Seedy Stuff

I have only been doing this gardening thing properly for a bit over four years. I enjoy learning new ways to grow vegies – trying fruit or vegetables I haven’t had before. So the idea of collecting my own seed just made so much sense. I have been getting into it more and more.

What I call my lazy approach of not bothering to pull up vegetables that are going to seed can actually be relabelled as ‘permaculture’ 🙂

I had a beautiful big patch of parsley last season. It eventually went to seed and I never really got around to pulling it out. Come spring, I had little parsley plants popping up everywhere!

Its been growing madly all around the zucchini plants with no real assistance from me. A few were easily transplanted to the ‘proper’ herb garden too. Not only do you get free plants, but you can sell the excess, so what’s not to love about this?

The scarlet runner beans were the first thing I started to collect. They are just so obvious and easy. The pod that you missed picking at the right time becomes nice and fat, then browns off. You crack it open and ‘voila’ there are your new seeds. The fact that I have a huge mason jar full of more of these seeds than one person sensibly needs in a lifetime is neither here nor there.

Of course, seeds from zucchini’s, cucumber, pumpkins, melon etc (basically any that you can scrap out of the fruit) are so easy to collect. Just dry them out on some kitchen paper or newspaper, then store them in paper bags until spring. (Do yourself a favour and label the bags!! Captain Obvious I know, but for people like me who just think they will remember which were the capsicum (green pepper) and which were the chilli seeds… Well, you can imagine)

Can I digress for a minute? Capsicum. For all those in North America that call it Green Pepper. When you come down to Australia for your awesome holiday of a lifetime, don’t order green peppers on your pizza as you will get really hot chillies. My poor father in law, who is extremely sensitive to spicy food ordered EXTRA green peppers on his pizza. I thought we were going to have to jump start the poor bloke!!

Anyway – back to seeds 🙂

I have saved tomato seeds and tried to grow tomatoes every year, but they really don’t perform for me (yet – I haven’t given up) I prefer using self seeded plants (they come up everywhere now) or laterals (which I will save for another post.)

Planting the slices of tomato worked well… most germinated, but I soon killed them 🙁

Other plants that you let go to seed and flower can produce a phenomenal amount of seed.

A single lettuce plant can produce enough for you to use for a few years. Although collecting it is more fiddly. The seeds are tiny – you pull the dried buds apart to get the seeds. I find seed collecting a very relaxing task actually…

Another advantage to letting your plants run to seed is that the flowers bring in the bees. I let a broccoli go crazy in the hothouse and it was very helpful in luring in the bees to do their work on the tomatoes, chilli and cucumbers.

My seedy broccolini in the outside garden totally exploded into seed pods!  Many nights were spend in front of movies podding these teeny tiny seeds! The crazy amount of plants that have self seeded as well is now on my urgent “To Be Attended To” list.

Fennel is a lovely plant. It thrives on neglect. I didn’t even plant it in the first place, but like a lot of things around here, it sprouted up and did its own thing.

I read that fennel attracts the kind of wasps that love to munch on codling moth, so we were thinking of creating a garden ring of fennel around our apple trees. Has anyone heard of this or tried it?

The fabulously gnarly little silverbeet seeds (swiss chard) are starting to dry off –

One thing I did learn – don’t put similar plants close together if you want to get seed. I had silverbeet and beetroot (beets) close together that went to seed. Cross pollination happened. What I grew from those seeds was really peculiar!! Lesson learned.

The basil flowers are going to seed too at the moment and I am watching them brown off. I picked one stem to see what the seeds were like and how to get to them. They will be fiddly as well – tiny seeds. But I don’t think you can have too much basil in the garden, so it will be worth the effort.

I collect some of the flower seeds as well – sweet pea (easy), Granny Bonnet (fairly easy) and sunflower seeds (dead easy)

Garlic is another easy one.

Just save a bunch of cloves to plant the following season. I was actually quite shocked how much seed garlic was to buy. One of my lovely cousins who was growing it in a big way started me off with some and I have saved and replanted my own ever since.

Another advantage to seed collecting is that you can make a few dollars off it if you have an outlet like a local market. I like to use my extensive origami paper collection (the collection that makes Jeff twitch a little bit) and fold envelopes for the seed. It all helps with the garden paying its way. Its just costs you a little time. They also make great additions to presents if you are into home made/grown gifts.

If you have a garden and don’t save seed – give it a go. Its pretty easy, it saves you money and its quite satisfying to grow food from seed you have nurtured yourself!

If you do collect seed and have any tips or things you recommend with the process I would love to hear from you.

I will finish up with a couple of leek seed heads photos because it took me a very frustrating hour to find these images (I have an extensive collection of photos lol) so I wasn’t going to not include them.

Cheers