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Friday, September 2, 2022

Seed Saving


I have been saving seeds from the plants in my garden. I have looked up information on collecting seeds. Hopefully, I am doing it right. It will be interesting in the Spring to see how well the seed I have saved germinate. And then next summer to how the fruits or flowers compare to their parents.

I have many Bachelor Buttons that came up voluntarily. I collected a bunch of seed heads. 

Bachelor Button Seed Heads

I am mixing together several different herb and flower seeds as I collect them. I think it will be fun to have a mixture to sow in an area of the yard. I have cilantro, dill weed, bachelor buttons, calendula, borage, and cosmo in my mix thus far.


Calendula seeds develop on the maturing flower head in a visually interesting way. The shape of calendula seeds are quite unique, too.

Looking directly down at a seed head of calendula.
Calendula seeds 


Borage usually self sows very readily. I have included borage seeds in my mix just as insurance.

Borage

I have these gorgeous rust colored sunflowers that I am saving seed from.

Also some ordinary sunflowers.

This sunflower was still opening up one morning.
Can you spot the sleeping bee resting on the flower?
I heard that once the rays have fallen off of the sunflower blooms the heads can be cut and dried in a paper bag as the seeds continue to mature. The seeds look quite under developed at this stage, but I hope they turn out to be viable.

This is my first time saving tomato seeds. I have Black Krim, Rutger, and Roma varieties.

I followed the fermentation method for saving wet seeds with my tomatoes and my cucumber.

I wanted to save pickling cucumber seeds. I don't remember the exact variety of cucumbers that I planted. I didn't grow anything that would cross with cucumber so, I'm sure the seeds I saved will grow some kind of cucumbers.

Once the seeds were clean and dry I put them in labeled, paper envelopes for storage.

Do you save seeds from your garden? 




4 comments:

  1. Oh! Your flowers are so beautiful...thank you for sharing! I am also hoping to save my seeds this year. I spent this morning planting some different flower seeds in trays. My sweet peas have come up! So excited♥
    Blessings to you~
    Gabrielle♥

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  2. Thank you for the comment Gabrielle!
    Sweet pea flowers are so pretty! Those are flowers that I have never grown, but I need to sometime. :)

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  3. I hope all of your seed saving goes well! Hopefully those floral snips will help out with some of that. :) I use mine a lot for cutting off seed stalks and things like that.

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    1. Thank you for the comment, Sunshine Country!
      Yea, I am sure the snips will be handy, in fact, I was using them earlier today. :) And the seed saving book is a wealth of information! I can't wait to pour over it. It is one of those books that I am going to want to read again and again!

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Thank you so much for your comments!