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8 Tips on Sowing and Saving Seeds

Author Bio

Emma Gallagher is a Brit living in North Carolina. She grows organic gardens and... Read More

Seed catalogs are so much fun and can fill a hopeful gardener with such inspiration. It’s also fun to save some seeds from a plant that you have grown and carefully saved ready for next year’s planting.

Some seeds can be sown and grown for the sole purpose of eating them as with sunflowers and pumpkins while others can be wrapped up in clay and tossed on desolate land in a fit of guerilla gardening.

Seeds come with so much potential for life and nourishment for you and the earth. Check out these OGP articles that share some secrets for success when sowing and saving seeds.

1. Seeds for Free

Thumbing through seed catalogs and scoping seed racks at the store are loads of fun and moments full of wonderment. Plus, there are a lot worse, and plenty of useless, things we could be dropping our cash on than the garden. So, we can justify the splurge. But, what if we didn’t have to? What if it was easy to get seeds for free? Loads of seeds are completely free and within our reach. Read on to learn How to Get Seeds for Free.

2. Edible Seeds

When we grow our food gardens we often focus on the vegetables and maybe a few fruits, but give little regard to edible seeds. However, seeds are packed with vital nutrients, healthy fats, and protein that fruits and vegetables aren’t necessarily adept at delivering. What this article is about are the seeds that don’t fall in the legume, grain, or nut category. These are the seeds we usually refer to as seeds, and it turns out we can readily grow them in our gardens! Check out this awesome Guide to Growing Edible Seeds.

3. Seed Bombs

The seed bomb, aka green grenade, is a portal of potential plant life, a pill if you will, in which the contents include a collection of compost and seeds. It can be tossed into those hard-to-reach places where cultivators may not be able to get. In some instances, the seeds will be those of wildflowers, a great visual for pedestrians passing by, and fine fodder for foraging bees and other urban wildlife. Sometimes the green grenades explode into an array of fresh produce for some free food. It just depends on the peaceful point being made. Learn How to Create a Seed Bomb for Guerilla Gardening.

4. Trees from Seed

These days even vegetable gardens are often grown from store-bought seedlings instead of seeds. So, the idea of growing trees—all the care and patience it can take—hardly seems to be a consideration for most budding gardeners. Why go to all that trouble when there is an option, a small price to pay, to skip it? Buying a young tree is far more expensive than planting a seed for one (often free). This guide tells you What You Need to Know About Growing Trees from Seeds.

5. Spring Seeds

Let’s be clear from the start: this article for 8 Seeds Best to Plant First in Spring is not about which things to plant first for the year, but which to plant first in the spring. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, spring officially begins sometime in March, depending on what seasonal gauge one chooses. For our purposes (growing food), we’ll be calling spring the time immediately following the final frost of the year. For some lucky folks, this will be slightly before March; for others, the wait could push much later.

6. Save Seeds

In the scheme of self-sufficiency, seed-saving is amongst the most important and overlooked items on the checklist. After all, there are no plants to produce tomatoes, squashes, and so on if there are no seeds from which to spark those plants. Saving seed for some of our yearly favorites just makes a lot of sense. Plus, it’ll leave a little extra funding for experimenting with new stuff! Read on to learn How to Save Seeds (and Money!) When You Grow Your Own Veggies

7. Prepare Seeds

Unless you are a gardener who lets your plants go to seed and self-sow, most seeds are bought in packets. However, buying seeds that have been sitting in a warehouse or on the shelf in a garden center means that they might not have had the benefit of exposure to different environments that would naturally help their success. Fortunately, there are some small and simple practices you can do to help store-bought seeds have a better start in life. Look here to learn How to Prepare Seeds for Planting: Stratification, Soaking, and Scarification.

8. Seeds Versus Seedlings

If you want to get a head start, seeds can be started indoors in January or February resulting in little plants that are ready to be planted out after the last frost. However, if you simply don’t have the room or inclination to do this, buying plant starts from a nursery in the spring is a perfectly good option. Seeds or seedlings? Check out The Pros and Cons of Planting Seeds Versus Planting Seedlings.

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