How can I save seeds from my garden safely?

I’ve always enjoyed home-saving seeds from plants growing in my own garden as well as in the gardens of friends and family, but I was told recently that these can potentially carry diseases. Is this true, and if so, is it something I should be worried about?

Maura F, Co Wexford

Home-saving seed is a wonderfully rewarding way to enjoy the bounty of nature as well as to increase your stock of plants for little cost, other than the price of some seed compost and a few plant labels.

I do it all the time in my own garden as well as in others, and am forever in awe of the wealth of material that’s free for the picking, as well as the opportunities it provides for us gardeners to get our hands on species/varieties that might otherwise be unavailable.

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Home seed saving is also an excellent way to build our resilience as gardeners, as well as to select plants for a multitude of important traits such as increased vigour, disease resistance, productivity, floriferousness, length of flowering period, etc. Before the advent of big international seed companies, it was also the only way for gardeners to provide themselves with a secure supply of seed with which to grow food and flowers.

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All that aside, you’re correct in saying that seed can potentially be a route for certain diseases to enter your garden. For example, the popular cottage garden perennial known as lupin is vulnerable to a destructive fungal disease called lupin anthracnose, carried on the seed of infected plants. Certain kinds of leaf spot on beans can also be caused by bacterial and fungal diseases carried on infected seed, while the common disease known as damping off, which affects young seedlings, can also be carried this way. Likewise, seeds can also potentially carry the eggs or larvae of pests.

For this reason, it’s important to only ever collect seed from obviously healthy, vigorous plants, avoiding any seed that’s fallen on the ground, as well as to avoid sourcing seed online unless you’re certain it comes from a reputable supplier. Likewise, it’s also not advisable to collect seed on holidays abroad.