Collecting Chili & Pepper Seeds

In a bid to save on buying seeds or new plants, this year I've tried to save some seeds from a few plants I've grown. I've specifically planned to save those from my different Chili varieties and Pepper (Sweet) plants:

Thai Dragon Chili Seeds
Tabasco Seeds
Inferno Seeds
Pepper (sweet) Seeds

Saving these was very easy, for the Pepper (Sweet) when going to cooking these; I saved as many seeds as possible from inside the Pepper, placed them in a small open bowl, left them in a light but not sunny area and waited for them to dry out naturally. The same was done for the Chilies, but I did allow some of the Chilies to dry out naturally before de-seeding.

Drying out took a few days to a week, and they should stay the same natural light colour as they were inside the vegetable, I have done this before and by mistake placed in direct sun, to which the seeds burned and turned a dark brown colour, not good. Also, it is handy to label the bowls, I forgot to do this and ended up having to lick a seed to see if it was a Pepper or Chili seed, turned out to be Chili and it was very hot.

                                                                  Photo: Laura Lunt  Date: January 2012

I now have a lot of seeds collected and some will be sown for this year, which I should hopefully to doing very soon. For the rest, I've decided to create a little seed collection gift pack, which I'll be sending out to a few family members and friends, and hope they have fun growing them this year along with me.