Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Hey all, today is well, obviously October 15. But you may not of known is that today is "Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day,"This event was started by Carol who also has a blog. To find her blog just click "HERE." Basically the whole deal with this event is were you post your pics of ALL (or in this case some) of the pictures that I have taken this year. This is my first time I have ever done Garden's Bloggers' Bloom Day.

Here are some pictures of the zinnias that I grew this year. When I was mowing the grass my mower had grabbed one of the flowers and viciously pulled it off. I couldn't make myself throw this flower away, so I decided that I would do a photo shoot. I think I took 192 photos!
These photos turned out great!
I don't know about you all, but I know that my zinnias turned out GREAT this year. They were really beautiful this year.

I also grew a pie pumpkin this year. This was first that I have ever grown pumpkins, I actually grew it by accident. We had actually thrown some pumpin seeds into the compost bin, and there it grew. I saw that plant and left it there, sure enough all of my other squash plants died and this one plant survived and PRODUCED!

I also for the first time I grew Sun flowers, I planted 3 plants and had a great result. They filled up a whole 24oz jar plus one head that I grew for the birds and other animals. They got so BIG, I will be defiantly growing them again next year, and hopefully if I have room, some more too! Maybe later I will post some of the pictures that I have of the sunflowers when they weren't dried. The only thing that I had a problem with, was the spittle bugs that spat all over my sunflowers and basil. I thoroughly despise spittle bugs!

I also grew this year, along with last year, some pink prairie mallow that I bought from Jung's Nursery. That is one online nursery that I really enjoy shopping at! The mallow turned out so nicely this year, with lots of blooms, that just covered the plant. There was an added bonus as shown by the picture, Bees love it! So if you need help with pollination, you may want to consider planting some Pink Prairie Mallow , the leaves are also edible!

I hope you all enjoyed some of the pictures that I posted, I would have put up more (which I have plenty of,) but decided not to.

Oh but I forgot this one, and cannot leave it out. It was early in the morning when I was looking outside and saw at my feeder two finches. I couldn't help but take some pictures, as that my camera is always nearby. Here is one of them!

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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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