How to Save Cucumber Seeds the Crazy Easy Way & Make Gardening Easier Every Year

This landrace cucumber project is really working out well. We're harvesting lots of cucumbers, plus we're saving seeds that will adapt to our own backyard and growing style. Instead of growing cucumbers on trellises, we grow cucumbers on the ground, as a sprawling ground cover.

Today David The Good shares how to save cucumber seeds while breeding your own heirloom variety.

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To breed a landrace pickling cucumber variety, we mixed multiple types of cucumber together in our gardens and let them interbreed, and then we mixed in more varieties the next year. Then, we save from each plant that produces. Later, we'll select for flavor and other characteristics.

These cucumbers are being grown on the ground as a ground cover in the Grocery Row Gardens. We picked over 163lbs of cucumbers so far, and now it's time to save seeds from cucumbers that have matured. If you let your cucumbers ripen on the vine to bright yellow and/or orange, then you can save cucumber seeds that are fully ripe. Picking cucumbers when they are green will not give you viable seeds - you have to wait until cukes are mature, then harvest the big, melon-like yellow cucumbers. Inside, you'll find hundreds of seeds which can then be washed, dried and saved. Saving cucumber seeds is really easy - and if this cucumber landrace works out well, they'll become easier to grow each year as they adapt to our gardens and style of gardening.

Thanks for watching! Check out the work of Joseph Lofthouse, and particularly his book Landrace Gardening for more information on how saving seeds for a landrace can make your gardening easier and add fun and excitement to your harvests. You can also subscribe to Joseph Lofthouse's YouTube channel at @landracegardening5631