How to harvest Lupin Seeds / Save Lupin Plant Seed ?
How to harvest Lupin Seed / Save Lupin Seeds?
Lupin flowers are a beautiful plant which come in a wide variety of colours ranging from purples, pinks, yellows and whites. Often its a good idea to save lupin seeds from a healthy plant to grow on the following year.
Heres a quick guide on saving lupin seeds
To simply save lupin seed from your flowering plant you will need the following items.
1. A brown paper envelop or seed saver packet to place the seeds into
2. A tub to collect the pods
3. Time
See photo above of lupin seeds in seed pods
If you have not already it is a good idea to label your lupin plants throughout the growing season with the colour and variety that particular plant is, this makes it easier in the future for when harvesting seeds from your plants so you can label the seeds correctly.
Now your ready!
First choose your plant you wish to harvest seed from, here we have a lupin plant “Lupin gallery white” my personal favourite
See photo above of a lupins plant pods where the lupin seed is not ready to harvest. One way you can tell this is because the lupin pod is still green. If you open them at this stage the seeds will be moist inside. Wait until the lupins seed pods have turned black like the photo below.
Once the seed pods have turned dark and when you shake the seed pods you can hear the seeds within the pod rattle, then the lupin seeds are ready to harvest.
Squeeze the seed pods gently to open them, if you do this too hard then the seeds can shoot out. You must save the seeds from the pods into paper envelopes otherwise they can rot which we do not want, see the envelopes here.
Seeds already saved securely into the seed envelopes.
Feel free to leave me a comment with how you are getting on saving lupin seeds or if you found this guide useful ?
Hi,
I’ve collected my Lupin seeds in early August. How long will they keep for ?
Hi Phillip,
I find Lupin seeds last around 2 years, provided they are dried out thoroughly then kept in a brown paper envelope… that is secured and water tight. Also it helps placing the envelope in a metal tin to stop animals from finding them and nibbling them.
I have a question. Of the lupin seed pods were picked when they were a dark green are they still good to use? How would I get then to turn brown?
I’ve picked some lupine seeds but they’re still green, how are the chance for me to make them sprout?
Hi Dee,
Ideally you would leave them on the plant until they have turned brown, you can leave them on a light windowsill on some dry kitchen roll and let them turn brown naturally.
Hi Karo,
The seeds are green or the pods are green? Best thing to do is get some dry kitchen towel and leave them by a window to naturally dry and ripen.