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!
