Seed Saving
Hello, friends! Brooke here from Shorties Funny Farm. I hope everyone is having a magical fall and finding some peace in the changing of seasons. I am one of the admins for Homesteaders of Indiana (HOI) and I want to share a little bit about seed saving with you. There are so many different ways to do this so please feel free to comment with any tips and tricks you want to share. I would love to answer any questions that you may have, so ask away.
I want to start with sunflowers. Wait for the flower head to turn brown and for the petals to die off. Cut the head off and brush off any remaining dried petals. Get a big bowl and start working the seeds out of the sunflower head. You can remove any extra debris from your bowl as you go. It’s that easy! You now have a bunch of sunflower seeds to use or trade. How fun!
Another great flower to harvest seeds from are zinnias. Cut or pluck the dried flower heads. After your last frost date is not too late, go for it. Get out there and grab those zinnia heads! Get a big bowl and gather up your dried zinnia heads. Pick up one dried flower, grab the dried petals and gently pull the petals away from the flower head. The seeds should come with the petals. If it is important for you to have seeds with no petals attached, you can cut or break off the petals. I personally leave my petals attached. It looks like colorful confetti come spring. Some zinnia heads may already have most of the petals broken off. Simply look through the remaining flower body for seeds, and brush them off the flower head. Some breeds of zinnia, like Green Envy, will reproduce the same color that they were, but most zinnias cross pollinate and you will get an entire rainbow from just one flower head.
I used to find corn a little difficult to deal with. I would end up with it all over my kitchen from wild kernels shooting across the room. My daughter and I tried to find solutions, and we came up with our invention - The Corn Pooper. This is some fancy stuff right here. We took an old pillow case and cut the corner off, then we stole a clothes pin right off the line, folded that corner over a few times and clipped it shut. It took longer to write The Corn Pooper on it than to make the entire thing. The next step it to track down a dull but firm item to push the kernels loose from the cob. You can use a butter knife, the back of scissors, anything that feels right. DO NOT USE ANYTHING SHARP, you do not want to go get stitches. In the video I demo how to scrape off the kernels, by using a jar. This is for demo only. You can see some stray kernels shooting around. This should all be done INSIDE the pillow case. At first you may need to peak at what you are doing, to help get the hang of it. The goal is for this to all happen totally inside the pillow case, which means you will be able to feel what you are doing but not see it. Feel free to stop and peak at your work as often as you want. Once you have all the kernels harvested you put the end of the pillow case into a jar and empty the kernels directly in. No waste! No shooting kernels (which is a little fun)! No spilled seeds!
Now you have all those awesome seeds and you need a way to store them. Some folks fold their own seed packets. If that sounds fun for you, go for it. Search online and pick your favorite tutorial. Paper folding is not my thing so I buy 100 little envelopes for $6.50. I get these online and there are lots of different options of colors. Glass jars are perfect for large quantity and they look cool, who doesn’t love that? Just remember to label them so you don’t get mixed up in the spring. Many years ago I was certain I could never forget what variety of pumpkin seed was from each pumpkin. Guess how well that worked come summer planting? At least it was a fun surprise to see what pumpkin showed up in the fall.
Don’t forget to comment below and add any other tips and tricks you would like to share. Happy seed saving, and feel free to message us with any questions.
Follow the link for a quick video.
