If you’ve not heard of them before, go check out the Seed Savers Exchange here.
They sell a bunch of different heirloom seeds, as well as offering an exchange system for people to swap seeds. (Grain of salt, I’m not involved in the exchange part of it yet)
But more importantly for this convo they have lots of info about seed saving, like isolation distances, how to selectively pollinate different crops, and even how many plants are needed species to species to keep a good amount of genetic diversity in a line. Really neat stuff, and a good mission too.
I can get lost in their website lol thank you! Years ago I had a catalog of theirs and may have ordered a few things. I’m watching the tour of the farm video right now. It stirs up a lot of garden planning again.
Glad you’re into saving seeds @OlManHenry ! Seeds are life. My wife and I collect tons of native seeds all over our region. We grow them for restorations so having a local ecotype is what we’re looking for. We actually have a seed vault, and provide native seed to https://www.thebuffaloseedcompany.com/
Like mentioned previously, native means “to your region”, and cultivars, or nativars I’ve heard them called should generally be avoided too. They will throw off pollinators. There’s many obligate pollinators that need our help, not just the generalists that will go for the selected for, “red” yarrow. You can find info on plants and if they are native to your area, naturalized (not native, but has been there long enough it’s not an issue), or invasive, at the USDA plant site. They recently added county specific search, rather than just state wide. USDA Plants Database
Collecting natives is fun, and it happens all year long.
Some of the first seeds we collect each year are from the pussytoes ← hilarious common name.
But an amazing plant that is an obligate host for the painted lady butterfly. I guess once you learn to love seeds, and you find out all the connections they have in the circle of life, it just makes it that much more magical that we can exist in this time of such great diversity. It’s dwindling more and more as we lose whole sections of land to invasives caused by absentee, and uninformed landowners, not to mention developments. We need to protect wild spaces, and collecting/saving/sharing native seeds can help.
Just found a new plant on my land today! Humped bladderwort.
It’s a general list, but those all are native to my area of Kansas. And good call about the cold stratification on the seeds. Lots of natives need 30, 60, or even 90 days of cold weather to let the seed know it’s time to germinate. We tend to try to put out seed before rain or snow is coming. That helps work it into the ground, and snow helps hide it from birds and rodents. If you’re seeding grass, I’d suggest putting it down in March ish. They don’t need the cold like many forbs do. Anyway… I love seeds! We collect garden seeds too. Native prairie is our passion though. Thanks for letting me spew.
I grew this year a few veggies from my refrigerator
The cherry tomatoes and red peppers
Both were great
The cherry tomatoes had the best taste and yield iv ever gotten from any cherry tomatoes seed I purchased
well over 100 tomatoes on that plant and it gave me 2 harvest
I’m iin the piedmont of NC, so we have a lot of plants that grow in the mountains and coastal areas, as well as a bunch that grow in Kansas, too so it seems!
I’ve only become interested in any kind of outdoor plants, other than pot, for a few years, I’m a real noob at this. Joined the County/State Extension Master Gardeners program, and it really ignited a fire.
It’s become an addiction to see just what, and how many pollinators we can attract each year. And, it’s been so great being able to grow plants we can’t get busted for
One of the coolest increases I got with adding tons of pollinators is I see WAY more hummingbirds now than I did as a kid. Never saw more than 1 at a time growing up, and now there can be 3-5 at times having dog fights over the jewel weed. Love those plants as they form nice bushes, have small orange flowers, and do a GREAT job working as nutrient export in my bog in my koi pond. Every fall I am pulling out bushels and bushels (all nutrients locked up in plant form instead of algae), and it comes up super easy, and re-seeds for next year on its own.
Neat waxy leaves too, they are also called silver dollar plants because if you submerge the leaves, they look like silver dollars.
Saving some of these purplestem aster seeds, the pollinators love them! Seem to grow wild here. I have been finding a lot of that since I was grounded all summer due to back surgery , amazing what we notice when we slow down.
o if anyone is on facebook… i run a seed swap group. friends seed swap… its a straight across trading…etc… tho we have to be carefull about our beans from here lol
I’ll pick some more dry pods for you and mail them them out, not a problem. I really like them a lot and the pollinators do too. A few plants produce ALOT of seed
Thank you kindly for the offer, but I must politely decline.
I live in michigan and that shit is everywhere, especially this year, must be the drought or something…dunno.
But
It would be cool if we could somehow add garden seeds to the spring coop boxes as a bonus or something.
I do not mean to volunteer the already hard working folks round here for more work, just saying something like this would be a great idea.
Or we could have a separate thing all together, what ever works.
I really feel we need to find a way to work together these days, despite any differences we may have, to a reach a common goal that helps us all become better humans.
, amazing what we notice when we slow down.
I love it! I agree 100%