Saving Seeds

Okay Kids, so this time of year is great. "GREAT?" you may say. Zach please explain. The upside is that you get to start you collecting for next year's seeds. If you have a particular type of non-Hybrid plant that you just can't live without and want next year...why not save some seeds from it. This year, I am saving seeds from a couple different types of seeds. I'll be saving my Scarlet Runner Beans, Radishes, Peas, and Marigolds. These are really some easy seeds to harvest for beginners since there are no special techniques as compared to say tomatoes. Here is the Link on how to collect tomato seeds.

 These are pretty self explanatory, because all you have to do is take off the hull around seeds. I think the key thing is to be sure that everything is completely dry.

 So once I have harvested the seed pods, i leave them inside for a couple of days, to insure that they are completely dry. After which I start to hull them. Be sure to store them in ziplock baggies, mark their names, and dates on the bag too.

So once I have harvested the seed pods, i leave them inside for a couple of days, to insure that they are completely dry. After which I start to hull them. Be sure to store them in ziplock baggies, mark their names, and dates on the bag too.

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Saving Seeds, Part IV Snapdragons

Alright, so I know that it has been such a long time since I have posted. What is new! So I figured that I would continue the seed saving series that I started ALONG TIME AGO! I think I left off with the peppers...So that means I am doing a series on....Snapdragons! Hey, who doesn't like snapdragons. Snapdragons have been around since the Roman times, they used to use them around the ancient temples. The first cultivated variety of snapdragons was first recorded by Carl von Linne in 1753. So yeah, they have been around for a long while.
I can remember when I was really young (each time I say this, all the old people just look at me!) My mom used to grow snapdragons in all different colors; form yellow, red, orange, white, and pink. I use to always go up to them and start to pinch them at their joints to make them talk. Being so small, I could never get the silly things to open their mouths! I would get so frustrated, I would eventually bruise the poor plants and the flower would usually fall off from the shear torment of the thing! To this day I still find it a challenge to make the snapdragons open their mouths! So if you have any secret to doing this, let me know.
Obviously you will need to have some simple supplies; your fingers (duh,) plastic bags, and bowl to place seeds in.
I like to wait until my seed pods are completely dry before I harvest them, as this way I can be absolutely sure they are dry. Once I find that the seeds are dried, You will want to harvest them into a bowl. When all of the seed pods are in the bowl, you will want to crush the exterior shell, this will release all of the seeds and allow you to have easy access to them. When all of the seeds have been taken out of the seed pods, remove the remaining shells out the seeds, so that you are left with pure black seeds. The snapdragon seeds should look about the same size as poppy seeds or small and black. With the snapdragon plant, if the seed pods were dry when harvested, you will not need to worry about drying the seeds as that they are very dry already.
Once all of your seeds have been collected, all you need to do is label and date your seeds! This will probably be the easiest thing you have ever done in your whole life!
If you have any comment or question, just let me know on the blog site! By the way Happy fall everyone! I hope this fall is one of the bests!

~Zach

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Saving Seeds, Part I Zinnias

Now is the time of year were everyone is all in a buzz for seed collecting! If you are like me, your whole purpose for collection these seeds is because you are cheap or you really want to save some of your seeds so that you can trade them online (because your CHEAP,) or you may be very saintly and are trying to keep that particular variety of seed alive! What ever reason you may have seed saving is well worth the time and effort that you put into it.
I can remember when I was younger, I had tried to collect some pepper seeds. I took every pepper in the house, all of which were from the store, and stuck them in a bottle which I stashed in my junk drawer. That following spring I proudly put my hand in my dresser drawer and pulled out that bottle of peppers. As I proudly pulled it out of my dresser I looked at seeds and shrieked in horror, instead of the beautiful peppers that I had stored away that fall, I had a bottle of whitish blue mold! You see I had made the common mistake of putting away my seeds before drying them. With all of the moisture in the seeds, it caused the whole batch to mold, and boy did it mold. Lets just say, that bottle didn't have a happy ending!
This will actually become a series of blogs that I will do. In this blog I will talk about: How to Harvest Seeds, and How to Store Seeds. I will start out by doing some of the most popular seeds, seeds that we all have grown, such as...Zinnias, Tomatoes, Peppers, Snap Dragons, Cucumbers, and Prairie Mallow. So look forward to a new edition each week, and will follow the order that I have written them above.
I will also Publish them online as we go along, so that you can have them all on one piece of paper and not have to look through all of the blogs...not that I mind!

There are some simple tools that will be a life saver when it comes to harvesting and cleaning seeds! These are are located in the picture above, but for the sake of your eyes I will list them for you.

• Knife, for opening the fruiting body
• Small Spoon, for scooping out seeds
• Strainer, for cleaning the seeds
• Paper towels, for drying the seeds
• Storage devises (jars or ziplock baggies), for storage.
  

Zinnia

Zinnias are a classic plant when it comes to the garden. I do not know of a single gardener who hasn't, at one time or another, had this plant in their garden. If you want to collect seeds form this lovely plant the best thing you will need to learn is...Patients! Yes, patients, and the reason I say this is because you really need to wait until the flower has completely died before you can start to harvest the seeds. A trick that I like to use is to tie a fine mesh bag around the flower head that I want to harvest seeds from, this little trick will keep the birds from eating all of the seeds and it will catch any seeds that fall out of the seed head!
When harvesting the seeds from the seed head you will have to have a hard surface underneath you, as it will help with the clean up. The first step is to grab the seed head...DUH! After that you will want take your fingers and pull off all of the petals so that you have one big pile. Once this is accomplished, sift through all of the debris to find the zinnia seeds. Zinnia seeds look like little arrow heads or like flat sunflowers. Once done sifting to find the seeds go ahead and compost the material left over. Be sure that when you put you seeds away, for storage, that you mark that container that they are in with the "seed name" and "date of harvesting". This way you will not
someday in the future, say..."What is this?" Trust me, I have done this many times! Here is another tip for you; if the zinnia flower was dry when you were collecting seeds from it, go ahead and store the seeds. If they were not, you will need to either let them set out to dry or wrap them in a paper towel. Be sure that if you put the seeds in a paper towel, that you check on the seeds every couple of days so as to prevent your seeds from molding. Learn from my experience with the peppers and don't ever put seeds away wet or fresh from a plant! This will only

As always, if you have any questions or if something was unclear, please contact me or leave me a comment so that I can help you out or maybe clarify something!
Also I will attach a link to all of the pictures of the zinnias and put a link out so that you can view the rest of the series on storing and collecting seeds!

This is the link for this article on seed saving, and the ones to follow!

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dhxcvps_48c6wkx7ds&hl=en

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