Organizing seeds last night, I noticed more that are easy to save and common to many gardens. Remember that all seeds saved from your garden are acclimated to your growing conditions. This is very helpful to the plants in subsequent seasons.

• Lettuce: Just about all types of lettuce are open-pollinated and will easily set seed. One plant can give hundreds of tiny seeds for growing later the same season as the weather cools, for give away, and/or storing for next season.
  • • Bolting is how lettuces and other leafy greens (next group) make spires for flowers to grow on. Flowers are the source of seeds. If you are growing lettuces for “a head of lettuce”, that lettuce plant will be cut at its base for your kitchen or the Farmers Market. No plant, no bolting, no free seeds for free lettuce crop. So, plant 2 or 3 extra at the outset that will be left to bolt and seed.
    • Another option gives you lettuce leaves all along plus lets the plant bolt and set seed: pick leaves from the outside of the head and leave the rest. This can be done many times before the plant feels temperatures rising which triggers the insistence to flower and set seed.
• Various leafy greens and herbs: arugula (rocket), mache, and sorrel, and spinach are open-pollinated. All but spinach are perennial foraging plants when given the chance to live in a field, or edge of the lawn (no chemicals on the lawn, of course), or in a patch by the compost pile. Train your yard helper not to weed-wack them because they are food!
• Spinach and Orache: common low-growing will set seed like lettuce when allowed, as described above.
  • • Orache, or mountain spinach, grows to 6 ft tall. Its leaves are the most delicious spinach I have ever tasted, thus it is the only type of spinach that I grow. You eat the leaves as they develop from the ever-taller stem. Orache (also spelled orach) is loved by sparrows and finches, who will completely strip the plant clean disallowing it to flower and seed. Protect it. Orache is found in red, purplish, and green.
• Brassicas overall: Broccolis, cauliflowers, rabe, kales, and greens such as Hon Tsai Tai, Yukima, and Dwarf Bok Choy are open pollinated if let bolt to seed. The heads of Broccoli and Cauliflower that is eaten would become the flowers if let do so. Most brassicas produce seed pods like this, with 8-14 seeds per pod. One plant of even dwarf bok choy will produce well over 50 pods. Do the math!
  • • Cabbages are brassicas. Most, however, require a really long growing season to set seed. Too long for here. But, I grow a Japanese type of Napa Cabbage, called Kyoto 3, that has been a little fussy with the altitude and intensity of the solar quality, but if grown in morning sun only (4-5 hours), it has done well and set seed.
    • The Japanese greens are from Annie’s Heirloom Seeds, though mine have been from my garden now for four years now.
• Herbs, culinary and medicinal: Basil was mentioned in the previous post. That information pertains to all types of basil.
  • • Same with Parsley.
    • Rosemary will set flowers if coaxed and grown gingerly, which my environment is not conducive for. It also needs at least one partner rosemary for proper pollination.
    • I can’t speak to Thyme. I split mine in March and it has never flowered. It is six years old.
    • Chamomile is both a lovely flower, loved by pollinators, and a medicinal herb. The flowers are the medicine and the tea. But, each plant produces two new flowers for each one that is plucked and dried for tea. Each single flower produces at least 20 minuscule seeds. Chamomile will spread on its own, if left unchecked. It is a perennial.
    • Echinacea is loved by Swallowtail Butterflies, who tend toward purple-ish flowers. (They love Penstemon also.) It is a medicinal herb, and a beautiful flower. It is perennial, self seeds, and slowly spreads. In Autumn, migrating yellow finches will seek them out.
    • Mint will easily set seed (open-pollinated), though it spreads more from root tendrils than seed.
    • Dill is open-pollinator, loved by pollinators, and a prolific seed producer. It will self-seed an area in no time. Be mindful. The seeds are, of course, the dill seeds used in pickling.
• Sunflowers are a food source for animals and people as well as pollinator heaven, and easy seed factories. The keys are two: a) let them dry fully before taking seed. The seeds will mold otherwise. b) keeping birds, chipmunks, and such away from the seed head (flower that is drying). A netting of some sort, that is fully breathable, is recommended. One can cut the half-dry seed head and hang it upside down in a dry, warm spot – if the critters won’t find it!

If you think of others, put them in a comment. We’re all learning together!

Photos: broccoli flowers, sunflower, chamomile