Saving Heirloom Pepper Seeds

      

     We grow mostly heirloom plants which means with a little planning most of the seeds we need to start plants next year can be saved from the plants we are growing this year.  Not only does this save on the cost of buying new seeds each year it also helps preserve genetic diversity.  

     Today we took steps to be able to save pepper seeds later in the summer. Pepper plants are in the Capsicum genus of the Solanacae family (tomatoes, tobacco, potatoes and eggplants are in this family as well).  All members of the Capsicum genus are inbreeding plants.  That means they do not need cross-pollination because they are self-pollinating.  That said, bees and other insects can cause cross-pollination in pepper plants.  If you want to save seeds (and know what you will be saving) you need to isolate the pepper plants from one another to ensure insects do not cause cross-pollination between variates.

     If you have a lot of land this can be done by separating pepper plants by 500 feet or more, but for those of us in urban environments with limited amounts of land there are two more effective techniques.  The first is to cage the entire pepper plant with a fine mesh that keeps bees out.  While this is effective we opt to use the second method:  When the pepper plants start flowering we choose a couple flowers that have not opened up and place a plastic bag (with a few tiny ventilation holes) around them.  Then when the flower opens it is isolated from insects and the resulting pepper is genetically pure.  Once the pepper forms the bags can be taken off (assuming you have some other method of identifying the isolated pepper for seed saving).

     Later in the summer once the peppers are ripe we'll harvest them, separate the seeds, and dry them for next year.  We'll keep you posted when their ripe and ready for processing!