Save Your Flower Seeds

Share your favorite flowers with friends!

Flower seeds are one of my favorites to save and share with friends. It’s such fun for a tight-wad like me, to see a flowerbed filled with the beauties I saved the seeds for.

A world of variety
The list of open-pollinated flowers you can save seeds for is astounding! It includes ageratums, asters, calendula, poppies, celosias, cleome, cosmos, impatiens, larkspurs, lobelias, marigolds, moonflower, morning glories, nasturtium, love-in-a-mist, petunias, snapdragons, sunflowers, zinnias, and more. The list of perennials and biennials is shorter: asters, butterfly weed, columbines, coreopsis, foxgloves, hollyhock, honesty, purple coneflower, rudbeckias, salvias, sunflowers, sweet pea, sweet rocket.

I’ve successfully saved seeds from several of these. You know a sunflower is easy because they come up under the birdfeeders! I basically follow the same procedure as with veggie seed collecting, in that I pick exceptional blooms to leave and allow to almost dry out.

Easy does it
With my poppies I carefully watched for their seed pods to turn brown and dry out. I carefully clipped them free of the plant, held them over a container, and like a salt shaker I turned then upside-down and shook. The tiny black seeds came pouring out. If hadn’t been careful in the harvest I could’ve lost all the seeds by my handling. There are several flowers that contain the seeds in a pouch of sorts, and if you’re not careful you’ll lose them.

The winter handling of them is the same as the veggies. I also direct sow some of them in new locations in the fall, and allow Nature to do what it does. They’ll do just fine without me.

Know your pretties
Some seeds require cold stratification (so many hours below a certain temperature). Nature does that for what’s sowed outside, and if you store your seeds in the fridge or the freezer, they’ll get what they need.

Biennials (the first year they’re a new, green plant, but no blooms. The 2nd year they bloom and go to seed) are fun to play with one of my favorites is old fashioned hollyhock. It’s important to know if you have annual, perennial, or biennials when saving seeds. It’ll save much frustration.

There are few things more satisfying than sharing your “pretties” with friends!

Sherrie Ottinger, The Tennessee Dirtgirl