Seeds from groceries

Hello, and welcome back. I hope you are doing well. The days here in Tasmania are getting warmer and longer, and spring is well underway. However, right now, a lot of people in southern Tasmania are waiting for the end of October and the upcoming Royal Hobart show weekend. There is an old belief here that you shouldn’t plant tomatoes or many other things until after the show weekend. As there is still a chance that a bad frost could kill everything off, many people will wait until then to get their garden started, usually with seedlings they get from the local nurseries or hardware stores. I avoid those places on the show weekend as they are packed and always busy. The few times I have gone, I am always amazed at the lines of people holding boxes of tomato seedlings and waiting to pay.  

Today, I thought I would share one method I use for getting seeds. You can buy fruits and vegetables from supermarkets with perfectly usable seeds inside. Sadly, they are often thrown out without a second thought. But if you want to get some seeds on the cheap, taking them from your groceries or kitchen scraps is a great way to cut back on your waste and save money. You see, I like apples and would like some apple trees when I move out onto the land. Although it will be a while before I move out there, I thought I could start the trees from seeds now, let them grow, and harden them up outdoors so when I eventually move out there, I will have a bit of a head start, and they will stand a better chance of surviving.

My seeds for today are Gala and Modi apples, tangerine, butternut pumpkin, tamarillo and a pear of unknown type. All I know is I enjoyed eating it, and it was everything I liked in a pear, so I decided to keep its seeds. All these seeds have come from my grocery shopping except for the tamarillo. I was given a couple by a friend, and considering that I can’t buy these in the local stores, I thought I would try to grow my own.

Beginning with the pear. After I had eaten all of the flesh, I used a clean knife and cutting board to carefully cut open the core, making sure that I didn’t accidentally cut the seeds or, more importantly, myself. Once the seeds were out of the core, I gave them a good wash with water and used a fine mesh strainer to ensure I didn’t lose any down the drain. When they were clean, I spread them onto a paper towel and allowed them to dry.

If I were drying these for storage, after they had dried, I would wrap them in some fresh paper towel, place them in a ziplock bag, and label and date the bag with what type of seeds they are and the date they were harvested/stored. Then, I would store them the same as any other seeds, which for me is an airtight lunchbox that I like to keep in the back of the fridge.

And to be honest, that is pretty much all there is to collecting seeds from your groceries. Extract the seeds, clean/wash and dry them and then plant or store them for later. It’s pretty simple.  

But because I plan to use these seeds, I covered them in a paper towel, roughly two or three layers, depending on the towel’s thickness. I moved them to a small tray and sprayed the towel with water until saturated. Finally, I put them somewhere sunny. Over the next few days, I will keep misting the paper towel, ensuring it stays wet, and with any luck, the seeds will wake up and work their magic.

Next, I started working on some seeds I had taken out of a butternut pumpkin. The pumpkin was on sale, so I got it at a good price and made a nice roast pumpkin pasta. And as you do when preparing a pumpkin for cooking, I scraped the seeds with a spoon and set them aside. As the pumpkin was in the oven roasting, I sat by the sink and kept myself busy by washing off any remains of the pumpkin from the seeds. Once washed, I spread them out onto a paper towel and repeated the process I used on the pear seeds.

Using a wet paper towel is a new method of germinating seeds for me. I haven’t done it before but I have seen plenty of others doing it successfully. So, I thought now would be a great time to try it. For the rest of the seeds, I will do what I have always done and use some seed-raising mix, keep them somewhere sunny and warm indoors until they are large enough to be transferred outside.

For the apples, I followed the same steps as the pear, and as for the tangerine, I pretty much just spat the seeds out as I was eating it and then washed and dried them. The tamarillo, however, was a process. I repeated the same steps I had with everything else: scrape out, wash, and dry the seeds. But, the size and sheer number of seeds made it a lengthy process. Needless to say, I now have more tamarillo seeds than I could ever hope to use.   

As I mentioned, these seeds were treated differently than the pumpkin and pear. I started with two egg cartons filled with a seed-raising mix from the hardware store. And for the drip tray, I used two lids from a large margarine tub. One carton had both apple varieties, and the other had the tamarillo and tangerine. I then gave them all a good spray, and like everything else, they were labelled, dated and placed in a sunny location and allowed to do their thing.

And with that, I have successfully added to the plants I’m growing for my garden or the land. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against seed packets, and I still, and no doubt always, will buy my seeds in a packet when I need them. But as much as possible, particularly when it’s time to harvest from my garden, I like to harvest my own seeds. There is something nice about being able to harvest and sow your own seeds year after year. And now and then, there are times when you encounter a fruit or plant you don’t often come across, one that isn’t sold locally. So it can pay to know how to collect its seeds, especially if you want to enjoy it more often.

And that is all I have for you today. Next week, I will share some items you can use around the house for raising seeds, a great way to save some money, reduce waste and achieve great results.

So, until then, thanks for dropping in. Have yourself a good one, and I will catch you later.