A Little Seed Saving

Sweet Magnolia pea seed

It was a grey drizzly morning this morning (although we didn't really get any rain) so I spent some time putting up seeds.

First up was a big bowl of dried pods from the Sweet Magnolia purple snap pea. These are really beautiful pea plants with purple flowers and pods.

Sweet Magnolia seeds

Even the seeds are pretty, shades of brown and green, sometimes speckled.

Got them jarred up and started on the mustards. There was a small amount of red mizuna mustard.

red mizuna seed heads

When I cut plants for their seeds I usually just stand them upside down inside a feed sack and let them sit in a warm dry room until they are completely dry. In the case of mustards the seed pods will pop open, dispersing the seeds. You can hear them popping sometimes. To make sure all the good pods have popped I just slap the seed heads against the side of the bag.

seed and chaff

The stems and seed heads go to the chickens and I pour the seeds and chaff out into a bowl. Most of that chaff on top is empty seed pods and easy to pick off a little at a time.

Then I'll swirl the seed around in the bowl and blow on it, which the chaff is lighter and most of it will blow off, leaving some pretty clean seed in the bottom.

Red Mizuna Mustard seed

After the mizuna I worked on the 3 bags of Giant Red Mustard seed heads, but didn't quite get finished yet.

The physical act of saving seeds is pretty easy. Just pick almost ripe seed heads and let them finish drying out. If they are in wet juicy pulp like melons or tomatoes, then I mash the pulp and let it ferment, then rinse and dry. The fermenting process helps kill seed born diseases and it eats the pulp, making it easy to get clean seed. Some plants do have special considerations however. Like corn. With corn you have to save seeds from 100 plants or more in each generation, so that you keep up enough genetic diversity for the plants to continue to be healthy.

Oliver or Oliva????

Back at mom's house I finished cleaning up an empty pen and moved some babies. One baby is an olive egger but I"m not positive yet if we have an Oliver or an Olivia.

mm boy or girl, that is the question

Then my sister refused to come out of her trailer because this spider was on the outside of the door. So I rescued it and put it over in the plants. I'll see if we can find out what kind it is, it's pretty interesting looking.

unknown spider

Harvest Monday & Seedy Saturday Winner!

baby lettuce, violas, society garlic blossoms, chives, lemon thyme

Welcome to Harvest Monday! This weekly bloghop is hosted by Daphne, over at Daphne's Dandelions. This week of course saw more baby lettuces, along with some herbs and edible flowers.

yellow beets, baby carrots, tiny potatoes

One day I pulled a couple of big yellow beets, some baby carrots and emptied a tub that grew potatoes. The potato plants have looked quite pathetic all fall and all I got were these 3 tiny potatoes. I think the problem was the soil was just not fertile enough. Looking at the plants I'm sure they didn't have enough nitrogen and looking at the potatoes I'm equally sure they didn't get enough potash. Ah well, there is always next year!

Pineapple Sage flowers are great in salad

The small Pineapple Sage plants that I bought recently have begun to bloom. I sprinkle the flowers in my salad. They have a lovely sweet, floral flavor with hints of pineapple. Their bright lipstick red color adds another dimension of color along with flavor.


Many people look askance at me eating my salad without dressing. While I do like Ranch dressing, it is way too heavy and overpowering to put it on baby lettuce. It is better as  a dip for things with more robust flavors, like hot wings.

I don't even usually use vinaigrette these days, preferring to actually taste the different flavors of the lettuces, other baby greens, flowers and herbs.

yellow marble & Princepe Borghese tomatoes

Since we were expecting snow and freezing temps I picked all the little tomatoes that were at least beginning to turn color. Since it is predicted to be in the high 20's overnight all week I suspect these will be the last.

This weeks harvests:
lettuce, herbs, edible flowers           1 pound  5 oz

potatoes                                                        3 oz
beets & greens                             2 pounds 14 oz
baby carrots                                                  5 oz
tomatoes                                                       1 oz

total                                              4 pounds, 12 oz

This week's Seedy Saturday giveaway is for Sweet Magnolia, a purple podded snow pea. The seeds were saved in 2009 and should have good germination. The plants will go to 6 ft+ on good soil. I wrote everyone's name on a slip of paper and folded it up. Then I tossed them in the air and picked up the slip of paper that landed closest to me. And the winner is......... Shannon B.! For the rest of you, stop in and try again next week.

PS. I have one more space that I might plant Sweet Magnolias in and after that I might give away the seeds that are left in the jar, so be sure and check in every Seedy Saturday!

Grow Peas!

Sweet Magnolia, a purple snow pea

I love peas, I could eat green peas every day of the year. However, here in the desert they only grow from fall through spring as they don't do well once the temperatures start getting over about 80 degrees. So I plant peas everywhere I can and gorge on them during the season. I don't like canned peas so don't bother growing a lot of shelling peas.

If there are any extras I do freeze some of the snap and snow peas to use during the off season. I've just written an article about growing peas of all kinds, including sweet pea flowers, which you can read at How To Grow Peas.

A few years ago I grew six different kinds of peas and wrote a review of them which you can read at 6 Pea Varieties on Trial.

So what else is new around here, not too much, mostly I've been working the day job and with the days getting shorter there is less time to be working outside. I'm still hauling rocks and building walls as fast as I can and of course, planting peas!