The Gardeners Dilemma

Picking out seeds is the best way to pass dreary winter days. I can spend weeks pouring over seed catalogs, building carts, changing my mind, and starting all over again. It’s a grand time. Baker Creek, Sow True Seeds, Urban Farmer, all are worthy of a visit.

But seeds are so EXPENSIVE! I am perfectly capable of letting letting my plants go to seed and saving them if they were good producers (just ask about the collards and broccoli I tilled into the garden covered in seed pods…🤦🏼‍♀️). I love saving seeds and knowing I can plant a hundred fold as much as I started with, save money, and of course “food secirity.”

Come to think of it, why haven’t gardens (and their keepers) taken over the world? We can propagate and procreate and spread like kudzu.

But I digress. This spring, I bought a variety pack of sunflower seeds from Sow True to plant and hoped they would be blooming for Ashlyn’s first birthday in July. And wonder of wonders, they did! We had awesome flower arrangements with a lot of flowers grown right here.

Even after the party, my little 8ft row of less than 20 plants continued to thrill. Sadly, I am down to two but they are braving the late summer heat and covered in blooms. The bees loved them, Ashlyn loved them, and they withstood a drought. The perfect plant!

I saved seed heads from most of the different varieties and now have probably close to a quart of mixed sunflower seeds, not least of a which is a mammoth that I pulled the one flower head from yesterday.

All this to say, my saved sunflower seeds and I are ready to take over the world. But what would I do with my snow days in January???