Seed Collecting - Early August

it's the time of year that i subconsciously start filling my pockets with collected seeds. i am cleaning out my seed room & getting ready to smell like rotting tomatoes. for some I will start with some flowers that are starting to go to seed:

Marshmallow. This is a great shot for seed collection how-to because it shows all of the processes a plant goes through when producing seed on one plant. You can see the pink flower on top which gives way to green pods (lower left), and then turn to browned seeds pods (with pink flower on top). They are ready to be picked when brown. They will be filled with many little seeds ready for saving. Dry on a screen.

Mullin starting to seed

Poppy seeds. You can see on my hand just how many seeds come out of one poppy pod. There is often thousands more . . . . Carefully pick the pods & dry them on top of a piece of paper or upside down in a bag, they will shed seeds quickly . . .

Swiss Chard starting to send out it's seeds

After the seeds start to brown (or the pods that contain them) it is time to start Collecting Seeds from your greens. Here is a collection of photos demonstrating how i collected tat soi seeds. usually i dry the seeds upside down in bags, but we thought that we would try laying them out on a sheet. the jury is still out which method is easier in the long run. certainly for photo purposes, this method allows you to see how to collect your own green seeds:

First we laid out all of the stocks of seed pods collected directly from the garden. we had to do this carefully because many of the seeds pods were already starting to pop

This is a close up of many of the seed pods that burst open (& tiny black seeds contained within) as soon as we laid the stocks on the sheet

This is me further thrushing the pods to get the seeds out

& the many seeds that were within

Next we collected Arugula Seeds. Many brown bags of them, They will now be hung-upside down in the barn & will slowing burst their pods allowing us to later seperate the plant matter from the seeds . . .

We collected a whole trailer full of seed stocks from our greens!!!!