Hello Everyone,
I am Steve I am from Canada (Londo, ON) and I am fairly new to THP. That being said the more I Troll around the forums the more new people I see making posts which is awesome! I also have not run into a solid guide to saving the seeds of your favorite plant for next years growing. As mentioned I live in Canada and our season is not exactly what you could call long and ideal for growing peppers so for those people interested in growing the hotter varieties saving seeds and starting them early is almost a must.
I just thought I would share the technique that I used and some of my personal experiences in the short time that I have been attempting to save seeds.
First of all the most important thing to do when saving seeds or handling hot peppers in any way in abundance is to wear rubber gloves, to me there is not point in getting all the capsaicin oil on your hands and dealing with trying to wash it off for hours before you can scratch your eye again. (again from experience wearing the gloves have saved my eyes alot of pain and did not affect the end result in any way as far as I can tell)
The next step in saving your seeds is to pick the correct pods to give yourself the best chances of getting seeds that will propagate into strong plants when sewn the following year. To do this you should choose the pod that looks the healthiest and is RIPE (2 biggest keys from what I have learned) the first mistake i made was to pick the biggest pod of the year and let it dry (made sense to me) and the seeds from it did NOTHING. I then learned quickly that if you have a smaller pod but it is very healthy and fully ripe you increase your chances ten fold. You can easily find info on every pepper online as to what it looks like when fully ripe, I would personally let the pepper get to it's fully ripe color and leave it on the plant for a week or so for good measure.
To continue the topic on pods, when you get a plant that you feel you want to re-produce you should make sure to avoid cross-pollination as when a plant becomes cross-pollinated the seeds will become un-predictable and you may or may not get the same plant you want. To avoid this problem I made little bags out of breathable material to surround the flower and avoid bug cross-pollinating your pepper. This also limits your choices on pods so I typically do this to a few different flowers to give myself a better shot.
Fast forward a few months and your pod is ready to pick!!
As far as I can tell there are a few ways in which you can dry out the seeds (air dry, dehydrate, dry in pods, and probably many more) personally I take my pods slice them in half and remove all seeds, I then take away any seeds that look really small or discolored. I spread the seeds over a paper towel and lay them in a dry place out of the way of traffic and direct sunlight. The duration of time needed to dry seeds may vary depending on where, how, and what kind of seeds you are drying. Again I keep drawing on personal experience I dried them for about 2 weeks moving them around to not allow them to stick to the paper towel. After a few weeks I then tried to break the seeds, (i'm sure there is a better test as to not waste any seeds but it worked for me)
Once the seeds snap and no longer bend they are dry enough to be stored, storing seeds for me was easy I used small envelopes to ensure the seeds remain dry and do not gather moisture while being stored. From there I just made sure to store them in a dark place that had low humidity.
I hope this helps any new comers to the seed saving business, again this was just my experience there are more experienced people then me on this site I just wanted to post a quick guide (I only saved my jalapeno seeds never any super hots or anything rare yet). And I apologize that there are not any pics, I haven't graduated to that level yet! Please if anyone has any more info to add or pics please feel free!!
Good Luck,
-Steve
I am Steve I am from Canada (Londo, ON) and I am fairly new to THP. That being said the more I Troll around the forums the more new people I see making posts which is awesome! I also have not run into a solid guide to saving the seeds of your favorite plant for next years growing. As mentioned I live in Canada and our season is not exactly what you could call long and ideal for growing peppers so for those people interested in growing the hotter varieties saving seeds and starting them early is almost a must.
I just thought I would share the technique that I used and some of my personal experiences in the short time that I have been attempting to save seeds.
First of all the most important thing to do when saving seeds or handling hot peppers in any way in abundance is to wear rubber gloves, to me there is not point in getting all the capsaicin oil on your hands and dealing with trying to wash it off for hours before you can scratch your eye again. (again from experience wearing the gloves have saved my eyes alot of pain and did not affect the end result in any way as far as I can tell)
The next step in saving your seeds is to pick the correct pods to give yourself the best chances of getting seeds that will propagate into strong plants when sewn the following year. To do this you should choose the pod that looks the healthiest and is RIPE (2 biggest keys from what I have learned) the first mistake i made was to pick the biggest pod of the year and let it dry (made sense to me) and the seeds from it did NOTHING. I then learned quickly that if you have a smaller pod but it is very healthy and fully ripe you increase your chances ten fold. You can easily find info on every pepper online as to what it looks like when fully ripe, I would personally let the pepper get to it's fully ripe color and leave it on the plant for a week or so for good measure.
To continue the topic on pods, when you get a plant that you feel you want to re-produce you should make sure to avoid cross-pollination as when a plant becomes cross-pollinated the seeds will become un-predictable and you may or may not get the same plant you want. To avoid this problem I made little bags out of breathable material to surround the flower and avoid bug cross-pollinating your pepper. This also limits your choices on pods so I typically do this to a few different flowers to give myself a better shot.
Fast forward a few months and your pod is ready to pick!!
As far as I can tell there are a few ways in which you can dry out the seeds (air dry, dehydrate, dry in pods, and probably many more) personally I take my pods slice them in half and remove all seeds, I then take away any seeds that look really small or discolored. I spread the seeds over a paper towel and lay them in a dry place out of the way of traffic and direct sunlight. The duration of time needed to dry seeds may vary depending on where, how, and what kind of seeds you are drying. Again I keep drawing on personal experience I dried them for about 2 weeks moving them around to not allow them to stick to the paper towel. After a few weeks I then tried to break the seeds, (i'm sure there is a better test as to not waste any seeds but it worked for me)
Once the seeds snap and no longer bend they are dry enough to be stored, storing seeds for me was easy I used small envelopes to ensure the seeds remain dry and do not gather moisture while being stored. From there I just made sure to store them in a dark place that had low humidity.
I hope this helps any new comers to the seed saving business, again this was just my experience there are more experienced people then me on this site I just wanted to post a quick guide (I only saved my jalapeno seeds never any super hots or anything rare yet). And I apologize that there are not any pics, I haven't graduated to that level yet! Please if anyone has any more info to add or pics please feel free!!
Good Luck,
-Steve
