You know, all the different types of plants and inbreeding and operating and this and that and all the genetic different combinations and how the professional breeders do it.

[00:31:07] Kamori Cattadoris: But since you are already a plant breeder, really you just need to know more fine nuances of plant selection. For example, how to rogue, and how to choose which plants to keep. The Native Americans, for example, will recommend not keeping only your best plants. Keep your second-best ones too because you want the genetic variety, especially for organic gardeners.

[00:31:28] Kamori Cattadoris: Now, if you’re not organic, don’t worry about it. But we have challenging growing conditions in comparison to, you know, spraying everything. So we want seeds that are resilient. Also, the weather and climate are different from year to year. So we want things that will, some plants will do better in one year, and some plants will do better in the other year, and if you have selected too finely, I guess, granularly, then you, your plants that you selected may not work so well in a different weather condition or, uh, a different year, basically.

[00:32:00] Kamori Cattadoris: So those kinds of things were really valuable for me to learn. It really improved my seed saving. And there are lots of tips about how to go rogue and when to go rogue.

You want to, if you’re going to be saving seeds for a plant breeding project, then you’ve got to be extra careful about diseases. Unless you want to breed something that is more disease-resilient.

[00:32:19] Kamori Cattadoris: And so then she tells you how to set up a situation so that you actually want to encourage powdery mildew, let’s say. Then you choose the plant that did the best. And then next year you’ll plant just the, just the seeds from that one plant. Or maybe it’s two or three that did well.

But again, you know, put them in a situation where they’re, well, the mildew just goes to goes to town, you know, which it will, if you water the leaves, for example, and do that frequently enough, mildew will eventually find it.

[00:32:40] Kamori Cattadoris: So Old Hartford rains a lot, you know, this year in northeast Washington, we got far more showers than usual, and so we’re getting far more powdery mildew than usual also.

So yeah, getting disease resistance is a very big consideration, and she will, you know, she shows you how you want to select for that.

But what I found was another book that is a little short, skinny, spiral bound, um, lots of charts and graphs and bullet points, and that was far easier to use practically than Carol’s wonderful book for background, uh, although I still remember a lot of her suggestions.

[00:33:23] Kamori Cattadoris: And that book is Breeding Organic Vegetables, A Step by Step Guide for Growers. That book is by Rowan White and Brian Connolly. And again, it’s step by step, with lots of charts and, and everything. And it makes it really easy at a glance to get a rather complex concept into your little brain for the day.

[00:33:43] Kamori Cattadoris: Because I always, that’s why I have books, is I can’t keep it in my brain from one season to the next. So I pull out the book and refresh my memory each year. So it’s really good to have those books.

Uh, another good seed-saving book though is, um, of course, the infamous Suzanne Ashworth’s Seed to Seed, which is probably the classic book.

[00:34:02] Kamori Cattadoris: I have that one as well. However, I have done my own plant breeding projects. It’s, and it’s really fun. I mean, I don’t want you to miss out on the fun. So it’s very, um, intimidating and daunting when you first contemplate it, but just do it, just try it. What can you lose, right? It’s just fun.

[00:34:21] Kamori Cattadoris: So I had a hybrid variety of tomatoes that I save seed from and of course the next generation they were all over the board and whatnot, they were small, they were big, they were tasteless, they were wonderful. So I selected the wonderful ones and after six years I got a variety stable that was the size that I wanted and the flavor that I wanted.

[00:34:39] Kamori Cattadoris: I just was so proud of myself it was just so much fun. So that’s a simple idea and then one year, um, a happy accident, as Carol Deppe would call it.

Um, there was a red, uh, Cracoviensis lettuce plant. They are normally green, with just red speckles. I didn’t realize at first what it was. I just saw this red volunteer, like we were saying, growing in my garden where all the seeds were left from the year before.

[00:35:03] Kamori Cattadoris: But I thought that’s got to be something intentional, not just a weed. So I put it in another spot and let it grow, and I realized, oh, that’s a Cracoviensis, but it’s solid red. So I save seed from it, and for several years thereafter, I would get some green throwbacks, just like the original, but I would also get a small quantity of pure red leaves.

[00:35:24] Kamori Cattadoris: Beautiful red, more like a merlot plant. So sure enough, five or six years later, it was stable and I had my own variety of red Cracoviensis, you know, it’s like, so anyway, I can’t, I can’t tell you how much fun it is.

[00:35:39] Erin Hoover: Well, and another advantage to that is that you’re creating varieties that are more, uh, adapted to your climate.

[00:35:46] Kamori Cattadoris: Exactly. And that’s what you do by selecting, exactly. So, um, a good case in point in that respect is, um, garlic.

I was lucky enough to inherit some garlic bulbs from, which are not really seeds, but, you know, that’s what we use as the seeds, from a friend who had been growing the same variety for like 30 years.

[00:36:05] Kamori Cattadoris: So I had a head start because he’s in our same climate. And I’ve been planting them alongside other varieties that I have purchased elsewhere. No doubt about it. They’re always the first to sprout. They grow the biggest and the darkest green. They’re just so happy here. They have really, truly adapted to our climate.

[00:36:23] Kamori Cattadoris: Our climate, and yeah, and that also is true of peppers and tomatoes, you know, after eight or nine years, you will notice that they’re doing, that they might hold out a little bit. after that first frost, you know, and they won’t get killed until the second or third frost, which is, hey, in tomato land, that’s a big deal.

[00:36:41] Erin Hoover: Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about. We’ve had temperatures in the 30s already.

[00:36:45] Kamori Cattadoris: Yes, we have too. 30, it was, um, 38 this morning.

[00:36:48] Erin Hoover: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I’m in the opposite corner from you. I’m in southwest Washington.

[00:36:53] Kamori Cattadoris: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s crazy for where you are, but for where we are, it’s like a warning.

No Such Thing as a Mistake in Gardening or Plant Breeding

[00:36:59] Erin Hoover: What is the most important thing to you about being a Master Gardener?

[00:37:02] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, sharing knowledge and also making people feel comfortable to explore and experiment. There’s no such thing as a mistake in gardening. You just learn from everything. And that’s why I say the same thing with plant breeding.

[00:37:16] Kamori Cattadoris: You know, it’s like, well, let’s just see what I can do. You know, it’s fun. So there’s no such thing as a mistake. You simply learn by careful observation about what happened. It’s like, well, what happened? And then you make notes in your little journal about what happened. And then you go, “Hmm, I wonder why that happened”.

[00:37:32] Kamori Cattadoris: Well, sometimes it’s obvious, sometimes it’s not, and you got to observe from year to year. So you sharpen your observation skills. You’re deeply connected to nature and, you know, that’s the kind of joy and passion that I try to share with other people because I want people to start gardening. It’s good for your health, it’s good for the community, it gets you outside in the sun so that you’re getting the nourishment from the sun that you need and the exercising you need. I mean, what’s not to like right?

Final Thoughts on Saving Seeds

[00:38:01] Erin Hoover: Uh any final thoughts?

[00:38:04] Kamori Cattadoris: No, that was pretty much it right there. It’s just, there’s no such thing as a mistake. Just go for it and try to just start.

[00:38:11] Erin Hoover: All right. Well, thanks for joining me today. This was great. I hope people learn how to save their seeds. And I’d love to hear from our listeners. If you have tried it and how it worked for you.

[00:38:20] Erin Hoover: Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Evergreen Thumb brought to you by the WSU Extension Master Gardener program volunteers and sponsored by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State. We hope that today’s discussion has inspired and equipped you with valuable insights to nurture your garden.

[00:38:37] Erin Hoover: The Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State is a nonprofit organization whose primary purpose is to provide unifying support and advocacy for WSU Extension Master Gardener programs throughout Washington State. To support the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State, visit www.mastergardenerfoundation.org/donate.

Whether you’re an experienced Master Gardener or just starting out, the WSU Extension Master Gardener program is here to support you every step of the way. WSU Extension Master Gardeners empower and sustain diverse communities with relevant, unbiased, research-based horticulture education.

[00:39:16] Erin Hoover: Reach out to your local WSU Extension office to connect with Master Gardeners and tap into a wealth of resources that can help you achieve gardening success.

To learn more about the program or how to become a Master Gardener, visit www.mastergardener.wsu.edu/get-involved. If you enjoyed today’s episode and want to stay connected with us, be sure to subscribe to future episodes filled with expert tips, fascinating stories, and practical advice.

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Questions or comments to be addressed in future episodes can be sent to hello@theevergreenthumb.com.

The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and do not imply endorsement by Washington State University or the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.