A gift from commentor Math Guy:
I enjoyed the orchids post and it reminded me of the display we saw when we visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens a few years ago.
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And a less lovely but possibly useful one, from the Washington Post — “How to Save This Year’s Seeds for Next Year’s Garden” [unpaywalled gift link]:
As the garden harvest season winds down, plants are starting to transition into their next critical stage: producing seeds for future use. Yes, you can order new seed packets each year from catalogues or hit up your local big box store for the latest varieties. But collecting the seeds of your favorite spent sunflowers, green beans or basil for next year is a fairly straightforward task that can help you save money and connect you to nature and the life cycle of each plant.
It can also ensure successful plants, because you’re using seeds from specimens that have been proven to thrive in your yard. “When we save our own seeds over time, [they] become adapted to our unique microclimate,” says Emily Murphy, regenerative organic gardener and author of “Grow Now: How We Can Save Our Health, Communities, and Planet — One Garden at a Time.”
Here’s what to know about collecting seeds, and how to preserve them for future use.
Know the type of seed
There are two types of seeds: open-pollinated and hybrid.“Open-pollinated seeds derive from plants in which pollination occurs by insects, birds, wind, humans or other natural sources,” says Julie Thompson-Adolf, author of “Starting & Saving Seeds: Grow the Perfect Vegetables, Fruits, Herbs, and Flowers for Your Garden.” “Plants pollinated within the same species will produce seeds genetically true to type and that are similar to the parent plant.” These make excellent candidates for saving because the seeds are reliable and produce the same plant each year.
Hybrids, on the other hand, have been cross-pollinated between two seed lines, often for specific traits, such as better taste, yield or disease resistance. Although you can save hybrid seeds, it isn’t recommended because they are unpredictable. There is no way to know which characteristics will carry on to the next generation.
Choose your plants wisely
Not all seeds are created equally, even among a group of the same type of plant. “Choose plants that performed well in your garden throughout the season, produced big, beautiful, blemish-free fruit or pretty blooms, and avoided disease,” says Thompson-Adolf.Also consider the processing required for the type of plant you’re working with. For some plants, including beans, brassicas, carrots, corn, lettuce and radishes, going to seed is the next stage in the life cycle. Preserving their seeds is known as dry processing and involves cutting seedpod stalks, drying them, separating the seeds from the rest of the plant and removing plant debris. Plants that produce seeds inside their fruit, on the other hand, including tomatoes, cucumbers and melons, require wet processing, which involves more steps, such as fermenting the seeds first. If you’re a first-time seed saver, it’s best to stick with dry processing, says Thompson-Adolf, because it’s easier…
Full details at the link.
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What’s going on in your garden(s), this week?
JoyceH
I’m in London! Got in yesterday morning and starting the Heart of England tour tomorrow. Last night we went to a concert at Saint Martins in the Field. Coming back I gracefully managed to twist my ankle. For a while I could barely walk, was afraid I’d broken something. But today is a smidge better and I managed to hobble out to the hotel garden following the siren call of cigarettes. Going to rest and recuperate today and hope I can take the tour tomorrow with minimal disruption.
JoyceH
Obligatory garden post. The garden here has a tree sporting big fluffy puff balls. Plane tree?
satby
Great orchid photos Math Guy! I like orchids but have never even tried to grow them because I just assumed they’re too high maintenance. Plus, the cats would try to eat them anyway.
My only seed saving this year has been of my canna lillies. I have dozens so far with more pods and some still flowering, though that’s quickly ending. I started some cannas from seed two years ago, and it was wildly successful.
satby
@JoyceH: oh, heal fast! And I hope the rest of your trip is fun and without further mishap.
JoyceH
@satby: I feel so stupid! Lillian was JUST saying that you have to be careful in London because there are all these little unexpected steps and whoops – there I went.
satby
@JoyceH: remember they have national health service there, and the hotel probably can refer you to a doctor to get it looked at for very minimal cost if needed. But an ace bandage may be all the medical care you need, and the local Boots* will have those.
* pharmacy chain, like Walgreen’s
Jeffery
I am seed collecting. I am finding newly ordered seeds aren’t germinating well at all. No idea why. Now I try to stick to seeds I have collected. Their germination rate is much better.
I would like to rework the flower bed in front of the porch. Bishop’s weed self seeded itself into it. It’s a thug. Grows from runners and will take over the bed in a few years.
Right now the patch of it is about two by two feet. It is mixed in with the Shasta daisies. Everything will have to come out. The soil sieved to get any roots from the bishop’s weed.
HeartlandLiberal
We moved five months ago to an independent senior living community. They have a greenhouse. Two days ago, our Ixora and Gardenia were approved to go in the greenhouse over winter. They are in huge pots and heavy, so we put in a work order to maintenance to move them. The greenhouse had to be cleaned out two months ago, there was an infestation of aphids. But it is all clean now, and as we walked past the greenhouse on our way to dinner yesterday, there were half a dozen new plants there, and the biggest of all were our Ixora and Gardenia.
That concludes my garden report. We live in a house now that has NOWHERE to put a garden. Next Spring, I plan to plant herbs on the deck in a raised container.
But we are happy here. My bad back concluded my vegetable gardening, which I have done every where we have lived.
P,S, Great pictures of orchids!!
JPL
Your photos are beautiful and thank you for sharing. I haven’t been the the gardens in a few years. I should make the effort to go more often.
satby
@Jeffery: I feel you! I have 2 small beds where I basically have to dig out everything and replace the hardy glads with some spring flowering stuff. If the glads overwinter ok in the basement I’ll put them in the same bed next year, but I wasn’t all that impressed with them this year. Those may become the “sunny annuals” bed, because the front ended up being way too shady.
satby
@HeartlandLiberal: Still in Indiana?
JoyceH
@satby: Martha went to a Boots and brought me back a Sports Ankle Support sock and paracetamol (Brit-speak for acetaminophen AKA Tylenol). Some of us just went off to the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace for the last day of the Georgian costume exhibit. I’m staying in the hotel garden with my foot elevated, listening to the church bells and watching the soccer game (a toddler and his dad kicking a little ball back and forth).
MazeDancer
@JoyceH: Listen to Satby. I managed to hobble around for days on a broken foot.
Hoping to collect seeds from the Morning Glories that are still going strong. When it is not so hot, they become Lunch and Later Glories, as well. So pretty to see.
JoyceH
@MazeDancer: At first I did worry a bone was broken, but it’s not bruised or swollen and feels a bit better today. Last night I could barely walk across my room to the bathroom, but today I got down the hall and out the door and down the steps so I think it’s just a sprain. Bad enough at the start of the trip.
Mousebumples
@JoyceH: you’ve got the rest, compression, and elevation, but don’t forget about ice for the first 24-48 hours, too.
Also paracetamol (Tylenol) is fine, but the anti-inflammatory effects of ibuprofen or naproxen (or other NSAIDs – I forget what’s otc in England) may help.
As a frequent ankle sprainer on my travels, I hope you’re feeling better soon!
On topic – beautiful flowers, and thanks for sharing!
NotMax
@JoyceH
Maybe you can temporarily qualify for a government grant?
;)
satby
@Mousebumples: I’ve always found Aleve or Advil (and the generics) to be far superior for musculoskeletal “stuff” like my ruptured shoulder ligament and twisted knee, so glad to see a pharmacist confirm it. I honestly avoid Tylenol at all costs, I’m much fonder of my liver than my cast iron stomach.
And with this, I’m heading back to bed for an hour. Been up since 3 am.
Mousebumples
@satby: a lot of it is personal preference, but acetaminophen doesn’t do much for me. Headaches, sprains… Not Great (for me).
Made pregnancy a challenge, lol.
NotMax
@satby
With age comes wisdom.
@Mousebumples
Ditto. Does absolutely nothing therapeutic for this ol’ bod (except inhibit alcohol consumption).
;)
Arclite
satby
@Mousebumples: Oh pregnancy!!!
When I was pregnant with the son who is now 40, the medical thinking was that you shouldn’t take anything at all unless you were seriously ill. So I ended up in the hospital with acute asthma following some bronchial bug, and getting theophylline, which gave me such a killer migraine that the staff wouldn’t give me anything for. By evening I was in such pain I called my friend, who worked there, to tell her either smuggle in some aspirin for me or a gun so I could blow my head off, I was past caring which. I had no idea it was 2 am. She called the nurses station and asked them WTF was going on, and they told her they knew I had a headache, but they didn’t want to wake up my doctor just for that. My friend told them they better because I was suicidal (I wasn’t of course, just hyperbolic). They did, and he ordered a pain killer. But to give it to me, they had to get me off the floor, where I had curled up into as fetal position as an 8 month pregnant person could curl.
Glad they don’t use theophylline much any more.
NotMax
@satby
Recalling an exchange in some program taking place in England during the 1890s, involving a husband attempting to wean his wife off morphine (paraphrasing from memory).
Doctor: I suggest administering heroin.
Husband: Is it safe?
Doctor: Perfectly safe, nothing to be concerned about.
.
Eunicecycle
@satby: how awful, especially when you are pregnant. I think doctors are better now about pain management when you are pregnant; maybe because more doctors are women, who don’t dismiss women’s pain.
Ramalama
@JoyceH: I was just in London (and France) in August. Hiking in France caused my legs to ache so that when I got to London, and family recommended using paracetamol I took it. Is it really the same as Tylenol? Seemed …. better.
satby
@NotMax: 😂 Though I think they believed that at one time 😣
@Eunicecycle: well, mother and son of Godzilla (22″, 10lbs) both survived. My mom and her friends drank throughout their pregnancies (the 50s, hard cocktails, not wine) and many were given amphetamines by their doctors so they wouldn’t gain too much weight. They thought it was perfectly ridiculous that the pendulum had swung so far opposite.
satby
@Arclite: (back on topic) and that sounds amazing!
ok, L8R friends!
OzarkHillbilly
They did. Morphine addiction was a big problem and doctors were casting about for a solution, any solution. Found that with heroin the morphine cravings were much less, so they did an uncontrolled experiment in the hopes the devil they didn’t know was better than the one they did.
Oooopps.
OzarkHillbilly
Thanx for the orchids Math Guy, they are always a hit.
Eunicecycle
@satby: OMG he was a big baby! My mom smoked through both her pregnancies and probably drank, too. When we know better, we do better, I guess!
Jeffery
@Mousebumples: When acetaminophen was first introduced it did nothing for me. Decades later I tried it and it actually work.
NotMax
@Eunicecycle
It was the 1950s. Massive consumption of bridge mix, Jell-O and TV dinners canceled out the smoking and drinking.
//
JoyceH
@Mousebumples: I would love to take NSAIDs, but I can’t, because of the meds I take, blood thinner etc. And Tylenol works well for me because I take it so seldom.
Gvg
@Jeffery: Seed companies vary a lot in the quality of their products ie germination rates. Most of them are not actually producing the seeds themselves, but reselling and repackaging from the same bulk growers in their own pretty packages for a higher price. The closer you buy from the actual source, the fresher the seed and better chance of good product. It also matters a LOT how the seeds are stored. Temperature and sterile conditions, how air tight the package is, all kinds of things. Some kinds of seeds need to be moist stored and those you need to get from seed exchanges quick and fresh (trilliums for instance).
You need to keep track of which companies you buy from and the success rate. If multiple species don’t germinate, move on to other source.
The potting soil quality matters too. Professional grade from nurseries or Promix brands are better. I don’t always bother except for hard seeds but years ago even reputable brands were giving me fungus problems. Now miracle grow is OK. Never use the off brand or generic. Clean the pots with bleach.
My best results have been from seeds from big suppliers like GeoSeed, Johnny’s or Harris. I think they are the source for the other smaller sellers who divvied up their big packets and sell 20 or 100 seeds of the 500 or 1000 seed packets Geo sells because the varieties tend to be the same. You get more seeds for a lower price. Better germination too.
I also get better results buying from seed sellers who sell to flower growers. That is, flower farmers who supply florists and are farmers. They treat the seeds as a crop and care about germination and they know more than the average gardener.
The cutting edge of seed production is Ball seed but they don’t sell to the public. It is the next level out that produces most of our garden crops.
Check the year date on your seed packets when you buy and make sure you aren’t getting old seed, although as I said, I think we are getting repackaged seeds many times. Small lots of seeds almost always have low germination rates.
Some species do have low rates anyway, such as echinaceas/coneflowers.
sab
@JoyceH: So did the church bells have any change ringing (different toned bells ringing in slightly changing order)?
NotMax
@sab
Trivia:
Big Ben is the nickname for the largest bell in the clock tower, the one which strikes the hours (and which has a never repaired crack in it, it was simply rotated so the mallets no longer struck there).
sab
@NotMax: I did not know that. So they didn’t simply retire it like our liberty bell.
NotMax
@sab
IIRC surgery was performed to prevent the crack spreading.
kalakal
@sab: It’s what gives it that distinctive sound. it was installed in July 1859 and cracked in september. Turns out the hammer they were using was far too heavy. They did repair work in place ( it weighs 14 tons) and rotated it. Been slightly off tone ever since
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: …send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for itself.
CCL
@Gvg: thanks, good info.
Math Guy, beautiful photos!
NotMax
@sab
Link should be cued up to a relevant excerpt in 3-D representation.
MomSense
I’ve got to deal with putting the perennial beds to sleep for the winter. They got away from me so there’s a lot of clean up to do.
I may be relocating for a bunch of reasons one of which it is really expensive where I live and housing values are so high that I could buy something small further north and that would take some pressure off of me financially. Going to start going through things and donate, gift and get rid of a lot of stuff.
Glidwrith
My MIL showed me how to preserve tomato seeds: get a paper plate and splat the seeds onto it. Allow to dry, then cut the plate and store the seeds in a bag for next year.
I can speak to the microclimate effect: worked with potatoes and after two seasons started seeing an increase in yield for the area.