How to collect cucumber seeds at home with your own hands?

Table Of Contents

Which fruit to choose?
When to collect seeds?
How to harvest cucumber seeds?
How to get seedlings?
Transfer

Not all gardeners buy new colorful bags every season because they know how to collect cucumber seeds at home. This process is not particularly difficult, but has its own nuances.

No matter how you like the variety, you need to pay attention to whether it is a hybrid, which is indicated by the letters F1 or F2. Even when it is possible to find seeds in such fruits, cucumbers will not tie, and if they grow, they will lose their qualities. Excellent yields, disease resistance remain in hybrids for only one season.

Which fruit to choose?

Breeders develop crop varieties by crossing the best plants. Sustainable characteristics are not obtained in one year. This kind of work takes a lot of time. It is necessary to collect cucumber seeds from fruits where 4 chambers are present, since female flowers are formed in them, on which the ovary is formed. Already in a season, a delicious harvest will ripen from seeds collected by one's own hands.

To prepare them, on the strongest bush, you must not pick the largest fruits. You can mark these cucumbers with a ribbon, put something under the base, otherwise, if they hit the ground, they will rot if it rains. So that the fruits do not interfere with the emergence of a new ovary, cucumbers should be left on the seeds not at the beginning of the season, but at the end.

Under the film, hybrids are usually planted, which self-pollinate. Varietal plants in a closed greenhouse, can be grown if bees fly into it, otherwise the fruits will not set.

When to collect seeds?

In order to preserve the quality characteristics of the variety, the next year many fruits ripened on the bushes, pleasing with bright green color, delicate taste, seed cucumbers are left on lashes until frost. Grains must survive not only the summer heat, but also the autumn temperature fluctuations. After natural stratification, the next year, sprouts will sprout together, a lot of ovaries will form, on which cucumbers will tie.

These green fruits contain enzymes that help digest animal fats faster. They have vitamins, and iron, and magnesium, and phosphorus, and calcium. Fiber normalizes bowel function. Alkaline s alts neutralize acids, prevent the conversion of carbohydrates into fats.

Seeds are selected under a combination of three conditions:

fruit turns brown;
cucumber becomes soft;
dry tail.

From these grains you can harvest next year. They will keep properties for several seasons.

How to harvest cucumber seeds?

In order for each grain to sprout in spring, you need to know how to harvest them, and pay special attention to this process. Whether the quality characteristics of the variety will be preserved depends on how the cucumber seeds were harvested.

Finding a fruit with a square section:

Cut it into 2 identical halves.
The grains are removed from the front.
Having cleaned the chamber, the seeds, together with the pulp, are placed in a glass of plastic or glass, filling it by a third.
If there is not enough liquid, add water.
The container is covered with gauze and sent to a warm place where fermentation should take place. Fermentation lasts from 24 hours to 3 days.

When a cucumber starts to rot, bacteria start to grow. To make them die, such a fruit is treated with a solution of copper sulfate.

After the grains are cleared of pulp and shell, they are poured with water. Seeds that sprout will be at the bottom of the container, empty ones will float to the surface. The grains are subjected to such manipulation several times, after which they are washed again and transferred to the material. To dry them better, you can put a cloth on the radiator or place it near another heating device.

Seeds are packed in cloth bags or stored in paper bags at a low temperature in the dark for several years. In the first season, the bushes grown from these seeds will produce many male flowers, and there will be few fruits.

If you do not want to wait until the seeds stand, they need to be heated for a couple of hours in the oven at 50 degrees. Cucumber seeds give the best inputs in the fourth year, they can be sown in the sixth, but not all will come out of the ground.

Be sure to take into account that if, after fermentation, the shells of the collected seeds are not separated and dried, the sprouts will not sprout.

How to get seedlings?

In the southern regions, the seeds of the crop are sent immediately to the open ground. Summer residents do not grow cucumbers in the fields, but in small plots. In order for the root to take root better, 1-2 grains are placed in each glass and pot of peat. Before disembarkation:

The bag of seeds is kept on a battery or in the sun for 14 days.
To improve germination, the grains are heated for two hours in a thermos.
Put in a solution of potassium permanganate for 30 minutes.
Rinse with running water.

After soaking on the third day, sprouts hatch. Seeds are placed on the surface of the earth, covered with soil with a layer of 15 ml. The soil is lightly sprayed, but not watered. In this way, prepare seedlings in each pot.

Capacities with seed grains are installed in boxes that are moved to the window, or sent to the greenhouse, covered with plastic wrap. At 25 degrees Celsius, the first sprouts will not have to wait more than 3 days. When they appear, the air temperature must be reduced so that the cucumbers do not begin to stretch. In cloudy weather, you need to turn on the fluorescent lamp so that the plant is not dark. Daylight for seedlings must be organized for at least 10 hours a day.

The film is removed with the emergence of seedlings. When the first leaves are formed, water is poured into each pot. It is better to do this with a spoon, since excessive moisture will only interfere with young bushes.

Transfer

After 3 weeks after sowing, 2 leaves appear, and cucumbers can be sent to the garden. Then the roots will not get sick and take root well. Before this, the land is fertilized with rotted manure and disinfected with a solution of potassium permanganate and Fitosporin.

Seedlings develop at a temperature of 16 degrees, growth stops when it gets colder, so it needs to be moved into the ground when the air warms up well. In the early days, it is advisable to cover the bushes with pine or spruce branches from the sun's rays. If you collect cucumber seeds correctly and take care of the plants, they will reward you with juicy and green fruits. Harvesting begins one and a half months after planting in the garden.