Experiment, Saving The Seeds
Growing fruits, flowers and vegetables here at Swan Crossing is an interesting experiment for us all, with successes and failures. Now that the high temperatures of August in Texas are upon us we have little food crops still growing. The holdouts are watermelon, hot peppers, and some remnants of tomatoes. We covered the rest of the greenhouse in black fabric to kill the weeds.
These watermelons have been so delightful that we are saving their seeds. We grew them from seed and now we plan for next year’s crop.
We eat them first! and we save the seeds rinsing them in a jar and throwing away the floaters. Which, of course, are seeds floating on top of the water. We keep all those ones that are on the bottom and dried them on paper towels.
The end of summer is the magnificent planning for next year, we’ll see if they grow again. Growing food really is a blessing for all of our family this year. It continues to surprise us how much food comes from a few seeds.
Seeds in stores for a fall crop are scarce this year. We are ordering seeds from organic farmers, non-GMO like broccoli, kale, and beet seeds online. Last fall we had kale from September through the following June! Nine months of healthy kale eating is fantastic. Remember the scare a couple of years ago with romaine lettuce was contaminated and none was available in the stores… well… we had some fresh all fall and into early winter.