'Dig' The EarthGardening
Spring: First Signs of Life
Today when I looked outside I saw something wonderful – green. There are hyacinths coming up in the back yard. Next to one of our outbuildings my “giant” daylilies are sprouting. To the west of the house the dianthus that dried up like an old neglected leather shoe is sprouting new grayblue pups. In the [...]
To Harvest or Not To Harvest a Stone Fruit Pit
Fruit such as peaches, plums and nectarines are considered stone fruits. These are easy to collect since you just eat or cut away the fruit, pull out the stone, wash it, let it dry and voila – a seed. One thing you should consider before collecting these from store bought fruit is that they may [...]
Harvesting Hardy Hosta Seeds
I was very curious to know how to start hosta from seed, but everywhere I read said that it was not commonly done since the seeds are not always produced. Turns out that one variety of the hostas I collected in the fall of 2007 did indeed produce pods with hundreds of seeds. The hosta [...]
Harvesting Seeds from Pretty Little Dianthus
This year I had three varieties of dianthus growing in my garden: Sweet William, Spangled Star and a Neon variety. Like the daylily, once the bloom expires a pod behind the bloom begins to swell with seeds. Allow the pod and stem to turn brown and dry out. The little pod will usually open at [...]
Harvesting Daylily Seeds
I discovered that daylilies are one of the easiest flowers from which to collect seeds. After the flowers have bloomed and died back the portion just behind the bloom begins to swell and form a pod. The pod starts out green and supple the seeds are not ready yet. Allow the pod to turn brown [...]
Harvesting an Avocado Pit
When the avocado fruit has turned black and is ready to eat you can remove the seed. Take a knife and half the fruit from stem end to bottom twisting gently to separate the halves from each other and the seed. Use a sturdy smooth blade kitchen knife to whack into the side of the [...]
Storing Seeds
Every gardener has a different way of storing seeds. Some like plastic baggies others like paper envelopes. Personally, I like the paper envelopes since they don’t retain as much moisture and keep the possibility of mold to a minimum. Look on gardenhere.org for patterns for large and small seeds envelopes or find ways to make [...]
Lull in the sowing process
There has been a bit of a lull in the sowing process lately. I’ve been trying to fly under the “husband radar”. All my tools and seeds got put in a cabinet out of sight. Hmmm. Could this be a case of “out of sight, out of mind”. The wintersowing experiment is still underway though [...]