Saving seeds is easy but takes time and a bit of patience

Harvesting seeds for the spring

Seed saving saves money, provides you with extra seeds to share with other gardeners (watch for #seedswapday on January 29, 2022), and ensures that you can grow the same plants the next year. Like this summer, for example, there was a particularly beautiful yellow zinnia in my garden. Saving the seeds from that plant will allow me to grow that flower again next year. This whole process starts during the growing season.

This short video will illustrate how to recognize zinnia seeds on your dried flower blossoms.

How to start

Later in the summer in my flower beds and vegetable garden in Maryland, I intentionally keep a few flowers or vegetables on the living plants so I can save the seeds to use the next year. For example, I keep a good number of zinnia blooms on their plants so they can die and dry out on the plant. That is the important part because the seeds have to form. It is kind of ugly having dried up, crunchy flowers on a living plant, but it is really worthwhile.

And don’t wait until the very end of the season. I have had the experience of an unusually early hard frost that killed many of my plants before I had a chance to save any seeds!

Now Is the Time to Plant Tulips and Daffodils

Don’t you love early spring when the outdoors starts to come back to life? You are slogging through the worse part of winter and then all of sudden you see an early flowering tree, the Cherry Blossom forecast is part of the nightly news (here in D.C. anyway), and the first electric-yellow daffodils in your neighbor’s yard appear. These are the first indications that spring is really coming.

Tulips and phlox in April.

Adding those early daffodils, tulips, and hyacinth to your home’s landscape is easy and affordable. I can’t tell you how cheerful those bobbing flower-heads can be!

Cut daffodils.

BULBS ARE EASY TO FIND

This time of year, along with the Christmas-themed inflatables, you can find a small but very nice selection of hardy bulbs at your neighborhood big box or hardware store. I even saw them in the grocery store today. Hardy bulbs are planted once in the fall and then left in the ground, and are the source of daffodils, tulips, and other early spring flowers.

START SMALL

Start small because planting bulbs on a cold fall day is not that fun. But but but – the pay off!! And you can probably get 15 bulbs for about $10.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT LOCATION

I am big proponent of enjoying your garden from the inside of the house. If you are working from home a lot more these days, choose a spot from your “office” window so you can enjoy them all day long.

Bulbs should be planted is a well-drained area of the your yard. The amount of sunlight does not really matter that much because the leaves are not on the trees when bulbs are popping up.

They don’t even have to be put in a prepared bed. I have a bunch of daffodils under the lawn. By the time the grass is ready to mowed for the first time, the flowers are long gone. Think of succession planting! (Note that there will green leaves that should stay attached to the bulbs until they naturally die and can be easily pulled off.) 

Bare bulbs, roots on the bottom.
Photo credit Univ. of Minnesota Extension

PLANTING INSTRUCTIONS

1. Like I mentioned above, bulbs should be planted in late fall in well-drained area of the your yard.
2. Dig a hole about 6 inches deep and plop one bulb, facing the right side up, in the hole.
3. Plant your bulbs about 6 inches apart.
4. I would recommend digging the holes and placing all the bulbs before covering them back over with dirt. That way you can see where they are and check the spacing.
5. I have heard stories of squirrels digging up bulbs, but I think if you dig them deep enough – truly 6 inches, no cheating – you should not have a problem.