This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
I have another exciting episode for you and today what we're going to do is we're going
to harvest some seeds.
We're going to harvest some huacatay seeds, which is an herb I grew this year.
They us it in South America in place of cilantro and it's actually a delicious herb.
After the frost this guy didn't make it, but it grew like crazy, I mean this thing probably,
If I staked it up would go to six / eight feet tall, a nice large bush and I could only
see if you grew it in the tropics it would grow with a nice plant, probably for some
time.
You can see here, literally it looking like a little tree trunk there, nice and thick.
But alas the plant has succumbed to the cold weather and the next think that we are going
to do is harvest the seeds.
So I want to encourage you guys to actually save your seeds, it's probably one of the
most critical gardening skills that you can have if you want to be self-sustainable and
self-sufficient because say one day there are no seed catalogues you have to actually
save your seeds and regrow them year after year, so saving seeds is very important and
the best time to learn about it is now.
These are very easy seeds to harvest, and let me show you guys how to do that.
The first thing is: 'John, how do I know if there are some seeds in there to harvest?'
Well the thing I like to do that is really simple and easy to determine if they are ready
or not is shake it.
Can you guys hear that noise?
It's like that little shaker you had in kindergarten you would shake and it would make that noise.
If you listen very closely you can hear the seeds shaking in the pods so that way you
know they are fully mature and ready to come out.
So what I'm going to do is actually just cut this guy off here and now we've got the seed
pods here and this is where the flowers were and I'm just going to go ahead and large plastic
bag (you could even use a paper bag or maybe even a pillow case) and put them in there
and just shake vigorously.
Now this may dislodge some of the seeds, and I'll shake it again.
Actually it dislodged most of the seeds into the bag.
Sometimes I'll take my hand and just get the rest by doing that, and now I have a large
bag full of the seeds and actually some of the chaff and different parts.
Let me show you what is in here.
So you can see the seeds here of this of this huacatay are like little lines.
They are really small and dark.
Each one of these guys can produce a whole other plant just like this and actually this
is quite a rare plant because you don't see it too much, but it's a nice edible that I
learned about this year.
It's nice to pick them and eat them or put them in some dishes to give them some flare
and pizazz and some taste sensations that you've never tasted before.
Now aside from harvesting the huacatay seeds here, I'm also harvesting some other seeds
down at the bottom that are just hanging out.
If you look very closely, I'm harvesting these guys here.
These guys are actually the red malabar spinach seeds.
I'll just take these guys off the little vine here and bag them up.
Now the Malabar spinach in my garden, sometimes I'll let them just drop and then next spring
they will actually start growing on their own.
You can control that by harvesting your seeds and planting them out at the right time.
Another seed I'm saving here is these guys, I don't know if there is any left on the plant.
They're on this plant.
Here's one hanging on right here, and these seeds are actually the agretti which I grew.
I can't show it to you know, it's dried out and past its season but you can check my past
videos for agretti.
These are the agretti seeds and they are actually quite interesting, let me go ahead and get
one out of the husk for you.
Remove all the chaff covering and that's one little agretti seed and you can see it looks
like a little snail curled up in a ball, like how the snail shell looks.
They're really interesting seeds.
Now I have heard these agretti seeds may not germinate too well and also they are slow
growers so I am saving to plant them out later in the spring time.
But as luck would have it and as nature works, nature knows what's best, always try to model
nature.
I can look to nature for the answers and we can look down here.
In this area where we didn't harvest any of the agretti seeds, they've already started
to come up and they look like little blades of grass in here, there's just a whole bunch
of them.
Now this area has been protected with a layer of greens - protected from the cold weather.
I'm not sure how this is going to do in the cold weather, I'm clearing out the greens
here and we'll see if the agretti continues to grow.
You know, nature knows best.
I always like to let some of my seeds drop in an area and see if they come back because
then if you've established certain crops in certain areas of your garden then that will
make your garden basically a low maintenance garden, and that's what I go for.
I want to make everything a low maintenance garden and let seeds drop and let it grow
back and all I have to do is eat the food and the produce that I'm growing.
I really hope from this episode that you guys glean that you guys need to start saving some
of your seeds.
Start today; start sharing with others because this is the way we can keep the genetic diversity
alive.
I mean agretti is a fairly rare crop but I'm growing it and it's coming back and I got
a little seed store so that I can continue to grow it and share it with others.
Once again, this is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, we'll see you next time and remember, keep
on growing!