Seeds: Sow’em, Save’em, Grow’em

Every gardener has his or her unique relationship with seeds. Before I became interested in any form of gardening, I can remember watching my father painstakingly planting lobelia and marigold seeds into fine seed starter mix, and thinking, “why would you spend so much time with something so tinny tiny”. Then the small seeds began to germinate, and I slowly saw the fruits of his labour.

Over the past ten years, I have been lucky in working at different greenhouses. My very first experience was when we lived in Northern Alberta. Being the new girl on the block, I was given the lowest labour intensive jobs. Filling up pots/packs with soil, planting the small nursery plugs, labelling the plant, placing it on the appropriate bench, and repeat until all the plugs were planted. As I learnt over the years, seeding was given or held by the top dog, or boss if you will. There was a schedule for each variety of seed. Every seed with its own growing schedule. Planted to soon, it would become leggy; planted to late no one would buy the plant as it hadn’t had time to grow and show off its beauty. Even though I have never held the responsibly of head seeder, there was the joy of listening to new gardeners getting so excited when coming into the greenhouse and seeing all the racks of seeds. Wanting to try them all, and knowing they will surely end up with hundreds of baby plants, with nowhere to transplant them. Only having to give them away to friends/family or learn for next season to choose less.

Saving your seeds from season to season not only helps with cost, you also gain the appreciation for the whole plant life cycle. I plant sweet peas every spring in memory of my grandmother. My sweet peas that I have saved from the fall, get planted on Easter, soaked overnight and planted either indoors or directly into the soil if warm enough, so I know they are on their way.