A SHOCKING DISCOVERY IN THE REFRIGERATOR
Harvest Tonight for Tomorrows Garden Delight
For years my wife and I would harvest the seeds from the plants we grew in our raised beds. It consisted primarily of tomatoes, a variety of cucumbers, bell peppers, peas and of course summer and winter squash varieties...all of which my children enjoyed picking and eating, especially the cherry tomotoes. What we saved in seeds equaled a savings in my wallet each spring and fall.
Over last summer we moved; leaving any seeds that we did have and giving them to friends. After a month and a half of slowly unpacking I told my wife that we need to start saving as many seeds as we can. So in September I have been making it a trend in our home to save the seeds from any fruit or vegetable that we eat.
So far we have a pretty good stash of acorn and butternut squash, garden and roma tomatoes, large, small and "gnarly" pumpkins, gourdes and grapes. We are also saving a few nuts from the Black Walnut and Hickory trees. I also got some marigold and zinnia seeds from a friend at church.
Something different to try
With all the seed saving going on I thought of collecting apple seeds. We love apples. My girls love Red Delicious. My wife Marian enjoys Gala. I enjoy the crisp and tart side of the apple family, and eat Granny Smiths. One day (October 4, 2017) my daughter was eating an apple and she was about to toss the apple core in the compost bin and I stopped her. I cut open the center and extracted the seeds and prepped them (details are below) and tossed them in my beer fridge.
SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE
Have you ever put something away only to forget about it? Those apples seeds were just that until yesterday!! Last night while obtaining an adult beverage I noticed something different about the ziplock bag that had the apple seeds in them. THE APPLE SEEDS WERE SPROUTING!!
I already have the three different apple trees in the ground that I planted this fall. With these new sprouts and some nurturing, our orchard will expand. I am so excited and blessed to see this. And I know my girls will absolutely love it.
HOW I GOT THE APPLE SEEDS TO SPROUT
Step 1. Eat the apple but don't toss the core out just yet.
Step 2. Carefully remove the seeds from the core.
Step 3. Place all the seeds from the apple onto some paper towels (I use 4 sheets).
Step 4. Get a sandwich sized ziplock bag and a permanent marker and write the apple variety type and date it was extracted.
Step 5. Fold the paper towels in halves so that it will fit in a sandwich sized ziplock bag.
Step 6. Fill the ziplock bag with just enough water to saturate the paper towel.
Step 7. Drain and lightly press any excess water out of the ziplock bag.
Step 8. Seal the ziplock bag and place it in the refrigerator.
Step 9. Wait.
It is important to know that each seed will not sprout. Less than 50% will actually sprout. So it is important to get each seed from the apple when doing this.
Because apple trees are not self pollinators, they need to be planted in pairs with different apple variety. (To me, this means I need to hurry up and get other seeds going!!!)
NEXT STEPS
Now that this little guy has sprouted, I will get some compost and moist soil from the garden and fill a pot. Carefully I will remove the sprout and transplant him into the pot. Do not add fertilizer!! Then it will sit in front of the window inside the house.
If this little sprout is successful and I keep doing this, maybe in a few years I can have a nice small little orchard in the back of the farm!! I will keep everyone posted on any updates.
As always, have a great and blessed day and continue to help each other grow in knowledge.
Kenny ~~~Pfeiler Family Farm~~~
Interesting, didn't know you had to plant them in pairs.
Oh yeah. That is why when I planted the apple trees, I actually read the instructions on the tag ha ha. Each tag had a list of other varieties that pollinate with each other. If you do not, you will get a tree that will not produce any fruit.
I'm not in any position to test this out presently but this is really good to know for the future when I move. Always meant to have a few fruit trees and pretty much nothing except apples and pears grows in Canada.
The apple trees, grapes and blue berry bushes were the first things I planted this fall. I did not want to wait an additional year for us to have fruit on the farm. I would like to add pears but my wife is kinda against it because we do not eat that many. I may slip them in next year and hide them somewhere else. Ha Ha
Try plums. We had them when I was a kid, back in central Alberta.
Ok that was new information for me on how to get the apples to grow and what to do with the seeds. Thank you for sharing!
Have a wonderful evening. Cheers!
That is what I am all about...sharing knowledge!! You are welcome and have a great day yourself!
Well that's a great way to be 😉 we can learn from each other different knowledge and this was yours that I got to learn from 😊
Cheers!
Beep! Beep! @shadow3scalpel at your service. I am here to assist all military members on Steemit. This HumVee will be scouting posts from a list of Veterans that is maintained by @chairborne. If you are a Veteran and new to Steemit, and you have questions or want to join the Veterans community, reply to this comment. We got your six, unless you are in the rear with the gear. Ooh-Rah!
Comment by @inthenow. This is a opt-in bot.
What do you use gourds for? I have only seen them used for decoration/crafts. It feels like it's planting flowers that, while I love them, don't do much except look pretty and call in bees. (nothing against bees - I do plant for hummingbirds and bees!)
My daughter was on a Kindergarten field trip to a farm and they got to pick gourds and small pumpkins before Halloween. I figure we can give it a try and see if they grow.
Now, 'kids' is one of the best reasons I've heard for planting something! When I was a kid I wasn't particularly fond of the work but there's no better way to see results for work than in the garden. Now I look back on it and appreciate it even more for the time I spent with my father when we planted. Not to mention the family bonfire in the fall where we threw all the cornstalks and vines in a pile along with some other firewood to keep it going. We had weiners and marshmallows that night then come spring the ash would be tilled into the garden. The food picked fresh from the garden then straight to the table was a good feeling too.
That is basically my goal for our farm. I want my kids involved in the planting, caring and nurturing as well as the harvesting from our garden. When the apples, grapes, blueberries and blackberries come in I am sure so see the harvest yields low as they will be "pick one, eat one" mentality! Ha Ha
With kids and with dogs! Don't let that cute weimaraner get a taste for them. Somehow it happens that we never have any raspberries anywhere near ground level and our strawberries are fewer and farther between. The blackberries never seem to grow along the edges and I have to wade into the thicket to pick them and the dogs follow me very closely when I'm picking the berries that grow high off the ground (like huckleberries). (grin)
We also have a lot fewer of the apples that get dropped and are left to feed the deer. We used to call our first dog 'little doggie appleseed' because if she wasn't hungry she'd take the apples and hide them thinking she'd come back later. I think most of them ended up being fodder for other small critters.
I am paasionate about seed saving. I recently wrote an article about some foods I plant to,start plants from. There's a book I reference pretty frequently called The Heirloom Life Gardener that you might check out. ☺
I wish I had room on my little plot to start some fruit trees. Someday!
Thank you. After buying a lot of new seeds and basically starting out from scratch, I need to learn how to harvest seeds on plants and herbs that I unknown to me...anything other than tomatoes, melons, squash, etc., the easy stuff. Anything I plant this year I am setting a few places just to go to seed.
The plants that don’t go to seed til the second year are the tricky ones for me... Cabbage, carrots... I tend to forget about them sometimes. Also herbs, they go to seed when I’m not looking and I lose when it drops to the ground, and so many of them don’t come back up on their own!
I’ll be making a post on all the seed I save as the growing season goes on. That’s a way off though! :)
The book you mentioned, The Heirloom Life Gardener it has information on seed collection correct?
Yep. It's a guide for seed saving. Excellent resource for gardeners!
Sweet! Just ordered it! Thank you again!