seed saving | organised castle

My vegetable gardening efforts over the years have sometimes involved buying and sowing seeds but have mostly been a matter of buying a punnet of seedlings.

I know that this is not the most sustainable option for several reasons. The seedlings come in a plastic tray and they are often grown in quite different conditions to your location which does not always bode well for their success. Finally, many are hybrids which are not suitable for seed saving as they do not grow true to type.

At the beginning of October, I was fortunate enough to be given some lettuce seedlings by a fellow gardener who lives about 1km away from us. These were very successful for several months until the hot weather and then they bolted as lettuces tend to do in the warmer months. A couple of them grew to almost 1 metre tall with masses of flowers.

GMan was keen to clear out the garden bed where they were so today I checked them and found dozens of seed heads with literally hundreds of seeds. I collected them, rinsed the detritus from them and spread the seeds out on a scrap of calico fabric to dry.

Wish me luck with my first real foray into saving and replanting seed from my own garden. These lettuces have proven themselves very successful in our climate and soil conditions so I am hopeful of reasonable success.

I mentioned yesterday that this simple living can be darned hard work – gardening, planting, harvesting, preserving, storing and cooking from scratch – not to mention the million and one other things that need to be done.

A sure-fire way to rejuvenate the enthusiasm is to see the ‘chores’ through the eyes of a child. Our granddaughters stayed here this weekend and spending an hour or so in the backyard with them was a sheer delight.

Collecting the eggs.

Checking out the onion patch.

Splitting open beans to retrieve the seeds.

The excitement of finding a bean seed. We will be letting them dry out and saving to replant. We have also saved snow pea seeds. Miss O had fun sorting the bean and pea seeds into separate containers.

Helping with the harvest.

There were lots of other things that did not get captured on film. Pulling up the spent broccoli and cauliflower plants and dragging the up to the compost bin as well as pulling the old snow pea vine off the trellis.

Miss O helped me cook and we made a fruit slice with passionfruit icing as well as currant, orange and poppyseed muffins. The girls took some muffins home to put in their lunchboxes for daycare tomorrow.

I also managed to get a little sewing done. 2 pairs of shorts are finished. Here they are on the models.

And the second pair.

It is a pleasure to see the sheer delight on the faces of my grandchildren when they can help with the jobs we do every day. I am reminded that what I am doing is ‘right’ and I look forward to sharing many more things as they get older.