How to Save Cucumber Seeds (including an extra step most people skip!)

Saving seeds from your garden can not only help reduce the cost of gardening, but over time you can actually create a plant that does well in your particular garden via genetic selection!
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Welcome to Auxhart Gardening! I’m Rachel, a small-scale southern gardener growing near Clemson, SC, zone 7b. I mainly garden in-ground, with containers as secondary production spaces.
Knowing where your food comes from is powerful, and empowering, and I believe we can change the world through gardening education.
The agricultural system is broken; we’ve monocultured nearly every major crop, forcing the use of chemical pesticides and inorganic fertilizers to maintain large-scale food production. I believe there’s a better way.
By teaching people to rely on themselves, even just a little, for their food supply, we might be able to create some breathing room for our strained food system, allowing for change to start happening.
By educating people about where food comes from and how to grow it, we can raise awareness about our broken agricultural system and form a community that understands how to fix it.
By forming a community, we can move toward creating real change in the world.
My goal is to educate; yes you can grow food, yes you can do it without chemicals, yes you can do it in your backyard or on your windowsill. And yes, that can make a difference in the world.

[@ScottHead]

This is one of the best seed saving videos on KZbin.

[@AuxhartGardening]

Thank you!!!

[@CynStone]

🥒 🥒 🥒🥒🥒 FANTASTIC ! You did the best explanation for cucumber seed saving that I've ever seen. WELL DONE. Cynthia 🌷

[@AmirH.232]

thank you

[@melodioushaste]

Thanks for explaining about the seeds sticking to the paper towel. That is something that would have happened to me.

[@cleverclogs2244]

I didn't bother remove the membrane from mine, and they were perfectly viable, sprouting their root in 3 days. I feel that the membrane dries, and seals the seed to prolong its shelf life...

[@AuxhartGardening]

Interesting! I've not seen anyone talk about not removing the membrane before.

[@cleverclogs2244]

@@AuxhartGardening Maybe I was just lucky they didn't go mouldy 😬

[@lukewilson3271]

Great video!

[@AuxhartGardening]

Thanks!

[@pamkrimsky1715]

This is a very helpful video. I had no idea how to save the cucumber seeds. Thanks.

[@AuxhartGardening]

You're welcome!

[@altoncheatham7383]

Thanks for sharing

[@ScottHead]

Nice to see your channel growing, you will be at 10K before you know it!

[@wardsdotnet]

Is this the same protocol for a saving seeds from a melon? Like if you have a cantaloupe and you want to save seeds from it

[@AuxhartGardening]

As far as I know, melon seeds don't have that mucus coating (but to be honest I don't eat any melons regularly). If they don't have that gel/mucus coating, they don't need to be fermented. For example a pumpkin wouldn't need this process, you could just dry the seeds immediately.

[@wardsdotnet]

Cucumbers are melons though, we just eat them in a less mature phase.

[@AuxhartGardening]

@@wardsdotnet well I have the most experience with watermelons and those seeds definitely don’t have that gel coating. So I’m not sure which do or don’t have it.

[@wardsdotnet]

Yeah, watermelon are so different from cantaloupe or honeydew. It's almost like they're different species and hard to believe they're not. I tried saving seeds from cantaloupe following pretty much the same steps here, which is also how I did it in the past with tomatoes, and I think it was just not a good cantaloupe and none of the seeds were viable

[@kennysilver9769]

David the Good said to just wash them off and dry.

[@cliveburgess4128]

I have a terrible time with cucumbers here in fl. grow, bloom, die, that's about it, any variety you think might work here? Thanks for the videos, Clive.

[@AuxhartGardening]

Have you tried growing them over winter? Usually dropping flowers without fruiting is due to heat or lack of water.

[@chiefredbird7315]

T u

[@cliveburgess4128]

@@AuxhartGardening Yes, it seems to be disease, fungal or otherwise, lack of water perhaps, big problem here, I have been trying to build decent soil, hopeful that this fall garden will be much improved, thrown everything at it I can think of, thanks!

[@JohnFerrerAkaEric]

Greetings from a Cola area gardener! That bug on top of the male flower you showed... is that bad for plants? My cayenne peppers are always covered in them, I keep killing them but they keep coming back!

[@AuxhartGardening]

I think it's a leaf-footed bug of some sort. They are a pest, but a mild one in my experience. Sunflowers are a great trap crop for them though, as they gravitate toward them. Your sunflowers may look sad, but everything else will get largely ignored.

[@JohnFerrerAkaEric]

@@AuxhartGardening Do the sunflowers need to be close to the garden or could they be like ten feet away to get the benefit? My garden/yard isn't terribly big but I think dwarf sunflowers may be something that could be a good functional decoration on my deck. For what its worth, Jerusalem Artichokes did not seem to have the same effect.

[@lekgotlatgae5955]

Uhm.. whats the problem with cross pollination with more than one variety? Also i’d like some advice on how to get the algorithm to work for me because i too want to start posting my gardening adventures in the harsh climate of Botswana.. it’ll be my first time doing it at such a scale.. my ashley cucumbers are super fragile but next season i’ma strictly plant them under a shaded area cause my they sure cant tolerate the heat

[@AuxhartGardening]

Cross pollination isn't a problem unless you care about keeping the same type of cucumber year over year. Crossed seeds will grow a cucumber, sure, but you won't be able to control what you get as well. It also makes it harder to select for the strongest seeds when you don't control the pollination. As for the algorithm, I'm not really the one to ask. I mostly just post videos that I would've wanted to see, and I do so regularly.

[@orsonzedd]

Why would I want genetic purity? That sounds dumb. I want my cucumbers to hybridize and make a special cucumber only for me

[@AuxhartGardening]

The only reason to keep genetic purity is just for consistency and health of the plant. A hybrid can be cool, but it's rare to get a viable one with characteristics you actually want, and can take several generations and a lot of work to get a hybrid variety to genetically stabilize. So if you're okay with getting different types of cucumbers every year, and having some of them be weak and unhealthy, then you don't need to worry about this.

[@orsonzedd]

@@AuxhartGardening I don't think that's true. Between all the Grex and landrace and ultra crosses I'm seeing out there I think genetic purity is kind of dumb and ignores that plants are subject to natural selection. I think it's better to hybridize your plants to adapt to your environment

[@wardsdotnet]

When you start talking about the test, you said "put my seeds up on that" but you didn't point out that you're only testing a few of the seeds! I worry a beginner might think they should put ALL the seeds in the bag!!!