This is how I save chilli seeds from my homegrown chillies. Sharing it step by step. Here I’m saving seeds from Hungarian Hot Wax and Jalapeño.
You need chillies, a knife, a glass of water and a paper napkin or paper towel.
- Pick the chillies you want to use. Make sure they’re really ripe. I usually use the first chilli of each plant for seed saving, since it helps me avoid cross-pollination between varieties and it’s easier to control the plants early in the season.
- Cut the top of the chilli and slice it open.
- Scrape out the seeds.
- Put the seeds in a glass of water. Leave them there overnight.
- The next day, some seeds will be floating and some will be lying on the bottom of the glass. Remove all the floating seeds and throw them away — they’re bad seeds. Take the seeds from the bottom of the glass and move them to a paper towel or paper napkin to dry. I usually leave mine for about a week. Mark the paper towel with the chilli variety — it’s easy to forget if you’re doing several varieties at once.
- After a week, place your chilli seeds in an envelope, a paper bag, or wherever you want to store them. I make my own small paper envelopes for seeds, and mark them with variety and year.
This year I’m also saving the floating seeds — the “bad” ones. I want to do an experiment next year to double-check if they’re really bad, or if that’s just what I’ve always been told.
