“Saving seeds…That is exactly how my Aunts, Grandmother, and Mother saved seeds. Usually in a long white envelope…sometimes a used one then taped. The name of the plant written in pencil on the front and the date and year. My Aunt saved petunias and pansy seed as well. In the fall she would plant her pansy seed in a large old washtub, cover it with cheesecloth…by spring she had the prettiest and earliest pansys in Canton. Do you know who saves all those morning glory seeds and scatters them everywhere? It must be the Morning Glory fairy that flits around early in the fall evenings.” B. Ruth
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That’s how Granny saves her seeds too.
Tipper
Appalachia Through My Eyes – A series of photographs from my life in Southern Appalachia.
My Grandma saved every kind of vegetable seed from her garden in envelopes with the name written on it.
Our maternal Grandmother always put hers in small jars, baby food or jelly jars. Bro Tom and I still do that.
God bless.
RB
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Tipper,
I try to always save my White Runner
Seeds just because I love the strain
and it came from local farms over a hundred years ago. For me, a zip lock bag works great in the frig.
Next season I hope the rainy pattern
changes around here…Ken
your bean sounds like what we call a valentine bean it is a pink bean and bears really well even if it is small
a good early 6 week bean
Tipper,
I know this don’t have much to do with saving seeds except a person might ought to get what’s left PDQ…I was on the porch waitin’ for the doggie to do his business last night. I heard a toot, toot, toot, toot! It kept moving closer and closer flying back and forth from the Dogwood tree next to the house to the ornamental Red Maple by our teeny homemade pond. The cat hunkered down in hopes of either snatching it or keeping it from seeing him…Everytime it tooted in fours…after if flew and relanded. It was a Northern Saw-whet owl…Now then that owl winters in Tennessee and further south..I can’t believe it is here that early..I also saw this weekend another black Wooly Bear Caterpillar..only tow little amber stripes in the middle of the thirteen woolies in the row…We might ought to batten down the hatches before Halloween..and hunt the long-johns in the cedar chest!
It’s gettin’ scary around here more ways than one…
Thanks Tipper,
PS…Tell Ed to cut that out! Those haints could still be around you know! LOL
I’m planning to save marigold sees this year, because the plants I bought this year had big flowers that lasted and lasted…might as well scatter some seeds in a bed next Spring and see what happens 🙂
Mommy and Grandma Breedlove always saved flower and other small seeds like that in envelopes too. Then they had to buy seeds from neighborhood kids selling them for school.
Tipper,
I was just looking out the window and wondering what I could plant in a tub by the old telephone pole. My husband just finished exchangeing out the green bottles for the cobalt blue bottles on the bottle tree close by the pole. The only thing that would climb that old pole and hide it would be white and blue morning glories and go beautifully with that blue bottle tree….Go Figure!
I have never attempted to save seeds, but each spring I find a return of my impatience and this year with the rain I had morning glories all over the place but where they were planted. I had nothing on the arbor, but my bushes and ground cover had lots of vines twisted around them. I think I will have a challenge when it come time to clean everything out.
Yep here too, although I met a wonderful farmer that has a solar seed dryer
Saving seeds brought back some wonderful memories. We “saved seeds” around Choestoe, too. My Aunt Ethel (for whom I was named) had a variety of early-producing beans that had a pink tinge to the bean pod. We called that particular bean “Aunt Ethel Beans” to honor her. She didn’t develop the seeds, of course, but her having saved enough seeds for several to plant in our neighborhood won her the distinction of having early-producing (and delicious) beans named for her! My Dad, who was a superb sorghum-syrup maker, also saved cane seeds. Neighbors would come seeking his “Blue Ribbon Cane” seeds to plant their crop of cane. There were other important seeds saved, too, but these two were noteworthy because of how well the seeds produced and who attended to the safe saving of the seeds.
I want to meet and learn the techniques of whoever saves and plants the Kudzu seeds, this person makes Johnny Appleseed look like Dick & Jane in our first reader.
My granny put tomato seeds on a paper right out of the tomato and let them dry to the paper. When it was dry she rolled up the paper and tied it with a string ( a flour sack string) writing the variety on the outside. She put bean seeds in a jar and they went in the freezer. The flower seeds went in envelopes or just wrapped up in paper. She had a world of beautiful flowers.
She also made note of who she got the seed from if it was not from her own garden. Those are the old ways….and they worked!