This last weekend, a good friend joined me in a class at the MN Landscape Arboretum. It was put on by Seed Savers Exchange and changed my outlook on vegetables. In the class, we learned about how plants are pollinated and the importance of plant diversity.
Plants produce seeds differently – and important to making the seed is the flower. The showy flowers of an eggplant and squash have evolved because of how the plants need to be pollinated. They need honey bees to share pollen between flowers.
On the other hand, a bean plant's flower can pollinate itself – so it stays small and somewhat closed.
Tomatoes, for example, self pollinate and you can help increase plant production by shaking the plant a little bit during the flowering stage to "sprinkle" the pollen within the plant!
Learning seed saving techniques and more about the plant botany was great.
Many seeds are easy to save. Some are more difficult. This photo above is one of the more difficult seeds to save over the years. Take a guess at what these seed pods will produce.
Others, like watermelon are much easier to save -- once pollinated correctly. Yes, you can eat the watermelon and spit the seeds
out. What a fun way to save!
