Collecting and saving seed
Carol, Carols Garden
Buying seeds is one of my biggest costs. There are some that I will always need to buy, but I also collect, clean and save lots.
Advantages of saving your own seed:
It’s a very cheap way of getting lots and lots of seeds.
Fresh seed often germinates better than bought and stored seed, has better viability.
Seeds which usually enter dormancy can be collected and sown at the point of ripeness, before they enter dormancy.
You can collect from particular plants that do well in your climate - I have taken seed from the hardiest Cerinthe for years, and think I have selected a hardier strain than normal.
You can select seed from particular plants that you would like to replicate eg a good colour way, or interesting markings. See point about hybrids below...
You can actively cross particular strains to try to produce new variants.
Some seeds are not easily available e.g. not usually sold (e.g. Pennycress) or stop being produced (eg Meadow Pastel Icelandic Poppies).
You might be able to swap or sell it (subject to current legislation).
What can you save?
Simple, open flowers which are popular with pollinators will produce viable seed most readily. Full, double blooms are often difficult for pollinators to access or have had their seed-producing potential bred out of them in the interests of looks or longevity of blooming.
Any species which sets seed eg Orlaya grandiflora, Ammi majus will be reliably true to type.
If it is a hybrid or cultivar eg Centranthus cyanus Black Ball then you cannot be certain that it will come true to type. In my experience, they often do, although if you keep taking seed from the same plants generation after generation, they might return to a more ‘natural’ dominant colour. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not. A couple of examples:
I have saved seed from Papaver nudicale Meadow Pastels for many years. Each year, I have kept only the seed from pale yellows, white and pale peach, ignoring the bright yellow and orange ones in the mix. Every year I am getting more of the strong yellow and oranges and fewer of the pastels. These dominant natural colours are coming through.
I let a bed of bright blue and white cornflower set seed and self seed. When they flowered the following year, I had a whole bed of all shades of blue from pales to deepest blue. It was beautful!
If a parent plant is isolated from others, or naturally self polinating, then they may well come true to type eg sweet peas.
You can actively isolate plants or heads to prevent cross pollination. Protect the flower head from pollinators before the stamen is ready to accept pollen (ie pretty much as it opens), then transfer pollen with a clean brush or pencil from anthers to stigma, and protect again until seed head forms. You can use a muslin bag to protect the head. It’s fiddly, but I have done this for a couple of lovely examples in a mix. There is still no guarantee that they will come true, but its worth a go!
You can actively seek to cross 2 plants to create a new hybrid, or variant, with characteristics that you like. Follow the same process as above, but remove the anthers from the mother plant, when they are still immature and before they can shed pollen. You can then introduce pollen to the stigma from the other parent that you want to cross with.
Pretty much anything that sets seed can be worth trying. You just never quite know what you will get…
How to collect, clean and store seed.
It is pretty easy and lovely thing to do, but there a few tips to increase your chances of getting good quality seed:
Choose a bright, airy dry day (one reason why it’s often a lovely job!)
Check which seeds are ripe - generally, they will have changed colour from green to brown. or the pod will have gone brown and you can hear seeds rattling inside.
Collect into paper bags, each labelled with variety and date you've collected it (even if its just the year)
Leave bags in a dry warm place to dry and ripen further. If the seeds are in pods, you will often hear the pods crack and seeds drop, whilst they are drying
Clean the seed by physically removing them, shaking heads, rubbing chaff off, and blow waste away in a shallow dish, until you have just clean seeds left.
Cleaning the seed means you reduce the risk of fungal infection, less volume to store, and a chance for the insects to escape! They will also be much easier to sow
Pack into labelled and dated paper envelopes and store as any other seed.
Don’t forget to sow some of them straight away
Drying flowers
You cannot have failed to notice the recent resurgence of dried flowers. This can be a really good opportunity to reduce waste and increase your profitability, but there are significant issues to plan for. You can grow crops specifically for drying, or you can cut what might otherwise be wasted and try drying that. Traditional drying methods focus on retaining colour but much of the recent demand is for washed out, pale and bleached material. So, pretty much anything goes.
How to dry
Standard advice is to dry most stems in a warm, dry airy place. They are best hanging as this means the stems will dry straight. If you lay them on their side, the stems will wilt and dry bent rather than straight. Drying and storing them in the dark will retain more colour, in bright sunshine will bleach them more. The quicker they dry, the more of the original colour and form will be retained. Dehydrators will dry them very quickly, but have limited capacity and use electricity.
Paula's fancy dehydrator for fruit and flowers
We made a drying rack in our open bay, exposed and windy shed. I also dry some in our sunny, south facing conservatory. Both work well in a good summer. We cut and bunch into 10s or 20s as we go, so we don't have to count or handle them again when we sell them. We bundle with elastic bands, but I do find some of these sometimes perish in the bright conditions. Drying time varies with the type of plant, the stage it's at when cut, and of course, the weather.
You can also try drying in or over Aga type range cookers if you have one, or in an airing cupboard, or in boxes of silica gel.
What to dry and when to cut
Most seed heads and foliage can be cut at any stage. Many flowers are best cut in bud especially Helichrysum, but I experiment with all stages. I think this would be my main tip - try things and see how well you like them. Do they look interesting, a quirky shape, a good texture, or just a bit too dead?!
Traditional drying flowers - statice (especially the airy types), helichrysum, achillea, lavender all dry easily and are fairly robust
Non-traditional drying flowers eg dahlias, Chinese asters, tulips. I find fleshy flowers take longer to dry, but they do make amazing colours and textures.
Grasses and seed heads - pretty much anything is worth a try, from pampas to poppies, bracken to bupleurum. If it’s already dry and papery, it’ll probably dry. Then it's just a matter of whether it looks good and is robust enough to survive handling without dropping bits everywhere.
Storing and selling
Once they are dried, you will need a cool, darkish, airy place to store them until you can sell them or use them. The greatest risk is that they will draw in moisture again, become damp and will then develop moulds. If they are to be closed in boxes or stored in closed rooms, they will need to be super-dry and stored in airtight boxes, maybe with silica gel to draw out any moisture.
Many of the seed heads will also attract vermin. Mice adore anything with a seed - amaranthus, grasses, poppies. Storage is perhaps the biggest consideration.
Selling them is the next issue. I have an established network of florist customers who have been keen to buy. They were bought mainly for installation type projects, autumn and Christmas wreath workshops, people making dried flower crowns etc, added into fresh arrangements to add texture etc. I use them myself combined with fresh material in autumn weddings and in Christmas workshops and for everlasting arrangements and wedding work through the summer.
Christmas and winter
Christmas and winter sales - foliage, flowers, wreaths, workshops, arrangements are all options that you might want to consider. The winter is not a ‘natural’ season for most flowers, but you can add to your income through using what is available and augmenting it with locally sourced or imported material. You might decide that you need a break to recoup, plan, spend some time with family and friends, or whatever. It’s not for everyone. If you have out-of-season flowers and foliage, will you have enough to justify normal marketing or selling activity. I have sold more buckets wholesale this January than usual, but nowhere near as many as in peak season and I have to decide if it’s worth my doing the necessary delivery run. Or whether I stay indoors and do my planning and admin.
Our take on Winter:
Carol: I do Christmas wreaths and workshops with my own and locally sourced material, but aim to finish by end of second week of December. I don't currently do Christmas arrangements. I supply December, January & February to existing wholesale customers on an ad hoc basis, if it's convenient and I have flowers I want to sell. Foliage will wait till March.
Paula: For the past few years, I've done house renovation in the winter. I do 2 deliveries of dried flowers and winter branches into Edinburgh in November/ December. I don't have enough to merit delivering until the spring flowers start in March.
Claire: I do Christmas wreaths and workshops with my own and locally sourced material, and I have enough of my own grown winter flowers and foliage including Hippeastrum and forced bulbs to sell to my regular "year of flowers customers" without having to buy in unless the field is frozen.