Gathering seed pods

Gathering the seeds of okra and beans is so satisfying for a lazy gardener such as myself.

Just let the stuff dry on the stem/vine and pop them off store, label and save!

Here's some okra pods looking great and harlequin-esque:

It's really cool when they dry because when they're ready to be gathered they typically split open at each edge.

You may need to be careful when the weather is rainy though because water can seep in and cause the seed case/seeds to mold within and then the seeds you so lovingly wanted for next year might be diseased or nonviable.  Toss all moldy seeds you might find while gathering, or even whole pods if it looks pretty dire.

Okra seeds are great because there are so many seeds within one pod.  Each "line" or section of the pod has a long row of seeds in it and if you allow them to grow, ripen and dry completely on the stalk you are definitely assured more seed that you'll probably need.  I have at least 15 of these pods dry and happy on various stalks.               

Same goes with beans and peas:

easy-peasy!

(well, ok I haven't saved my pea seeds yet because I grow so many varieties near each other that I am all worried and Gregor Mendeled-out about them, being pretty sure I won't get something true if I were to save and plant them, but I'm probably just being paranoid). 

Gah, those square genetics tables!   They're coming back to haunt me!

Adventures in seed saving and other fun fall activities

*lukewarm* Yea, sustainability.

Erm, AHEM, I mean, woohoo! ;)

This bit of cold water on the happiness that is my garden stems slightly from seed saving, a bit of a messy time consuming process for some seeds (like Malabar spinach), but still a very important and cost saving process.

(red stem Malabar Spinach)

My slight gripe is that I forget teeny tiny little spiders really enjoy chillin' and making a home on the tiny flowered racemes of plants such as basils, lemon balms and perilla.

Whilst gathering perilla seed for the giveaway (still up and going if anyone wants it or the malabar spinach!) I was cutting a bunch of the perilla recemes to trying to get just enough seed for one packet and avoiding any spider webby looking bits as well as possible.

Despite my efforts when I started seed extracting, little spiders started scurrying around EVERYWHERE.

I'm not nervous about spiders themselves; I'm just nervous about getting bit because I have unfortunately pretty bad reactions to mosquito and spider bites (serious burning, itching and swelling to grapefruit size bites sometimes).

And I really hate Benadryl, so bites (as I probably have ranted before) are a problem and I really DIS-like squishing spiders, even if there are million of them running around me because hey, spiders are pretty good.

Needless to say, I thought to myself as I was being nibbled on, "Ouch. ouch. ouch. They're. tiny. little. things. They'll probably---OW, produce tiny little bites?"

So yes, the bites were little.

Until 2 minutes later, where they were about 10x what they were before and I headed for the neem oil, which doesn't relieve itchiness immediately, but when it starts working, it really works.

Seed saving tomatoes are a snap at least, every time you eat one you can eat the fruit and squish out the gelly inside to add to water and let it ferment. Then clean, dry, and save.

Okra and beans are easy too, sweet "let 'em dry on the vine/stalk!" and then bust 'em open to get to the seeds AND save.

(Scarlet Runner bean)

It's just those herbs, those darn, darn herbs with their leeeetle flowers that attract leeeeeeeetle bugs, which THUS attract leeeeeeeetle predators (aka spiders) that get to me. *shiver* I can still feel tiny spiders crawling all over me!

(Purple Perilla, AMAZING no tiny spiders made a cameo here. Anneliese, I SWEAR I got all the spiders off before I mailed you your packet of seed!)

Anyways, fall is a stupid busy time, more than spring is I often forget.

Gotta (1) seed save, (2) re-pot outdoor things for inside, (3) plant perennials in the coolness of fall, (4) plant fall/winter vegetable garden, (5) take cuttings for propagation, (6)  Divide any spring flowering perennials, (7) Offer to rake people's leaves for composting!!!

AHHHHHHHHHH! *runs around collapses*

Happy Autumn to you and don't die of overwork!

A Dynasty is Over: Great Wall of Spinach cut down

The weather being colder and I, in anticipation of sweet, sweet sugar snap peas and snow peas decided it was time for the malabar spinach to go.


(Well, most of it)

I am experimenting (aka 'being lazy') and seeing what will happen to the spinach after the frost/during the winter and on (if it doesn't get too gross as the plant is almost succulent-like).

I am curious if the spinach will self seed itself for next year as I dropped plenty of berries/seeds on my first seed collecting harvest.

My malabar spinach, the red stem, "Rubra" variety, was quite lovely to behold much of the summer and once it started to seed and the weather become not so pretty, its color change was akin to those "love it or hate it" situations where you enjoy a plethora of yellow-pink-orange-ish colors with the fading green leaves and hot pink stems, or you think it sort of look like vomit.

Either way, it didn't look too palatable.

The twine trellised vines were pretty easy to take off all together, and while I'll go through and save some more seeds from the piles of malabar spinach vines, I am trying to figure out a good way to potentially compost them or if I probably ought to solarize the lot because I am nervous about utterly self seeding my compost pile with it.

The seeds shouldn't survive the winter, but in a compost pile, things do surprisingly well, and we know how warm it can get in there...

Ugh, now I need to re-string the fence again for peas, luckily it'll be a while yet before they need the support much if at all!

So, goodbye sweet faux-spinach! Next year, if things work out, I may try to see if you are freezeable!

Malabar Spinach seed saving--- this might get a little messy (Don't forget to comment for the seed GIVEAWAY)

I was interested in documenting my malabar seed saving, as the seed is encased in a small dark purple-black fruit seed coat and wondered how involved it would get. The answer: PRETTY FREAKIN' INVOLVED.

I originally intended to just let the seeds dry out in their fruit, as I read could be done, but the chances of the fruit molding, or going bad and thus turning the seed bad was too great and I wanted to be sure the seeds were in good condition, so I decided to scrub the juicy fruity bits off.

On an earlier day, I picked a small, but plentiful basket full of malabar spinach berries(?):

(berries are tiny and encased in each is a seed)

I then took out the colander and a larger metal bowl to capture anything that might get washed out of the colander because I didn't want to lose a viable seed.

Remembering having heard that the fruit is a well know vegetable dye, and having many plain white rags around that I use for cleaning which my Aunt Louise gifts me every time I see her (Thanks Aunt Louise!), I decided to experiment and place one of the cleaner not stained rags under the colander so that all the fruit juices/dye would splash on and dye the rag, hopefully a rather pleasing purple-y color.

Yep, that's a really purple-pink (magenta I suppose?) color! I ended up getting another rag to dye  partially because my hand was beginning to get a wee bit raw from scraping fruit against the metal colander holes. Kind of like a grater. I swear no bits of my fingers will be in any requested seed packets!

Mmmmm, fruit flesh encrusted rag! But it gives you a good idea as to the color of the dye. I did have to add and swish water around to be able to move the fruit/seeds in the colander well, but the color was still pretty strong I think.

The other reason for the water was this:
The separated fruit fleshy bits float to the top so I can easily extract it from the seeds that sunk to the bottom of the colander. I attempted to use a spoon to scoop up the floating fruit bits, but ended up just tipping the bowl gently to allow the bits to drain away. The entire process was similar to panning for gold I'd say, though I haven't done that since I was 6 years old... and I think I might have been just pretending to pan for gold too after I read about it in a book on the 49ers...

Here I am still in the process of rubbing berries between my fingers and hands in the bowl to separate the seeds from flesh still.
Eventually, after doing this for a good while, and dumping the fruit flesh a couple of times after swishing with water, I am getting some clarity and the good seeds are at the bottom of the bowl. Any seeds that floated to the top were probably unripe or not viable for germination, so I allowed them to follow the fate of the fruit flesh, DOWN THE DRAIN, I mean, INTO THE COMPOSTER!
When I got everything clean enough, I dumped the seeds into the colander for a final swish and mini-scrub to make 'em squeaky clean.

I have an admission to make.... I have never dyed anything before and as I was sort of doing everything last minute and was feeling too lazy to do some real research I gleaned everything I could remember from my "wish I was a frontier girl" days (about 7 years old at that time, Little House on the Prairie and all that rot) and I chucked the malabar fruit colored water and rags into a pot and cranked the stove on high because I vaguely remember dying had something to do with boiling water. I added vinegar for good measure and realized later that maybe I was thinking of Easter eggs :(

Either way, after a while I turned off the pot of dye+rags and let it cool on its own before I let the rags drain of some of the water dye and then hung them on some metal, grated, sunroom furniture to dry.
(Note: Once dry, the color of the rags are just a bit lighter than this color and more PINK than mauve. Which I am not a huge fan of... I am thinking of attempting to try as little water as possible for the next batch of seed saving because dangit, I am NOT a pink fan. Gimme some royal purple baby).


Here are all the seeds I set out to dry on my dining room table on some newspaper... on some nice white table cloth (brill right?) Eh, tablecloths are meant to be used and abused. I would have loved to put them in a really sunny spot, but it was sort of cloudy that day/ rained later.
It appears that one of the seeds decided to sprout, possibly within its fruit coat! I sincerely doubt it was during its bath while I was handling it.
So, that was my seed saving adventure... and there's a whole heck of a lot more seeds to save... so, um, please, take them off my hands?

(UPDATE: I realized that I had forgotten to re-read this post before I sent it and there were a million grammatical and spelling errors, so my apologies... very sleepy when written)