One of the most empowering things you can do for your garden is save your seeds! Exchange them with neighbors, share them with friends, or keep your own library.
Going on a Seed Hunt
One of the most rewarding things you can do in your garden is save seeds from season to season. Not only is it an absolutely free activity that provides years' worth of planting potential, but it's also incredibly grounding and enriching for yourself. I often use it as an opportunity to express my gratitude to the plants for all of their effort in generously providing food throughout the season and producing seeds for the next season.
Saving seeds from the garden
It's quite simple to implement a seed saving plan in your own growing set up. If you have a plant that you've enjoyed growing and eating from, then all you need to do is leave a couple of the adult plants in the ground longer than you normally would. Typically, we are trained as gardeners to yank out plants in order to make room for the next season's plants. Instead of pulling out everything, pick a couple plants that look particularly healthy and leave them to complete their life cycle.
I know it's hard to accept this, but that carrot that's starting to bolt? You're going to leave it in the ground. Peas drying on the vine? Leave them. Onions produced a big white flower ball? Leave it (it's pretty anyway!). Get yourself used to leaving a couple behind each season for collecting seed from later. I say two so that you have some genetic diversity to your seed library, but you can do more than two if you'd like to have lots of seeds to plant or give away to other gardeners. Typically leaving the plants will invite lots of pollinators to your garden, and it will provide color and interest to the space with all those blooms. Eventually, though, it will start to fall over, shrivel and look dead, and that's where I offer this advice...
Let it be ugly
Break out of the mindset that plants are meant to look perfect and beautiful all the time. Learn instead how to honor every stage of their lives from seed to seed. These plants put everything they had into making the foods we ate throughout the season, and now, letting them complete the cycle and producing mature seeds feels like the right way to show our appreciation. That means that the plants may shrivel and brown or stretch and fall over. It will look untidy and unkempt to the average person. But in the garden those drying stalks and falling plants provide much needed sanctuary for bugs like ladybugs, butterflies, and bees to lay their eggs. They also provide resources for birds to build nests and squirrels to insulate their dens.
Break out of the mindset that plants are meant to look perfect and beautiful all the time. Learn instead how to honor every stage of their lives from seed to seed.
Ever since I stopped pulling out my watermelon vines at the end of the season, I've had a thriving community of ladybugs. I've never had to buy them or entice them into the yard. They simply stay year round because they have habitat to live in.
Now that you've started to leave your plants to go to seed, or perhaps you're just ready to start foraging for seed. Here are some tips to help you get started and have success.
Some tips for how to collect seed:
Look for plants that have spent blooms, they will look dry and brown. If you pinch the buds between your fingers they should make a crackling sound and break apart. If the bud still is squishy then wait a few more weeks until it gets dry and stiff to harvest.
Sometimes you make the process easier by cutting off the whole head of the flower and then thrashing it into a bucket. This is a great way to harvest grain as well as sunflower seeds.
Get other people involved! It's one of the best activities to do with kids, friends, partners.
If you're foraging for seed, resist the temptation to collect more than you need. Consider for a moment that this is a natural space that relies on those seeds to be reintroduced each fall. And if possible, harvest small amounts from a few different plants instead of only from one plant. This will ensure you have some genetic diversity to your seeds and it'll allow the remaining seed pods to disperse evenly too.
After you've harvested seed, give them a little time to dry out completely before storing them long term. Spread them out flat on a tray for a couple of days and then store them away. This will reduce the chance of mold.
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