Saving Brassica Seeds

I collected seeds from a brassica plant for the first time last weekend.  I am almost certain - hmm, let's say about 90 percent sure - that these seeds are from a bolted bok choy originally planted sometime last fall and overwintered in our weedy side garden.  But if I'm wrong, then they are from a bolted tatsoi plant, also overwintered.  I'm not too worried about not knowing the exact plant variety, because they both grow very similarly in our garden (the typical rosette growing pattern of tatsoi was very difficult to see in my garden last year) and we like the flavor of both. 

This small bagful of seeds came from just a part of one bolted plant, so I now know that if I ever want to collect brassica seeds again, I only need to let one plant bolt and go to seed.  This is already probably way more bok choy seeds than I could possibly plant in one season anyway.

The entire seed collecting process was pretty easy and simple.  The bolted bok choy put out a long flower stalk that bloomed small yellow flowers for a few weeks, and before I knew it, there were seed pods.  The seed pods started out thin and green, then became more swollen, and finally turned brown and dry, as pictured above.  If the pods get too mature/dry, they will split and explode (literally) on their own and scatter their seeds everywhere.  I'm sure I'll see some volunteers growing in this part of the garden later this fall or next year.

I collected the brown seed pods and gently rubbed them between my fingers to get the seeds out of them.  It was a little bit tedious separating out the remaining empty pods (aka chaff) from the collected tiny seeds, but I figured seed saving was worth at least that much effort.  If I had to process a greater quantity of seeds, I might have used a large bowl to collect the pods, but for the relatively small quantity that I collected, this large plastic lid I used was fine.

Although this is the first time that I collected seeds from a bok choy plant, I'm guessing that the process is the same for all brassica plants like Asian greens, cabbage, broccoli, radish, kale, etc.  Right now there are some bolted daikon radishes in my garden and the seed pods on those plants are very plump, almost like pea pods.  I'm curious to see how they will change when they are mature.

Daikon radish seed pods

Saving Lettuce Seeds

I have to admit that I did not intend to save lettuce seeds this year, mainly because the thought just didn't occur to me.  But my late-spring planted lettuce all bolted quickly when it got too hot early this summer.  One day, my cut-and-come-again lettuce patch just started shooting up these tall flower stalks.  I left them alone because I was curious to see what would happen.

Well, the tall flower stalks (about 3-4 feet tall, I think) started putting on hundreds of these tiny flower buds that, according to the internet, each only opened for quick 30 minutes to self-pollinate and start setting seeds. I caught a few of the open flowers here and there throughout this summer, as you can see in the picture above.  The self-pollinated flowers turned into fuzzy seed heads, like dandelion, as a bunch of seeds formed inside each seed head.

I'm guessing that the fuzzy stuff is intended to carry mature seeds away by wind.  But I also noticed that many seed heads still had seeds intact and just lost the fuzzies.

So I took each seed head and crumbled it gently between my thumb and forefinger to harvest the seeds.  It was pretty easy, and I could do it while the seed head was still attached to the stem.  I then unloaded the contents pinched between my thumb and forefinger to a paper plate.  I repeated this process, um, like a hundred times until I got tired of it and decided I probably had enough lettuce seeds to plant an acre.  In case you're wondering, my vegetables garden is not an acre.  Not even close.

I'm not really sure how I can separate the seeds from chaff, as they all just came apart together.  Does anyone know of a easy way to do this?  Otherwise, I guess it won't hurt anything to just scatter-sow these seeds along with the chaff during next planting time.

Some lettuce seeds were black and some were white.  I'm assuming they are different varieties of lettuce, as I had several different varieties (that I can no longer identify from the bolted lettuce) planted in that corner of the garden. 

There are still hundreds more lettuce flowers and seed heads in the garden.  I don't know if I have the heart to just pull them all out, but I don't really want to harvest any more seeds, either.  Oh the dilemma.  At least I learned my lesson for next year.  If I decide to save lettuce seeds again, I will just let one or two flower stalks develop and that will still give me plenty of seeds, far more than what I can reasonably use or share.  When the weather gets too hot, I will pull out the remaining lettuce to make room for something new, like bush beans.

Germinating Cantaloupe Seeds

Do you ever test-germinate your seeds to see how good they are?

We bought a cantaloupe from a local farmer's market a few weeks ago, and I saved the seeds.  I put the slimy gooey seeds into a bowl, filled it with water, discarded all the ones that floated to the top and just kept the ones that stayed at the bottom of the bowl.  Then I dried them on some newspaper.  Even after discarding the floaty seeds, I probably still have well over a hundred seeds.  I'm definitely not going to plant all of them and I'm sure they will go "bad" in a few years, long before I get around to ever using them all up, either personally or through seed trading.  But before I considered allocating garden space to these seeds and/or trading them away, I wanted to make sure that these seeds were good.

So I placed about a dozen seeds on a sheet of wet paper towel, loosely wrapped them up and put the whole thing in a ziploc bag.  I left the ziploc part open for ventilation, and placed the bag in my grow box.  About five days later, this is what they looked like:

Every single one of the seeds germinated!  Not only that, the roots were really starting to develop, with some of them growing through the double-ply paper towel and coming out on the bottom.  Since I don't know the variety of the parent cantaloupe, I probably won't plant very many of them.  But it's good to know that these seeds are good!

Before you ask, no, I did not save these seedlings, because our indoor grow box is definitely not big enough to grow melons in over the winter.  It's always difficult throwing perfectly good seedlings away, but they served their experimental purpose, and went to go rest (permanently) in the compost pile.

Have a happy Friday everyone, and stay tuned for a Lupe update this weekend!

Saving and Germinating Parsley Seeds

I have been collecting parsley seeds for the last few weeks.  I grew both flat leaf and curly parsley from seed in 2009.  They grew all summer/fall last year and overwintered in the garden.  This year, the same plants grew for a bit in the spring and then bolted quickly.  The flowers were pretty and attracted lots of beneficial insects (see the last picture in this post) and now they are giving me seeds.  I even made a parsley seed bouquet, inspired by the Ottawa Gardener.

I sowed some seeds two weekends ago to test their germination rates.  After 9 days, over 90 percent of the parsley seeds had already germinated.  Not bad, eh?  Here are a couple of pictures.

Since both flat leaf and curly parsley grew and flowered so close to each other, I could not distinguish between the two varieties when I collected the seeds.  I also don't know if they cross-pollinated.  It will be interesting to see what kind of parsley grows from these seeds.

If you're thinking of growing some parsley next year (or even this year indoors) and need some seeds, I have plenty to share, as long as you're not picky between flat leaf or curly parsley!

Parsley Seed Bouquet

Inspired by the Ottawa Gardener, I arranged a bouquet of parsley seeds.

Freshly arranged bouquet

Close-up of parsley seed heads

Seed bouquet on our dining room table

Cilantro (Coriander) and Parsley Going to Seed

We have herbs going to seed!

Cilantro/coriander

Our cilantro bolted almost as soon as the seeds germinated in mid April.  I think it was just too hot for them this spring.  Three and a half very long months later, we finally have some seeds that are turning brown

Parsley - still mostly green flower heads

Parsley - these are brown, probably almost harvest-ready?

We had both curly and flat leaf parsley planted next to each other, and now I can't tell which flower heads are from which plants.  I've read that they readily cross-pollinate with each other, so I guess these seeds will give me some sort of hybrid curly-flat leaf parsley next year.

For those of you who have harvested herb seeds before, how do you know when they are ready to be picked?  Are they ready as soon as they turn brown?  I don't want to run the risk of them not being "ripe" enough by harvesting too early, but I'm also worried that they might all fall off one day while I'm not looking.