Garden season may be winding down, but some of its best souvenirs hide inside the vegetables and flowers already growing outside. Saving seeds lets gardeners carry favorite varieties into another growing season, and it can turn one especially delicious tomato, sturdy bean plant, or gorgeous flower into next year’s starting lineup.
Not every seed deserves a spot in the envelope marked “Definitely Plant This Again.” Open-pollinated varieties usually give gardeners the most predictable results, while hybrids can produce offspring with a grab bag of traits, and crops that cross-pollinate can create some very unexpected descendants.
