Free Seeds! How to harvest seeds from your groceries

How many of you have sprouted an Avocado seed? That’s right, everyone has but have you ever tasted the fruit from a Haas Avocado grown from seed? I had the great pleasure to visit a friend in South Florida who offered me a sample of the first official fruit from a seed he planted 7 or 8 years ago. Taste? Worst tasting avocado with a bitter aftertaste. After asking a Horticulture expert a few weeks later, he laughed and said NO avocado seed produces a genetic copy of the parent tree and only a tree grafted with a Haas, or other, scion guarantees a match.

Moral of the story: Keep on encouraging the kids to sprout the seeds but only grafted trees will produce the stuff great Guacamole is made from...

My Father would use dry beans from the store & they worked just fine.
All seeds on today market are hybridized, Europe & USA have been hybridizing seeds for three hundred years.
The book "Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding" tells the story of how man has  manipulated plants for hundreds of years.
https://www.amazon.com/Hybrid-History-Science-Plant-Breeding/dp/0226437132

I have always gotten my bean seeds at the grocery store. They have great varieties and way cheaper than the one sold for growing

I have found that at the Haas avacados that I prefer do not over winter in Raleigh, NC.

Do any avocados over winter in Raleigh?  You might be able to keep them over winter if you baby them by pulling a plastic sheet or blankets over them over winter.  I was able to keep most of our garden alive during the ice storm by erecting a low-tunnel over it, and placing a small heater inside.

I've a number of cabbage stems placed in the garden that have overwintered and been as effective (if not more so) than seed grown.

In the master gardeners classes I had taken they specifically warn against re-sprouting plants from the grocery store -- due to pathogens and diseases.  I am not sure what they would say about seeds from fruit (as long as the were not exposed to the air, handling or equipment).

I have some apple seedlings, one pear seedling, and several green onions on my windowsill at work from organic grocery store produce. I had the seeds in the refrigerator in a moist paper towel at work for 6-8 weeks before planting out. Several of the seedlings did not make it because they dried out when I went on one of my 10-day trips for work, others have been given out to coworkers, and I plan to plant a few out myself.

I also like to plant out and mulch seeds from my lunch if I find a good spot for them while I am working in the field.

If you save the bottom around the root core of a tasty onion and set it in a shallow container of water (I use the glass gobs from vases) it will begin growing roots. Once there are roots I plant the roots in a good potting mix with the little onion chunk above the soil line. I have had great success with them forming bulbs that can then be planted out in spring.

These things may have been already said:

1)Peppers and squashes often have mature seeds in them  Tomatoes, many veg you buy at the grocery store has viable seeds in it.

When I core a bell pepper sometimes I dry the core(the stem area with the seeds) on top of my refrigerator.

When I was growing "pickling" cucumbers they grew way bigger than regular cucumbers and the skin went yellow and they got really big and bitter.

After TASTNG THE OLD ONES.



I put them on the compost pile.

And pickling cucumber vines grew.

Now I have a berm I put things on/in I don't want to use right now in the food forest.

Most of the veg you buy at the grocery store has potential to have viable seeds.

The veg you grow, always let some pants live the entire life cycle.

If you miss out on the seeds they make, if you remember where they were......you can propagate by spreading the dirt.

I do a bit of seed saving from good watermelons and squash. I like to regrow green onions too after hacking the tops off.

Right now I've got 2 varieties of saved melon seeds growing. Wait I lied. I have 3 because the Hammies are a melon too! Hopefully they'll get there unlike last year well.. because bears.

I think if you live where it's to cold you can grow them in a pot and keep them as a house plant. Just keep them pruned

I've tried flax and chickpeas for the first time this year. I plan on trying beans next. Lots of beans.

Here are chickpeas.



I've also managed to root a few lemongrass cuttings from the store and they're doing well in pots for now.

I had a honeydew melon, so I buried the rinds as fertilizer and planted the seeds on top. I went out today to check on them and found that a slug munching on them, but otherwise they seem fine.

I hope I win a copy of your book. I did not buy many seeds for this year and have had mixed results. I have saved a line of patty pan squash I bought 10 years ago and all I do now is place some that have gone over in a part of the garden I want them  the next year and get volunteers every year without much visible hybridizong!

I saved cukes and okra and saved seed, which sprouted but then died. Mixed results with tomatoes (but hit with very cold weather) No peppers sprouted at all but eggplant and ground cherries did great!

My pink and blue tomatoes (store bought) all came up beautifully but NONE of the russets.

I am interested in reading about your brand because I have saved the same three varieties for years and have seen no mixing!

Thanks!

Last year I grew some ginger in my cold frame. This year I planted some, but it hasn't come up yet. I don't think it's going to, because it's been a long time. It was incredibly easy and I got some new ginger root to use in my cooking. Its provenance was the grocery story. Your post makes me want to try again.

Oh, and I grew some grocery story flax.

If I ever get more organized I'll keep notes, but mostly, I just plant, plant, plant....

Ellen Schwindt wrote:Last year I grew some ginger in my cold frame. This year I planted some, but it hasn't come up yet.

Ellen, I know I'm not the only one here who's been surprised to see that ginger takes its sweet time and comes up when it pleases. Keep an eye on it and you might get a pleasant surprise.

Love this. All my winter squash plants are from grocery squash. Last year i grew a bunch of the little snacking pepper seeds, ate lots of,"free" peppers, gave lots of plants away to friends. One friend put 2 of them in attractive pots and gave them to her grandkids for Christmas covered in sweet, red, kid-sized peppers

My kids think am crazy, they're probably right. Everything I buy I save seeds from. When I buy meat, I wash the Styrofoam trays and put a paper towel in them to put seeds on to dry. Also the plastic trays the little meals my husband eats when I'm not there work good for this. They also stack well if you have to pick them up off the table when company comes. I have even been know to save a few seeds from a tomato that tasted good at a restaurant, wrap them up in a napkin and smuggle them home. Yeah, I guess I am crazy

Tomatoes I find very satisfying to save 'n' trade seeds. You can start with some extra-tasty ones. Just spread a bit of the seedy pulp onto a piece of paper and let them dry out. You can then scrape them off and keep in a paper envelope until seed starting season. It get's more interesting starting the coming year: save fruit from the best (flavor, earliness, disease resistance, drought or cold tolerance....whatever the challenges may be in your own garden). Save that seed again and use it the next year. Note the plants that show the traits you're looking to develop, save their seeds, and keep on that way for a few years and *presto* (pesto?) you will quickly have your very own landrace.

Works for other plants and livestock as well, but I find tomatoes particularly satisfying.

A month after my post of the chickpeas, and record heat and drought in the PNW. Here's an update.



Here's a few cracked open. The pods had quite a bit of empty space, and rattled when shaken. Pods carried 0-3 seeds, most had 1 or 2.



I tried crunching them into the bowl to remove pods. I eventually shelled them individually into separate bowls. It was satisfying to do while watching TV.


So this was a fun experiment. I'll grow some of the ones I harvested. I might try sprouting some too.

Project Update

This is a project I have been working on for two years, a small tomato type proto landrace. The tomatoes on the plate were in a clamshell pack purchased from a grocery store in December 2019 and the seeds were saved from them. I grew out a selection of those seeds in 2020 and a sample of the resulting harvest is shown in the second photo. Note the diversity that is expressing itself.  It is likely that at least some of the original commercial varieties were hybrids, it is also likely that cross pollinating occurred in the commercial fields where they were produced, both being highly advantageous circumstances for my purpose. I saved seeds from each of these tomato strains and grew them out in 2021. The final photo shows a sample of the resulting harvest. Note how the diversity is exploding due to continued dehybridization as well as the wildcrossing that occurred during the 2020 growout. This is exactly what I want to see happening. I wonder what the 2022 season will bring with the new seeds saved from 2021, should be exciting once again if I decide to continue on with the project.

I did include two commercial varieties into each of the 2020 and 2021 growouts, hybrid and OP varieties that interested me, and will continue to do so every season to add to the genetics of the mix. Wildcrossing, backcrossing, introduction of new genetic material, continued growouts, selecting based on both positive and negative observed traits, bulk seed saving, and repetition of the process annually for an as yet undetermined amount of years would eventually create a self sustaining, genetically diverse landrace of strains that will remain fluid, and will be locally adapted and totally unique to my garden. That is my definition of a locally adapted landrace, which by its very nature creates both food and seed security and independence. I think these last two years of various crises and shortages and food price inflation bear out the importance and necessity of such things.

Honestly I am not a big fan of cherry type tomatoes, never have been. I did this as an experiment to prove a point to a bunch of naysayers who said that seeds cannot be saved and grown out from grocery store produce, and if someone tries it at best they will get poor quality or inedible produce. Others claimed flat out that seeds saved from hybrids will either be sterile or develop toxic produce.  So much misinformation out there, much of it borne of misguided ignorance.  A lot of work for me just to prove a point, but I have found it to be entertaining. Landrace development is kinda second nature to me now after two decades of developing them for my personal food supply, so this project has been no big deal to me. Just takes a multi year commitment to see it through.  Unfortunately I am losing interest so I might just abandon this project in preference to projects that are more important to me.

Commercial tomatoes from a retail clamshell pack purchased December 2019:

Sample harvest from 2020 growout of seeds saved from the purchased tomatoes shown in previous photo (the larger tomatoes top right and bottom left were not part of the experiment):

Sample harvest from 2021 growout of seeds saved from 2020 harvest as shown in previous photo:

Last year we grew out some pear seedlings from pears found dumpster-diving. Liberate the Garbage! They are now planted on our land. Interesting to see if they survive the winter. Well, if the cold or the deer get them I suppose it's no big deal. It was literally trash to start with...

I do not remember if I or someone else mentioned this before, but when I was studying to become a master gardener I learned that transplanting/resprouting stuff from the store could spread disease and pathogens.  You might want to look up techniques to sterilize and/or disinfect seeds before using them.  THis is not something I have have needed to do myself, but I can definitely see use cases...

I just bought some "yams" to grow out.
The thing I'm wondering is, are they yams or are the sweet potatoes.
The store hade some long cylinder shipped tubers segments marked as nagaimo and and some even thinner ones marked tiegun nagaimo.
Those are certainly yams, as I've eaten some and they exhibited the traditional slime during processing.

The three bought, I'm not sure about.
It mostly matters because I would like to eat the leaves...

Ebo David wrote:...transplanting/resprouting stuff from the store could spread disease and pathogens.  You might want to look up techniques to sterilize and/or disinfect seeds before using them.

It might not matter if you're literally buying produce from a store, but any sterilization protocol will also destroy all the microbes that the mother plant deposited on the exterior of the seed to help it grow. I seek to increase the diversity of my soil microbiome and don't really want to sterilize anything like that.

William Bronson wrote:are they yams or are the sweet potatoes.

they sure look like a few different kinds of sweet potatoes I grow (for the leaves, mostly! good stuff.)

Nagaimo is a yam (Dioscorea polystachya). The tiegun cultivar is supposed to have superior nutritional/medicinal qualities. I am not sure how realistic it is to start them from the roots in the store, but if you try it please post because I'd love to know!

Patrick Mann wrote:I saw the phase "grocery store cover crop" somewhere on permies. That's what I do. Flax is my favorite - I buy pounds of it for cover cropping.

Interesting! I always thought of Flax as being a vertical plant, something like oats or wheat. I just checked out "growing Flax" on the net and it truly does look like a good 'cover crop' in the photos and it listed info that the plants can grow very long.

By the way, Field Radishes are also a great 'cover crop' as the roots can go as far down as 4 ft. into the soil - opening up pathways for other crops root systems as well as being good drainage.

Jesse Glessner wrote:

Patrick Mann wrote:I saw the phase "grocery store cover crop" somewhere on permies. That's what I do. Flax is my favorite - I buy pounds of it for cover cropping.

Interesting! I always thought of Flax as being a vertical plant, something like oats or wheat. I just checked out "growing Flax" on the net and it truly does look like a good 'cover crop' in the photos and it listed info that the plants can grow very long.

By the way, Field Radishes are also a great 'cover crop' as the roots can go as far down as 4 ft. into the soil - opening up pathways for other crops root systems as well as being good drainage.

I happened to grow both daikon radish and flax last fall to keep ground covered as well as getting living roots in soil as long as the weather permits. They were quite cold hardy and stayed green till Jan when temperature dropped down to teens.  After they died back, I examined the soil. daikon drilled down over a foot as expected. As for flax, the soil underneath was filled with fine roots, really dark and had excellent structure. I potted some up for my transplants with good results. I read about flax roots associating with mycorrhiza fungi and wonder if I should scatter more flax seeds around as to increase the soil microbe diversity.

Anyway, buying bulk flax seeds from the grocery store would be so much cheaper than buying seed packs, even though the germination rate might be a lot lower.

I also see you can pick up 5# of Daikon radish seed from an online feed store for $28.  Visit your local feed stores and see what they have.  Also, think about growing heirloom when you can, like the Eastham Turnip -- which are yummy!

I bought a bag of 13 oz Bob's red mill flax seeds for a little over $2. I tested the germination on a paper towel and almost all germinated the next day! Huge saving compared to just a few hundred seeds in the seed pack.

@Christopher, I was just speaking about things brought in and not widespread sterilization of the soil (which is a very bad idea).  My real message is to proceed carefully and ask experts like extension agents about what are problems and what are not.  If you know where your seed comes from, it makes the questions a lot easier.  If it comes from a local source, then great!  If it comes from overseas, then I would think twice about that seed, and look into diseases, pests, potential invasives, that could come from that source.

On avocados:
My kids love sprouting the seed with toothpicks over water, but that’s as far as any I’ve ever started got. Then I read somewhere on the Internet (so you know it’s true) that most seeds from grocery store avocados will never produce a plant that bears fruit.  Has anyone had any luck ever sprouting their own fruitful avocado tree?

Beth Bauer wrote: Then I read somewhere on the Internet (so you know it’s true) that most seeds from grocery store avocados will never produce a plant that bears fruit.  Has anyone had any luck ever sprouting their own fruitful avocado tree?

I have one in the yard that sprouted from compost, it's taller than me and I've topped it a few times (where I live they get very, very tall). But Dr Google (legit source) says a tree grown from seed will take at least 10 years to bear fruit, so no news on that front yet. I have used the leaves for tea and cooking, and the birds love it, so we got that.

@ Tom Knippel, I have a very similar landrace of cherry type tomatoes in my garden. Mine started with an accidental cross between pimpinellifolium and who knows what and in successive generations made all kinds of shapes and colors. Then two or three years ago the woman bought two different kinds from the store. It was in winter, and those tomatoes were grown in Canada, apparently in a heated and artificially lighted greenhouse. Anyway, they quite surprisingly tasted good, so I planted the seeds and mixed them up with my older landrace. A tomato that came in seeds from Joseph Lofthouse that I named Captain Crunch and a weird, very stalky little tomato that I think came from you is in there too. I was in hopes that stalky one would make bigger tomatoes and not need staked but it turned into cherry type instead. How knows, maybe it crossed with something else or was already crossed when I got it. I'm like you in that I don't pay cherry tomatoes much attention, I just eat them as snacks while working in the garden.

I usually don't even plant them as there are always so many volunteers. I've started some this year because three different ones showed up last year that the woman here really liked. It might be fun, but doubt I'll ever mess with it to plant a big patch of older seed just to see how many different kinds show up.

Mark Reed wrote:@ Tom Knippel, I have a very similar landrace of cherry type tomatoes in my garden. Mine started with an accidental cross between pimpinellifolium and who knows what and in successive generations made all kinds of shapes and colors. Then two or three years ago the woman bought two different kinds from the store. It was in winter, and those tomatoes were grown in Canada, apparently in a heated and artificially lighted greenhouse. Anyway, they quite surprisingly tasted good, so I planted the seeds and mixed them up with my older landrace. A tomato that came in seeds from Joseph Lofthouse that I named Captain Crunch and a weird, very stalky little tomato that I think came from you is in there too. I was in hopes that stalky one would make bigger tomatoes and not need staked but it turned into cherry type instead. How knows, maybe it crossed with something else or was already crossed when I got it. I'm like you in that I don't pay cherry tomatoes much attention, I just eat them as snacks while working in the garden.

I usually don't even plant them as there are always so many volunteers. I've started some this year because three different ones showed up last year that the woman here really liked. It might be fun, but doubt I'll ever mess with it to plant a big patch of older seed just to see how many different kinds show up.

Interesting, thanks for posting as I enjoy reading of your various garden doings.  I was not going to do a growout this year but then I acquired some more cherry varieties from a retail source that I found interesting, so I want to get them crossed into the mix.  This is another project of mine that is quickly getting out of control but I just find them so entertaining to grow to see what comes about, even if I do not like eating them.  I am going to do a fifty plant growout and jam the plants together in a quad layout to foster wild cross pollination, this seems to work well plus saves garden space.

If you ever wanted to exchange mixes of cherry/small tomato types I would love to reconnect with you.  A simple trade maybe next season, just a random mix of what we each have that we find interesting.  I know that if something interests you it will interest me as we think a lot alike.  Just bear in mind that mine is a young project, at present a non-acclimated proto-landrace.  Crossing has not occurred in any multi generational depth yet.

Off topic, but I am starting an okra proto-landrace this year.  I have acquired over two dozen OP and hybrid varieties along with a couple of unintentional wildcrosses and breeding mixes from private sources.  It is kinda the same concept as the cherry type tomato proto-landrace, except no seeds saved from grocery store produce.  I am not a big fan of okra but I do not dislike it.  I find it to be a fascinating plant and I know it is a highly nutritious food source.  It does well in my northern climate as long as I grow the plants in one of my hot microclimate areas.  It has been on my to-do list for many years and current events are pushing these projects, seed acquisitions, and growouts into much higher priority.

-Tom

I guess great minds do think alike as they say. I have six new varieties of okra going into my mix this year. I picked them all because of being described as faster maturity. It grows very well here and gets really big. I'm going to try to tame it down some, selecting for shorter, more branching plants along with the quick maturity. It is a very pretty plant; I think it's related to hibiscus. I might just for fun try to select for larger more colorful flowers.

My new things in past couple of years is sweet sorghum, soybeans, amaranth and peanuts. Also added a bunch of new cowpeas. They are all doing very well here.  I have never seen such big and numerous nitrogen nodules on any other plant than the peanuts. I'm not sure about the amaranth, it's also a very pretty plant but huge, and those tiny seeds are a pain to harvest and clean. Plus, I'm not sure what to do with it.

Last night I bought a bag of dried peas at an Indian grocery store.
Whole, dried peas are hard to find in mainstream grocery stores near me.
I may go back the yellow ones, if these sprout.

I get a lot of onions and potatoes out of the garbage.
What we don't eat, we plant.
Just picked up a pile of green onions from Aldi.
I've already started planting them.

The goal is to populate my lands with endemic self seeding or perennial edibles, so I just let them go, with no real plans to harvest.
The onions I planted over the winter are 8" tall, and I'm hoping they go to seed this year.

Ok, this is wee bit off topic,, but bear with me??


We go to a very generous food pantry that's maybe 20 minutes from my house.
My aunts church runs it, and she was practically begging us to come get some food.
We don't much eat canned goods  unless we are broke, and we have been  blessed to have steady work for the last 4 years.

So we mostly we are going there for ready to eat foods that our mentally ill cousin can and will eat, and lots beat up produce, like cabbage, that is unwanted by others.
We also bring all kinds of surplus back to The People's Pantry of Price Hill, which is a leave-what-can, take-what-you need stand.
We are very lucky and we know it.
We have needed pantries in the past, and we abhore food waste, so this is what we do.
We leverage our connections and vehicles to spread the abundance around.

Today I took something just for myself.
A bag of navy beans.
To plant.
I think it's OK, since they were quite unwanted, and we packed the People's Pantry to near bursting.
Both blue berry containers got 4 or 5 beans as did the raspberry barrel.
Between the peas and these beans there could soon be legume greens popping up everywhere 😋.
It's been a while since I last strew about seeds with great abandoned, but it is a great joy of mine.