Prior planning prevents poor plantings performance

It may surprise many but in the northern temperate climates our gardening year is almost at an end where all the plants that will give a useful harvest have already done so or are in their final days of starting their last late long production cycle . For many the Covid event saw the shelves emptied of seeds within a few days of them being put on the shelves . 
I'm not sure how the seed situation is going to pan out next spring other than seeds will be even expensive . I'm planning not to have to go into any place I don't need to , so will be seed saving like mad this season  .  
So far I have collected ...broad ( Flava ? )  beans , red kidney beans , white  French climbing beans , big marrow fat peas & mange tout peas , spring cabbage seed from last year , this years spinach seed &  last years  cauliflower seed.
 
 Now's the time to pick the biggest ripest juiciest strawberry , if you want more of the same size & quality strawberry . plant runner may not give the same fruit .   Shave the skin & seeds off it .....     Eat the strawberry.

 Put the seeded skin in a small capped bottle of water , shake it hard twice a day and in a week or so the seeds will separate from the decaying flesh . Every couple of days  let it settle for a few minutes  so the seeds fall to the bottom  but so there is some suspended whitish matter that can be carefully poured off . 

Then refill the bottle to half full with new clean cool water recap and shake like mad again .

 On the day you judge it to be when there is not a lot of seeds & stuff left .  Stretch an old nylon ( pop) sock over a glass & gently pour the sediments & seed over the material let it drain a few hours .  Carefully slip the sock off the glass and put it on a new clean glass and put it somewhere warm & dark to dry out for 48 hours , then  gently scrape the dried seeds off the nylon with the bowl of a teaspoon  . Pop the seeds in the freezer for an hour or so to stratify them then store in the fridge overnight , to bring them through a quick winter & into a new spring .

 Next day sow in a small tray in 2 inches of fine sieved compost giving a very light covering of more sieved compost ( I used our kitchen sieve to get the fine quality needed ).  Now  moisten them with clean water from a trigger spray then put them on a north facing window cil . Keep doing a daily moistening & in a few days the seeds will germinate . 
When they get their second set of leaves ( the true leaf... not the first seed leaf )  carefully prick them out and put one plant in a four inch plant pot and grow them on to next spring  in an unheated glasshouse 

 Because they are basically biennials they should produce fruit next year as they will have gone though their first winter .

 You can also do this to your best tomato . slice the tomato in 1/4 inch slices across the ir equatorial area , scoop the seeds out , use the bottle of water trick again . Dry in the same manner but this time drying make it four days in a dark dry warm place . Scrape the dried seeds up and put them in a small air sealed sachet adding the dates & what seed it is . Stratify the seeds before sowing them. 
 Sow them indoors next year three weeks before your last frost date &  pot up for inside growing till the last frost date is a week in past then put them in the glasshouse or outside 2 feet apart .
  
This year because I had no viable tomato seeds left couldn't get any in the shops garden centers or online .  
So I took a slice of big shop fresh imported from Spain juicy tomato in early mid April  laid it on a 2 " bed of fine sieved compost ,covered it in 1/4 " of fine sieved peat,  kept them moist but not too moist , potted them when 1& 1/2 " high up in old yoghurt pots with drainage holes in their bases , had them planted out in their final tubs in the unheated glasshouse by mid May , did the same with two really sweet red  ripe cherry tomatoes . They produces 158  decent strong healthy plants betwen them . 
I put 18 in tubs in the glasshouse and something like 20 in the veg & front flower beds .

 I turned several three gallon buckets of big & cherry toms into pressure canned tomatoes as well as we were consuming untold numbers of ready to eat tomatoes .
 
We have had many many pounds of 5 & 1/2 ounce & cherry tomatoes ( estimated at least 60 pounds over all )  as I'd stripped all leaves off below any marble sized cluster of tomatoes & took out all the side shoots .  

I sold most of the excess tomato plants off @ three for £1. the rest went into making compost .

   A great "Seed Saving 101".

That is very labor intensive!  My strawberry bed is old and getting renewed next year.  Not a single berry this year was had.  

Thanks, plantoid!

Actually it took longer to type out and correct than it does to do it & that includes filling the seed tray up & sowing the seeds .

OhioGardener wrote:   A great "Seed Saving 101".

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