Has your garden gone through 鈥渢he change鈥� yet? You know how the garden is flush with new growth and looks vibrant and thriving, and suddenly, one day, it looks bedraggled and the plants look tired and are starting to yellow and sprawl. Part of this could be because of extremes in weather, like heat, lack of rain, or wind; but part of it is that the garden is past the season of growth and is moving into the season of harvest.
While it is sad to see the garden season on the gentle decline, what a wonderful time of year! It is such a delight to go out and pick fresh produce for a meal! I remember how special that 鈥渇irst meal鈥� was from Sweet Pea鈥檚 garden, when we could make an entire meal from what we picked in the garden: flavorful new potatoes with fragrant dill, tender peas, crisp beans, rosy beets, glowing new carrots鈥ust give me a dish of butter and I鈥檓 set! It鈥檚 a meal fit for a king.
If you don鈥檛 have your own garden, remember that the Yorkton Gardeners鈥� market is on Saturdays from 8:00 AM till noon at the Prairie Harvest Christian Life Centre, corner of Melrose and Simpson Streets in Yorkton. There are all kinds of yummy garden produce available, as well as flowers, honey and crafts. If you鈥檇 like more information or might want to be a vendor at the Market, call Glen at 783-7040.
Now, back to our gardens. Though the gardens are maturing, it is still too early for a major garden clean-up. But one thing we can do now is begin to collect seeds for next year. Seed saving is an ancient practise, and very easy to do. First, some basics.
Seeds must mature on the plant. We can鈥檛 pick green seed pods and expect them to ripen. For an example, bean or pea seeds. It won鈥檛 work if we pick green beans and leave them on the kitchen cupboard and hope that the seeds inside will mature and be ready to plant next year. We must wait until the bean has dried on the vine to that wonderful papery texture. Then, we can shell them and save those lovely seeds. It is easy to collect seeds from flowers: calendulas, cosmos, marigolds, columbines, Maltese cross, delphiniums and many more are easy to harvest for seeds. You can easily tell when the flowers are dried, as the petals are papery and the seeds are hard. Carry little envelopes with you as you tour your garden, because these seeds are ready to store as soon as you pick them.
I did a little homework and found out an interesting factoid. In the seed collecting world, when we leave the seed pods or heads to dry on the plant it is called 鈥渄ry fruited鈥�. But if we pick the veg and extract the seeds from the inside, that is called 鈥渨et fruited鈥�. With this method, we wait until the specimen we want is mature, say, a luscious tomato. Then we cut the tomato open, carefully scrape out the seeds to dry on a paper towel, and save them after that.
Once our seeds are dried, stored in little jars or envelopes and labelled (don鈥檛 forget to do that!), we should store them in a dark, dry, and cool location. Most will keep for a long time. Some seeds don鈥檛 keep as well as others. Carrots don鈥檛 have a very long shelf life, so if you find a package of carrot seeds among your garden supplies in the garage, and you don鈥檛 know how old they are, best to toss them. You could plant them and hope for the best, but if they don鈥檛 come up or come up very sparsely, you have wasted almost two weeks of gardening time.
Be sure to visit the Yorkton and District Horticultural Society at www.yorktonhort.ca and see what鈥檚 new. Thank you to our friends at Yorkton This Week for their great work. Let鈥檚 pray for health for all and a gentle rain for our gardens. Have a great week and be sure to wear a hat!
