grow, marvel, eat, laugh, persevere

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Saving Seeds or Saving Trash

This bug is not related to saving seeds other than it is sitting on a plant I hope to save seeds from. Mostly I just thought it was cute. I had 2 Rudebeckia and a Coneflower that I wanted to try to get seeds from but I have a feeling none of this is seeds.

I followed the directions on several seed saving websites and this is what I got. Does this look like seeds at all? It looks like trash to me. I really want to participate in the seed trade but nobody needs to trade for trash. The one below is Goldilocks.

This was from the Rudebeckia in the bug picture. One website says the seeds from this plant look like dark brown splinters but I can't imagine I could get this much from 3 little flowers.
The picture below is from Coneflower and I'm 99.9% sure THIS is trash, thanks to reading Mr Brown Thumb's saving Coneflower seed post. Oh well, maybe next time.


In other gardening news, as soon as GB read about how I was killing all my plants she promptly delivered 24-30 new seedlings for me to kill. Is she crazy????? No, seriously, she brought me 24-30 new plants!!!!! She came over and made me demonstrate how I would dig up a plant to move using a big weed to check my technique. I've never been so careful with a weed! It sorta felt like when your math teach makes you go to the board. She also showed me the proper way to move a plant by moving my Coreopsis Rosa herself. We planted all the seedlings and I watered them really well after she left. As I sit here typing they are in my garden dying. No, I'm joking. I am committed to keeping these alive! As God is my witness, I will not kill these plants!

7 comments:

  1. I have never tried to save any of these seeds I'm sorry I can't help you :(

    Love the "bug" picture!

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  2. KILL that bug!

    I posted about it before it is the spotted cucumber beetle. I can't really help you with the Rudbeckia but I know from seed trades that a lot of people accept that some seeds like the Rudbeckia are expected to come with chaff.

    Tomorrow I'll try to take a picture of some Coneflower seeds to give you an idea of what the seeds look like.

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  3. Here's a pic of the coneflower seed..

    http://www.theseedsite.co.uk/seedsize12.html

    This site is awesome for seeing what any seed, as well as seed pod and seedlings look like. You just have to get used to navigating as it's quite large, but definitely worth poking around in.

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  4. laurie & chris - thanks for stopping by.

    MBT - holy crap!!!!! I thought it was some kind of cute ladybug type of bug! thanks for the help.

    tina - thanks for the site! I will definately check it out. And, thanks for stopping by.

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  5. Greetings from a fellow gardener (zone 6A), seed saver and blogspoter.
    I enjoyed reading your posts. I am happy to send some seeds to you.
    Leslie Wind

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  6. I think the coneflower seeds look pretty good. Toss them up in the air in a slight breeze and lots of the chaff (trash) will blow away.

    It's very nice someone was able to show you step by step how to transplant successfully. You're on your way!

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  7. Gina, I'm willing to bet you actually DO have some coneflower seeds there. I couldn't quite tell from your picture, but at the end of the 'quills' you will see the small seed. It's like an elongated triangle and it should be lighter in color than the black quill.

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