Savers

To try to save some money I have begun to harvest some of my seeds. This way I can spend the money on other things like shoes  trellises (trellisi?). So here is my step by step to saving Zinnia Seeds.

 These are the first "productive" flowers I have been able to grow other than some native plants. This guy is HUGE and much bigger than I expected so he has provided some lovely shade to my poor butternut squash (more on that in weather issues).  I see tons of bugs hanging out around him, He has been bit a few times but seems to survive the occasional munch.

1. Pick a beautiful specimen-one you hope to repeat next
year.  This guy has a beautiful pink shade and he
is opening in a somewhat uniform manner-see that guy
in the back corner? too unruly

2. Let him dry til he needs some
Cetaphil. You know he is ready
When you pull a petal out and a
little arrow is attached.

(Those little pointy arrows circled in green are the seeds
they are attached to the petals)

3. Give him a good haircut. Cut as close to the
"center" part (which is hard) as you can, all that
extra petal is not necessary.

4. Pull off the seeds, these are really the bottoms of the petal
so what you have left is a pile of seeds/petal butts, and the
rest of the flower center-I don't know what it is called.
the petals should pull of easily, just rub your thumb over them
or gently pull them out.

 They needed to dry some more so I put them in an origami box since I did not have any paper bags. I will pull seeds from a few more flowers this year and grow at least two next year!