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Gathering seeds

Don’t be fooled by the blooming azalea bush in the background, it’s late Fall. It will be winter, by the time this is published. My poor azalea is continually confused and thinks it’s Spring. I’ve been planning for this moment all year, though, saving seeds from various flowers and plants that I’ve grown and expecting I would have more time in the fall and winter to work with seeds. That time has come.

I’ve saved seeds for stubby carrots, orange marigolds, tithonia rotundifolia (Mexican Sunflower), magenta zinnia, and orange king poppy (I think).

Remember to leave some plants to “go to seed”. Many times you’ll keep the plants alive until they look like they’re dead.

I used a screen that I had from the top of an aquarium to sift through most of the tithonia. Those things grew like crazy this year. Exponential. The seeds I have are probably thousands of times more than the seeds I planted. Thousands. I’m amazed tithonia aren’t everywhere.

Cleaning seeds takes a few sessions. This is just one of them. I’ve been separating poppies and zinnia earlier in the year and had help with the marigolds.

There’s always a 3d print

I had intended many of these seeds to be gifts, so I wanted to package them up nicely. I drew a logo, scanned it, turned it into a vector drawing and then 3d-printed a stencil. Using this, I painted a bunch of seed bags, and started filling them.

These will make nice holiday gifts. Sshhhh… Not a word!

Rosemary

Then there’s the rosemary. The plants in the herb garden need trimming anyway, why not make the best of it? Saved the clippings, washed them, and then dried them. Yes, this is the same aquarium screen. I’m in need of another screen frame.

I took a dozen of the clippings and put them in a jar with water. I rooted another one recently, it took about 2-3 weeks, changing water twice.

Nice little roots on this bugger. I’ve planted it in some dirt, so we’ll see how it does.

I still have a massive amount of seeds left, especially the tithonia. I’m thinking about doing some guerrilla gardening in my alley with them. Everybody get’s a sunflower! Maybe some seed bombs. What do you think?