Saving Cucumber Seeds (Part 1)

We had a nice crop of cucumbers going.  I say this in the past tense because in exactly one day some very hungry little green worms ate them all down to the vine.  I have some cucumber seedlings that have sprouted and I'll be transplanting them into the garden next week, but there were a couple cucumbers that I left out on the vines in order to save their seeds for next year.

Pick out a nice looking cucumber and allow it to just continue growing.  It will eventually turn yellow and start getting soft.  That's when you want to go ahead and break it off the vine and bring it inside.

An overripe cucumber for seed-saving

Cut the cucumber in half and get a spoon and scoop out all of the seeds.  The seeds are large and plump and have a jelly-like protective layer around them.

A scoop of cucumber seeds

Here is what it looked like before I scooped out the seeds:

And here are the cukes after I've scooped out the seeds. 

I placed all of the seeds that I scooped out into a bowl.  I tried to carefully pull out any pieces of cucumber flesh or any mis-formed or empty seeds, leaving only nice looking full seeds in the bowl.

Next I added an equal amount of water into the bowl as I have seeds and I set this down on the window sill.

Cucumbers are one of those seeds that you have to ferment prior to saving.  I'll leave this in the window for 3-4 days and then I'll show you what comes next in Part 2 of this blog post probably in a week or so.  It is a good idea to save your own seeds and as long as you're starting off with heirloom, open pollinated seeds, you can save your own seeds year after year and not have to depend on seed companies or the mail carrier to deliver your seeds.  You'll have your own!