Saving Flower Seeds
Q: Can I save flower seeds from my own garden and should I let some flowers reseed themselves?
A: Absolutely! Saving flower seed is one of the easiest ways to get more flowers without spending more money. And some flowers are perfectly happy to do the work themselves. I call these Garden Gypsies—flowers that drop their seeds and show up again next year wherever they happen to land.
If you want to collect the seed yourself, don’t rush it. Let the flower finish blooming and allow the seed head to mature on the plant until fully developed - generally dry, brown, tan, or black rather than green.
On a dry day, cut off the dried flower heads from the strongest plants, and put them in a paper bag or envelope. Shake or rub the flower heads gently to release the seeds. Remove the larger pieces of dried flower material, but don't worry about removing every bit of chaff. You're saving seed for your garden—not entering a seed-cleaning contest.
Let seeds dry thoroughly before storing. Then put them in a labeled paper envelope and keep somewhere cool, dark, and dry. Label those envelopes!
One thing to remember: saved seed doesn't always produce an exact copy of the parent plant. Open-pollinated flowers are more likely to resemble the parent, but bees may have cross-pollinated your plants with another variety. Hybrid flowers can be even more unpredictable. That's not necessarily a bad thing—you may get some interesting surprises.
Instead of collecting all the seed, let a few flowers mature and drop their seeds right where they are. Or spread them into new areas. Next spring, you may discover little seedlings popping up in unexpected places. That's part of the fun.
Read our Q & As with Keith Funk answering common Colorado gardening questions here. See his website: gardenwiseguy.com and hear him on the Garden Wise Radio Show.
