Seeds!!!

I'm a psycho seed hoarder.  I admit it.  My kitchen table is now a seed saving station. Not only am I saving seeds from the plants growing in my garden, I am buying them, too. I LOVE buying seeds!  The growing season isn't anywhere close to ending and I'm already planning for fall and next spring. Psycho.... but I love the whole gardening process.  I really do.  If I could re-live my life and knew what I knew now, I would be a farmer or go into some aspect of horticulture.

I recently bought these from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds....

I really love this company because they also send you a free gift of seeds, which at least for me, encourages me to plant something new. Anyhow, they are having a sale and one of the things on sale was Desert King watermelon seeds!! Yes, I bought them and rapini, which wasn't in their sale items but I need rapini; and as a free gift, a variety of tomatoes I've never heard before, Riesentraube. Ever since my Orangeglo watermelons have actually produced fruits, I've been crazy about watermelons.


So, one of the reasons I decided to buy heirloom seeds was specifically for saving seeds.  I feel it's incredibly important to save seeds and share seeds.  For me it's a learning process since I'm still a novice gardener and don't quite know when seeds are ready to pick.

I've been getting up early to go out into the garden looking for pods that I think are ready.  Usually, I'll break open the seed pods and dump them onto coffee filters or paper towels to dry for a week or two. In the above pic, from the upper left to right, I have California poppies, Italian basil, Bright Lights cosmos and Love-in-the-Mist.  Once they dry, I bag them in Ziploc bags, label them with the name and date when collected (usually just a month and year) and if I have silica packets around, pop one in.

Now my BIG problem is trying to organize my seed collection because my bagged seeds are in a plastic grocery bag in my pantry. If I was really organized and had more time, I'd make paper seed envelopes, which might still happen, and put a pretty pic of the plant on them.  Maybe another time. :-)