Don’t forget to harvest seeds from your annuals or other plants.
- Hyacinth bean vine, moonflowers, etc. are really easy to harvest, since they make nice big pods. Just pick the pods and shell them as if they were lima beans.
- Some of the other seeds are a bit harder to find. Most daisy-like flowers, such as coneflowers and black eyed susans, develop seeds in the center of the flower after the fluff has dried.
- If you’ve got a plant you really want to get seeds from, but the seeds haven’t ripened, you can often rubber band a small paper bag over the flower head so that the seeds fall into the bag when they are ripe.
- Once you harvest your seeds, you may need to freeze them for a few weeks to avoid having pests devour them. Mini hollyhocks are especially prone to this problem.
- Label your seed packets with the name and color of your seeds’ parents. Just be aware that you may end up with a different plant color than you expected next year if you have several varieties of a single species in your garden.