Saving seeds from year to year was once essential for farmers. Nowadays, we are used to buying seeds every year, otherwise the seedlings are already ready for transplanting. Rediscover how to store seeds it’s fascinating, it saves money and it also helps preserve old varieties.
Zucchini belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family, which also includes squash, cucumber, watermelon, and melon. It is one of the most common vegetables: easy to grow and generous in terms of production, a real “must” for our vegetable garden. This cultivar guarantees an abundant and continuous harvest throughout the production cycle. The most common varieties, such as American black squash, Roman squash, or the costoluta Florentine variety, bear fruit continuously from May to late summer and, if grown well, until late October. .
Producing and reusing zucchini seeds is not difficult : the plant is characterized by different male and female flowers, it will therefore be necessary monitor pollination Moreover, to have the seeds ready, it is necessary overripe fruit because zucchini is eaten as a vegetable when botanically immature.
But let’s see step by step how we can get zucchini seeds for next year.
Contents [Ocultar]
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The importance of saving seeds
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Select the plant
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Avoid zucchini hybridization
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Safety distance
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hand pollination
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Harvest fruits and collect seeds
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Procedure for drying and storing seeds
Contents
The importance of saving seeds
Already sprouted zucchini plants, which are normally found in agricultural consortia, are in fact comfortable and ready to be transplanted. Already treated against fungal diseases, and selected in the laboratory, they guarantee an abundant harvest. However, from the point of view of an organic garden, this is not the best option: the seeds are treated from the start, and the chemical treatments continue on the seedlings.
Additionally, the strains are almost always F1 hybrids. , selected in the laboratory and by forced crosses, guarantee a plant with excellent characteristics, which however will not be preserved by the following generations of plants, born from their seeds. It suffices to consult the catalogs of the major seed and seedling producers to realize that, among the varieties of zucchini offered for retail sale, more than 70% are F1 .
Hybrid seed is not a bad thing in itself, but the massive use of these crosses is becoming a danger for biodiversity: old and local varieties are being lost. A seed made in the laboratory will not have the ideal characteristics for the climate and soil of a given medium, the fact of buying hybrids every year does not allow the zucchini plant to adapt over time developing a variety ideal for the place where it is grown.
Self-cultivated seeds, on the other hand, allow over time to have a cultivar of zucchini that is increasingly adapted to the context in which it is found.
Select the plant
The selection of the plant is essential for we will always have to choose the flowers to pollinate in the healthiest, freshest and most exuberant plants. If not necessary, we try to avoid underdeveloped or unhealthy plants.
Variety of American black squash.
Make sure you have planted non-hybrid seeds, or at least F1-type non-hybrids. About 15 days after transplanting, the plant begins to produce its first fruits. It is advisable to remove these first fruits when they are still small (no more than 5 cm), in order to “stimulate” the plant to grow vigorously and produce more fruits.