Cucumber Seeds For Next Year

A friend provided me some seeds from a white cucumber, grown by her family for years in North Carolina for slicing and pickling - first time I’ve gotten my pickles to be crisp. I’ve had bad luck with my cuke crops lately and was down to my last few seeds so decided I needed to focus on seed production this year. I let my earliest cukes ripen so I could insure I got them before the typical plant calamity of recent years -I ended up with four. I harvested and let them sit around for a few weeks and when they were very soft, I scooped out the seeds and fermented each cuke separately for a week in a quart jar of water. I generally followed the guidelines from this site. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Ask-Our-Experts/Organic-Gardening/How-to-Save-Cucumber-Seeds.aspx. After fermenting, I washed them well and here they are ready to go to the dehydrator – still separated by cuke, along with some Anaheim chili peppers.