The Art of Seed Saving

Fall is seed saving time. O didn’t start pir as a seed=saver. I am low on patience and buying plants to get things going was always my thing except for maybe radishes and Swiss chard. Flowers, herbs, peppers, tomatoes—such a fun day to head out and come come with a car full. Then—COVID. Shelves were empty and everyone was hunkered down in their own little private Idaho’s growing things. Supply chains dried up due to no workers and seeds for purchase online were all sold out (WTF). I never missed a day of work because I worked at a hospital so this whole unavailability business was beyond my comprehension. So the Mother of Invention stepped in—Necessity. Harvesting seeds from my plants was the only way to guarantee a crop for the next year. Tomatoes, peppers, parsley, zinnias, 4 o’clocks, coriander, pink pine cone flowers, eggplant…as it turns out—it is kinda addictive. I even tried growing roses from rose hips. I’ll let you know if I ever master that tricky wicket. And my seeds have scattered, as they say, across the continent from east to west, north to south as I share them with friends near and far. My reward being a lovely picture of a butterfly on a zinnia in California, grown from seeds I sent from Connecticut, harvested from plants I grew from seeds a friend sent me from Texas. Ponder that.