Saving Seeds

I'll start off the post today by showing you some flowers in the garden.  The seeds we'll be talking about are dull and drab.  Let's look at some color first.  This flower below reminds me of Chanterelle mushrooms - exactly the same color.  However, this plant has nothing to do with a mushroom.  These are the blooms of peanut plants.  Pretty soon we'll harvest them and make some homemade peanut butter.

The pretty flower below is a mystery to me.  It is on some variety of cow pea, but the plant came up volunteer from last year's crop.  It is either a blackeyed pea or a whippoorwill pea.  The mystery will be solved shortly when it sets its pods.  Then we'll know.  Until then, we'll enjoy its colorful flowers.

This flower below, can you guess what it is?  A clue is peeking out behind it.  It is a bloom on an okra plant (Clemson Spineless, to be precise).  Can you tell that okra is in the hibiscus family?  The flowers highly resemble a hibiscus blossom.

That's all on flowers for now.  Let's move to seeds.  It is important to save seeds.  It is a good insurance policy in the event you can't get seeds next year or the variety that you prefer.  Below is a beautiful butternut squash we harvested.  

We scooped out the guts and the seeds and set them aside.

We separated the guts out and put the butternut squash seeds on the windowsill to dry.  It is important to save seeds from the healthiest of fruit.  Hopefully these seeds will produce a nice squash like their parent next year.

I was also saving some Whippoorwill peas.  We just set them on the windowsill for a week or two and let them fully dry out.

Once they are fully dried out, it is time to package them up.  I get a dark-colored bottle and label it with the variety and the date they were saved.

Same thing with these...

I store the bottles of saved seed in a jar in a dry shelf drawer in the utility room.  It's nothing fancy, but the process works.  I'll show you later this week perhaps, I planted some Boston Pickling Cucumbers from some seeds I had saved back in 2016.  We achieved a 100% germination rate.  Fantastic!  Saving seeds is rewarding and will save you money over the years and keep your heirloom and favorite varieties being passed down.