Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
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!