Monday, August 13, 2012

Harvesting and planting seeds.


Ready to hang up. 
When we returned from our vacation, we noticed the last cilantro plant was ready to be pulled and hung out to dry so we could collect the seeds. The seeds were trying to fall/grow into the snapdragon plants. And I don't feel like trying to pull them out of it.







Shake shake shake...BANG.
While we were hanging the new one up to dry, we noticed the older cilantro had dried out and the seeds were ready to harvest. I forgot to get a before picture, but we put it in a  paper bag and let Pooka shake it and bang it on the floor, the tool box, whatever. She had alot of fun with this step.








Once it was well separated from the stalks (Well most of them). Pooka and I sat down and sorted the seeds  out. We used coffee filters as our plates since that is what I had on hand in my gardening supplies. It would of worked a bit better on paper plates. But that's a live and learn moment.

Before
After
After they were sorted out, we planted them with a bit of the debris to act as a fertilizer. I used the same container they had been in before, and on the left side I used commercial seeds that I had bought previously (not thinking to harvest my own) and on the right are our home grown seeds. This should give us a good control group to see how well we did.
Commercial vs Home Grown
Colorful carrot mix
 Since we had the dirt out, I promised Pooka that this fall we would start some carrots. In true Pooka style, we can't grow just orange carrots. We have to grow colorful carrots because we all know how Pooka's love color.
Good luck little carrots







We got the seeds into their new pots as well. Hopefully we will have alot of carrots to take to school in lunches. I am not sure how Brother will feel about having purple carrots for lunch tho. 

So that's it. We have seeds going into the ground in August. This seems counter intuitive, but we will see what we can get.

No comments:

Post a Comment