Emily Chan
Gardening can be expensive, especially if you’re just starting out. To cut down on costs, you need to be innovative with your gardening techniques.
A great way to garden on a budget is by saving the seeds from your vegetables to grow instead of buying starts.
Kimi (@therealkimilove) is demonstrating on TikTok how to collect seeds from produce and how to tell which seeds won’t germinate.
It’s actually so much easier than it sounds!
The produce you’ll likely have the most success growing are peppers, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, jalapeños, citrus fruits, and strawberries.
So if you’re cooking peppers for dinner tonight, make sure to set those seeds aside. All you need to do is take the pepper’s core left over from your dinner prep, pull out the little seeds, and separate them into a cup. You can also save the veggie scraps for compost or freeze them to make vegetable broth.
An easy way to separate the seeds is by adding water to the cup and swirling your finger around to disrupt the clumps of seeds.
Additionally, you can determine which seeds are not viable by seeing if they float. Floating seeds will not sprout or grow, so you can toss them out.
Place the leftover seeds in a colander and rinse them out. Then lay them on a paper towel to dry. Next, pick out any of the brown seeds and the ones that look too small.
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