#seed saving

[tomorrowsgardennc]

☝️🤓 sunflowers are very similar in nature:

a sunflower is actually an inflourescence called a head. the relatively inconspicuous flowers in the center of a sunflower head are fertile and produce seeds, while the surrounding ray flowers, which resemble petals, are infertile.

"the seed garden" from seed savers exchange

I knew poinsettias "faked" having big flowers by just turning some leaves red but I didn't know the real tiny flowers in the middle looked like such idiots

[graciliswindowsill]

I really thought that i couldn't participate inthis solstice Solarpunk Aesthetic Week but surprise!!! A friend decided to give their father some local seeds as Christmas gift. The contacts flew and suddenly I'm in the middle of a seed swap!

Giving seeds of black popcorn, a variety of beans, red okra and Pau-Brasil.

I might receive a slice of pie, and seeds of a type of cucumber, shiso and a different type of bean.

[tomorrowsgardennc]

saving seeds does NOT save you money but rather allows you to use the same allowance to try new seeds.

[natureisthegreatestartist]

[anipgarden]

Collecting Milkweed Seeds - All Facts, All Seeds, No Fluff

(OK but please also consider I'm not an ~expert~ I'm not a ~scholar~ I'm just a nerd on Tumblr who really likes milkweed and wanted to make a fun lil post about it)

[Image ID: a green, leafy common milkweed plant (Asclepias syriaca) with five large, ovalish and bumpy green seed pods. The seed pods are currently unopened.]

It’s fall, which means if you haven’t seen them already, now’s the time that milkweed plants will start producing seed pods! (Well, technically, they’re called follicles, but fuck it they’re seed pods).  Each pod has dozens of seeds inside, some species can even have up to 200 seeds, so even collecting just a few can be a good way to boost your pollinator gardening efforts big time! What you do with them then is up to you--adding life to your backyard garden, sharing with friends, making seed bombs--but first you’ve gotta collect them.

The first thing you want to do is identify your milkweed plants--in an ideal world, you’d be able to tell precisely what kind of milkweed you’re collecting from (so you can know precisely what growing conditions that species prefers.) But when they’re dying back, forming pods, and releasing their seeds, it can be hard to tell. It helps to visit sites early, to know what milkweeds are there, and while you’re there you might even find some forming pods. 

It can be helpful to band off the pods early! This will keep the seeds from escaping, so you can come back later and collect them! I would only do this for a couple of pods--each pod has a lot of seed in it, so only taking one or two from each plant should still net you plenty of rewards! When I’m doing this in my backyard, I tend to use rubber bands--the size of rubber band you’ll need varies depending on the species. I’ve also seen people use the lacy-looking jewelry bags to a similar effect--if the pod splits open, all the seeds get trapped in the bag!

[Image ID: the first image is of appears to be swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) with about fifteen long, green, smooth and pointed seed pods. Most of the pods have small black rubber bands wrapped around the midsections. The second image is of what appears to be common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) with two large, ovalish and bumpy green seed pods. A white fine mesh bag has been tied over the pods.]

For people who want to get seeds from unopened pods, you have to be very careful not to force open a pod that isn’t ready--otherwise, the seeds inside won’t fully develop. How do you tell if a pod is ripe? There’s a seam in each pod, and it should open fairly easily with minimal pressure if it’s basically ready. If you’re basically prying it open, you’re too early. The seeds inside should be a nice dark color, and be plump in the middle--if they’re creamy colored or light orange, you’re too early. There may be some undeveloped seeds in each pod (I am talking maybe 1 to 3 here), but if the majority of them are ready, you’re good to go!

[Image ID: a tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica) seed pod that has been opened at the seam, revealing dark brown seeds and lots of creamy white floss. Four seeds are floating away from the pod on fluffy white comas. The pod is being held between a white person's fingers.]

I’ve also seen people who go late late late into the season, after most of the pods have already fully split off and released their seeds. Some of the seeds occasionally stay in the pod, so they’ll take the leftovers that didn’t get scattered after winter passes. That’s a fair strategy! I prefer to get mine way early on, so I can get a clear ID of what kind of milkweed it is (some will flower and produce pods at the same time), but if you already got an ID early in the season and then come back later this can also work! But…

[Image ID: several dried brown seed pods have opened fully, releasing a cloud of milkweed floss with seeds attached. Some seeds are still in the pods, but many are primed to float away.]

There is, however, one thing that tends to be a bit annoying about collecting milkweed seeds--and that’s the fluff. These fluffy white bits attached to the seed--called comas--function similarly to the iconic fluffy dandelion seed. A milkweed seed’s coma allows it to float through the air and on the water until it (hypothetically) reaches bare soil or an otherwise suitable start to settle down and germinate. If you’re collecting the seeds for later use, though, that same coma can mean your milkweed seeds are traveling through the air and away from where you’re collecting them, or all over your apartment once you get them home. Removing the comas by hand is an option, but tedious, and still leads to a nice pile of fluffy that will get airborne at the first gust of wind. At the end of the day, for many people trying to collect milkweed seeds, the coma is just an annoying part they dread.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to collect milkweed seeds without having to deal with the comas long-term!

[Image ID: A single brown milkweed seed floating on a comparatively huge mess of white fibers.]

Method 1

So this is my favorite method because it's honestly one of the simplest and easiest once you get used to it. You open the pod, grip the top part of the middle ‘pith’ section tight, and gently scrape off the seeds into a bowl or bag. This leaves you with almost no fluff in your collection bin, and you can then toss the middle fluffy part--or I’ve heard of people collecting milkweed fluff for spinning! Most of the videos I’ve seen on it use common milkweed or other large milkweed pods as an example--however, I’ve successfully done this with smaller milkweed pods like A. curassavica as well. 

Method 2

This method is one I’ve used in the past. Take the seeds and fluff and put them into a bag (paper or plastic) and add a coin or two. Shake the bag around--a lot. The coin will dislodge the comas from the seeds. The seeds will then drop to the bottom of the container, and the fluff will float around on the top. I’ve also seen this with buckets and blocks, like in the video below!

Method 3

I’ve seen a handful of people discuss burning the floss of the seeds! Apparently the seeds themselves aren’t damaged badly by the fire, though honestly this is a method that I am simply too anxious to try myself.

Method 4

This was a method I found while I was looking for other methods people have done. Apparently, you can just roll the pod between your hands and it’ll work to dislodge the seeds? I may have to try it next time!

Hopefully this advice is helpful for you all! I know collecting seeds was a hassle for me before I learned my favorite method. If I had a nickel for every time I got yelled at for releasing milkweed fluff into the house...

If you've got a method that I haven't heard about yet, let me know!! I'm always down to learn more about milkweed, and it can also help someone else down the line!

[sarahmackattack]

Saw ur post on insta about milkweed. Are you telling me that I’ve been manually separating my seeds from the fluff for years and am only just now learning this trick?!?!!!!???

Mind = blown, thank you so much for sharing

Happy to assist.

For those who haven't seen it:

[gardening-guy]

gardening update || 12/01/24 🏡🌱🌼

was out in the garden today to water a bit and we've got good news and bad news...

bad news is one of my 3 veggie/crop raised beds is just absolutely wilting... i have no idea why bc it wasn't like this the last time i checked two days ago, but now everything looks so sad and miserable

i am very confused as to why... am i over watering?? was it too cold??? do they not have enough mulch??? should i buy more straw to mulch them more???? aaaaaaa i have no idea please help 😭😭

onto the good news...

i harvested a ton of different flower seeds in the garden! we have violas, coneflower, zinnia, and my pink cosmos! i definitely still have more to learn about seed collecting and seed saving, but i'm still just beginning and i have time to learn & hone the skill!

the viola seeds are really interesting, they remind me of one of the monster things from stranger things lol. i only caught glimpses of the show when my dad was watching it, but they remind me of these guys:

[turtlesandfrogs]

Today, we're doing part of the selection process for saving seed from kale. Ideally, when they bloom next year, I'll have winnowed my population down to about 25 to 50 plants.

Already, I've selected for:

Ability to sprout after more than a year of poor storage conditions

Vigor in overcrowded situations (because I thought it wouldn't have a good germination rate... turns out they're very resilient seeds!)

Strong root systems capable of getting water even without irrigating, even in hotter and dryer conditions than normal (they're in a hoop house)

Now, I'm selecting for leaf shape and resistance to invertebrate grazing pressure:

I'm working from a grex, which in the context that I know it from, is a population of plants that have a lot of genetic diversity, with a lot of expressed variety, which can either be maintainedor be used to select a new variety. You can make a grex by picking a few varieties of kale, for example, letting them cross, and then choosing to maintain a certain level of diversity through the following generations.

We've decided that we like the broader, flatter, less frilly leaves, so I'm thinning out all the frilly-est plants. Here's post thinning:

And here's the day's kale for breakfast and lunch:

I'll keep making selections over the next year or so, removing from the gene pool any that are too bug eaten, or don't make it through winter, or bolt way early next spring.

Now, I'm not an expert here, and I'm doing this very casually, but I've been very happy with the results so far. If you want to learn more, I really liked Carol Deppe's book about breeding vegetables.

[inthecityofgoodabode]

August 2024: A Little Bit Of Everything

Monday harvest:

Tuesday harvest:

Seeds we collected from this year's leeks:

Wednesday harvest:

Curbside find of the week. These 100 gallon stock tanks run for around 130 bucks & this one was free. We're going to use it to make a container version of a hugelkultur bed:

Friday harvest:

These are some of the summer squash that volunteered in our front bed. They appear to be a hybrid of lemon squash & either straightneck or crookneck squash:

Tersa sphinx caterpillar:

Seen while walking:

Found while walking - two rocks... one obviously evil:

We have volunteer pumpkins in the front bed starting to make:

A volunteer crookneck squash from the front bed:

Sunday harvest:

I felt something on my back & snapped this photo:

And here it is biting me:

Out of focus shot of a hummingbird feeding at our chive blossoms:

My queen planted some lemongrass today to take the place of the Bells of Ireland that had gone to seed:

[banefolk]

It’s seed collecting season in my poison garden so here is some poppy seed ASMR. Sound on!

[thestudentfarmer]

Seed saving succes!

I posted awhile ago about carrots I let go to seed this last season. I finally got round to doing the full seed cleaning, a small germination test and wanted to share on that.

Below, the heads when I finally pulled them, I did clip the heads from the stems and placed them in an open storage bin.

To be quite honest I set it aside and forgot about it for awhile. Day to day and all that. Thankfully the corner I set them in was well undisturbed save for a few spiders when I got back to them.

Still a lil bit 'stick'y but it's as filtered as I can get currently. I'll be looking into some sort of seives to make harvesting seed easier in the future.

Interestingly enough, when separating some of the junk, the seeds got a sort of perfume-yness to them? It was very pleasant.

I took the corn out to handle later, but the cleaned out carrot flowerheads I tossed them in the chicken compost area so any missed seeds would get enjoyed by either the girls or the wild birds and the remaining stems and sticks'll get composted before long.

Did a germination test on the counter to see if the effort was worth it.

Way more germination than I expected! 🥳 very much worth it!

Here's the seed bag, I expect there is still a chunk of chuff/junk that didn't seperate well but it weighed 9 oz. (gallon size ziplock) I'd feel okay saying mayby 5-7 oz seed from seed saving this year. Even at low end of 5 oz that's still pretty good :)

I think I'll keep half and sort the other half among some friends and family as gifts, and donate to the local seed library nearest to me.

And if opportunity arises I'll do the same with the next carrot grow :) they were pretty easy (aside from toppling so much), the pollinators loved them, they were beautiful plants and we can use every part of them as well which is a win win all around 🏆

They were from hybrids of rainbow x nantes carrots. Some got long (but not many, I have shallow soil) they did get nice and fat though and we enjoyed quite a bit of salad, pesto and pretty flowers thanks to them this last grow season.

🥕🌱 Happy Homesteading 🌱🥕

9.21.2023

[startedwithaseed]

Peas!

Pea plants are amazing. They're a plant that feels to me like they are desperately keen to grow

An escaped seed must have sprouted, having dropped from the sheet holding a bunch of drying pea pods above it.

They're really beautiful plants, with delicate flowers and tendrils that grip and wind onto any support they can find, and they taste bloody great, especially the first pick of sugar snaps right at the start of the season. They are early cropping, and apparently the flowers cannot be fertilised (and therefore won't produce peas) above 30 degrees.

Being legumes, they fix nitrogen and so do not require lots of added inputs to the soil. The soil should be well draining though, to prevent root rot. They can be eaten at any stage - eat the shoots if you're fancy, or dry them and make pease porrige like the did in the middle ages! In fact, when they were introduced in the 1600s in Britain as the fresh vegetable (and not just a dried more like a bean) they were said to cause such a stir that people become manically addicted...

So they can be dried for storage for eating, but also of course for saving the seed. Drying and shelling peas for seed was my introduction into the world of seed saving. A perfect intro - they make it so easy for us! Simply leaving a few of the forgotten pods on the plant as long as possible, to swell up and dry, and you'll have your seed supply for next years sowing.

Dried wrinkly peas from a sugar snap variety. They are said to be properly dry when you could bite into one and not leave tooth marks.

On a larger scale, marking off a section to not harvest from at all works best, although tricky to resist the plumper pods in the forbidden section. If there are any particularly unhealthy plants, they can be removed (a process called rouging) at any point to try and avoid passing on these trait.

Peas are mostly self fertile, having "perfect" flowers (which just mean the flowers contain both the pistil and the stamen, allowing them to fertilize themselves). This means they are unlikely to cross, although the advice if you are growing more than one variety of pea to try and grow them 15 meters apart, but this can be less if they are separated by a barrier such as a hedge. Pollinators can be lazy sometimes! But, again the chance of crossing is low so it shouldn't be a big concern. Side note, thing like chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) and sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus) are in the same family Fabaceae but not the same species so will not cross with the traditional garden peas (Pisum sativum).

Within this species there are 3 main categories -

English/podding peas. These are grown for the pea and the pod is generally too tough and fiberous to be eaten

Magetout/ snow peas. These are eaten before the peas develop and are eaten whole

Sugar snap peas. These peas were developed more recently to be the best of both worlds, the pea is eaten whole with the peas developed inside, meaning the crop is sweeter.

Within these categories, you will sometimes hear peas be refereed to as "wrinkled" or "round" seeded. This refers to how the seed looks dry, as sugar snap peas have more wrinkled seed. This is something to do with the higher sucrose content, but what it exactly does I couldn't pretend to know. There is also massive height range with different varieties of peas, and the dwarf varieties are well worth considering if you don't want to worry so much about the sturdiness of your support, or having to find something to climb on when it comes to harvesting the peas higher up.

Peas and calendula

Sitting around shelling peas can be really social and also feels satisfyingly like a kind of ancient practice, I don't know what it is about podding and shelling vegetables that appeals so much but I highly recommend it as a meditative process!

For more info, Hodmedods UK sell all sorts of dried legumes on their site, but also write articles and blogs about traditional varieties of UK grown legumes like the Carlin pea and how to cook with them.

[tomorrowsgardennc]

i know i normally dont post the seed packet designs on this here tumblr but come onnnnnnnnnnnnn even i think i did a damn good job on this one!!

hnnnngggghhhhhh

[nitrogen-fixing-cartel]

Tomatillo seedlings

[balkanradfem]

I just opened up my last butternut to eat and she had only 3 SEEDS INSIDE

girl why didn't you make seeds??? These three better germinate >:(((

[chokrihizem]

Harvesting Romaine Lettuce Seeds Made Easy! Welcome to our ultimate guide on harvesting and storing romaine lettuce seeds! 🌟 In this video, we’ll show you the simple steps to collect seeds, and store them for future planting! 🌾💧 Whether you're a seasoned gardener or just starting out, this video is packed with tips to help your garden flourish! 🌻