My Father-In-Law bought marigold seeds once, years ago. He plants them every year in our garden but he uses seeds from his own previously grown flowers. He showed me today how he gets the seeds from the flowers - it was far more simple than I had thought.Marigold Seeds:
- take an old, drying marigold blossom, and remove the outside petals.
- pull the seeds out from inside the base of the flower.
- Once you remove the seeds, leave them out to dry before putting them away for use next season.
My Father-In-Law usually plants his in June (we're in Zone 8). He even showed us an ice cream bucket full of seeds he has stashed from last year.
He has also grown tomato plants from seeds taken from a store bought tomato, by simply removing them from the fruit and inserting them in the soil, without drying them or doing any other prep first. I haven't tried that yet, but I plan to!
Potatoes are one of the easiest foods to grow from your grocery cart - I've done this many times myself. You simply select a few potatoes with eyes sprouting, cut them in pieces ensuring that each piece has at least one eye, and bury them in the soil. They can take over your garden though, so watch out ;) They also can come back year after year, if any potatoes are not harvested and left in the soil.
One day I was turning the soil in my compost pile and I found an avocado pit that I had composted which had sprouted a new plant. I transferred it to my garden and watched it grow, only to have it die over the winter. I wonder now if I had brought it indoors, would it have survived?
What about you - what's your experience with growing new food and flowers from old?
Clip art courtesy of www.artvex.com
