Hello everyone. I hope this cloudy day finds you at peace as you await the fall weather that is coming soon. Here in North Florida, I for one will be so happy when it arrives to stay awhile.
As I was cutting up my pumpkin to can, I thought that I would save the seeds, as we never know what next year may bring or possibly not bring to us. There also has not been very many cans of pumpkin on the store shelves in very many states, as people have been saying that they are not finding it. So it was canning time for me.
I also like to save seeds from heirloom tomatoes that have the greatest taste that you could imagine. I used to grow about 50 plants each spring and save the seed for the next spring.
This is simple to do, all you have to do is scrape out the seeds you want to save. Leave some pulp with them and put them into a bowl of water. I put this in the kitchen window so I don’t forget it.Let it sit for 3 days so it will look a little moldy and stink.
Then after that third day is over. You pour the seeds into a strainer (sieve) etc. Rinse well with water. Put into a clean bowl that is filled with water and about 5 drops of bleach. This kind of repels insects from eating the seeds that you plant. The first part that gets moldy seems to preserve the seeds or maybe fertilize them. I forget! I do forget sometimes as I am 61. But I do try to stay sharp with everything in my life.
Let these seeds sit only for 1 day in the bleach water. Then just drain off the water and spread out the seeds to dry out. As I live in an apartment, I put them on a plate in front of a box fan. Now you put these in a labled and dated freezer bag and store in the freezer until the next planting season comes around.
I do believe that they stored all of those fascinating and very best tasting heirloom seeds this way or we would not even have had the pleasure of growing them in these days. I do hope that you will try this for yourself and I do hope that you will buy heirloom seeds to garden with. As the seeds now days have been modified to just grow for one time only and not grow again. But the difference of great seed and bad is to buy heirloom seed to plant and then save your own every year.
I grew some new kind of corn many years ago and it did not even know what it was or how to even grow. It had tiny ears like the Chinese corn in their recipes and on another side of the bush it grew a half of an ear with only the top part filled out and the bottom of the ear was bare. Another ear grew on only one side of the ear and not the other side.
Needless to wonder what will eating this corn does to your body? I went back to my heirloom silver queen corn that grew many large filled out ears on each corn plant and sweet as honey too. You could eat it right out in the garden, which I did teach all the kids to try it.
I put up some much corn in those years, in the jars and in the freezer also. And the last 99 ears went to the soup kitchen to feed the needy. So you can see the difference in the quality and productivity of the new seeds that are sold now-days from the old-days!
Then you will have the very best! And heirloom seeds will reproduce every-time. Thank you for visiting and please do come back soon as I post on Thur-Sat- and Tuesdays. And please share my posts so that my blog will continue to grow and even more important, is to try to help others learn stuff, if they so choose to.
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