Herb Garden Seed And Its Process
One of the best ways for gardeners to spend an autumn day is strolling through an herb garden that’s setting seed. The plants will give out a fragrant aroma when your legs brush against their branches. By collecting seed from your garden herbs, you can replant your herb garden next year, using materials you may already have on hand.
How Seeds Form
Before you start saving seed from your herb garden, it’s a good idea to make sure you understand the basics of plant reproduction. Plants grow from seed. There will be two leaves on a seed that has just sprouted. Leaves will sprout new leaves and keep doing so until a plant is formed. Underground, the seed also sprouts downward into the soil, spreading under the surface of the earth to nourish and support the leaves above ground.
Like everything else in nature, the plant’s strongest desire is to reproduce itself. Plants reproduce from seed; a plant’s mission in life is to produce seed to guarantee the survival of its species. Plants are able to produce seeds by growing flowers, these are then pollinated by the wind or bees. As the flower petals shrivel and dry up, the seed matures, and the wind shakes the seed off the plant and onto the ground where it germinates and sprouts two new leaves, and the process repeats itself.
How to Collect Herb Garden Seed
Presumably, you will be harvesting your herb garden plants throughout the growing season and using their leaves and flowers for medicinal or culinary purposes. Halfway through the season, pick several healthy sturdy stems as specimens for collecting herb garden seed. Tie a colored ribbon around the branches to mark them, and stop harvesting leaves from those stems.
Once you see that the flowers are almost fully ripened, cut the stems at the base of the plant. Bind several stem ends together with a rubber band and hang the bundle upside down from a clothesline hung in a warm, dry room. Place the hanging end of the bundle inside a paper lunch sack, and secure the bag around the bundle with string or a twist tie. After a few days, shake the stems and you will find that full ripe seeds will drop.
How to Save Herb Garden Seed
Once you have collected seeds for an herb garden, the seeds will remain viable for several years if they are stored in paper envelopes in a cool, dry place. Make sure that you write the name of the herb outside the envelope so you will know what you are planting next spring.