'Tis the season to walk around looking for fun seeds!

General Discussions
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I decided to walk to a public area forty-five minutes from me that has crabapple trees. I figured I’d see if any were ripe, and if so, what they tasted like. Maybe I’d bring some good ones home to make jam with.

I didn’t make it that far.

Along the way, I found a huge patch of purslane in a public area that hadn’t been stepped on or anything, so I picked a whole bunch, both to eat and save seeds from.

Further down the street, there was a lovely front yard garden with some green bean vines that had a lot of dried pods on them. I’m not shy (like, at all), so I knocked on the door and asked the lady who answered if she was planning to save the seeds. She said no. I asked if I could have them. She said, “Sure, help yourself!” She also gave me two cucumbers that were fully ripe and yellow, perfect to save seeds from.

There were some really pretty petunias with dried seed pods on them at the house of a neighbor I knew. I asked if I could save some seeds. He said sure.

There were a few enormous apples, rotten on one side, that I found on the ground by the sidewalk. The people who lived there weren’t home to ask (I wish I could’ve asked, even though it seemed a given), but it seemed safe to assume they didn’t want those, so I brought them home to save seeds from. I chose not to bring home any apples near the sidewalk that only had minor or moderate bug damage, because they might want those.

So now I have more seeds to plant or share, plus I made a note of a few places I want to go back to when the seed pods are fully dried (hollyhocks and chicory that were growing as weeds by the sidewalk, and I think I may have seen flax there, too).

And I still haven’t gotten around to checking the crabapples yet.

And I really ought to ask the people with the apple tree if they want the bug-damaged fruits, because if not, I’d like to taste them and make sure I like them.

Same for the people with a pear tree a few doors down from them.

There are so many wonderful seeds to save at this time of year. Take a walk around your neighborhood! See what you see!

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Thanks for the reminder – I’m away at the moment, but as soon as I get back to London I want to check on the Cormus domestica trees in a local park and on one of my regular bicycle commutes.

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I love stories like these. It demonstrates the interaction between urban dwellings and nature wonderfully.

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That’s a really cool idea and a fun story. Makes me wonder about where I might be able to do some of that around here… :thinking:

That said, I have been walking around on our own land recently and identified a couple of new things to collect seed from.

We have a Carolina Buckthorn tree growing near a fenceline, which I’m not sure where the original seed would’ve come from aside from some birds probably carrying it in.

And we have American beautyberries growing in several different places. I’ve noticed them in years past - they’re sorta hard not to notice if you’re out there at the right time of year! But this is the first time I’ve taken the time to identify them.

Earlier this afternoon, our family went on a walk and on the way back I noticed one of the girls playing with a big fuzzy leaf which I thought might have been mullein, but I was already pretty tired at that point and trying to carry a 4 year old who had fallen and skinned her knee back towards the house so I didn’t take the time to inspect it. Maybe next time we go back that way.

So I guess I’m doing a similar thing on our own land. But I don’t have a bunch of neighbors with yards to browse through lol.

Edit: Just noticed you said that public area was a ways away from you. Maybe I’ll have to think about where a good spot to do this might be.

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I doing something similar. Recolecting carob pots when walking to have more genetic deversity on my seed and future trees. Also found mirabilis grows wild, so I am trying to collect more seeds. Always searching for seed to collect. Not that much luck with fruit trees.

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This thread makes me think I need to find or make a small pouch with multiple little pockets inside to carry around when I am at locations like that. Because I know I have found myself in places where there were/are plants I could gather seeds from (now that it isn’t the middle of the night I can think of some of those places more readily), but I didn’t really have anywhere to put the seeds other than maybe my jeans pockets with my keys, wallet, phone, whatever else my kids had me shove in there…

And personally I’d rather keep the seeds separate from getting smashed in with all of that and if I got seeds from more than one thing it would be nice if they could be kept separated so I didn’t have to go back and separate them once I got home.

Do you have a solution that you use for something like that, or do you just drop stuff in your pockets and either use multiple pockets or simply sort it all out once you get home?

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I should start carrying small zip log bags, those really really small that I use for seed swap. 5x5cm or 2x2inches. The problem is when I get bigger pods and I do not have my backpack.

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I keep little ziploc bags in my purse. :smiley: For someone who doesn’t carry a purse, they may be able to find a space for tiny ziploc bags in their wallet.

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I keep little jelly jars in my backpack. If I find something interesting it gets put in there. Since I mostly use these seeds to make hedges more diverse, I just stuff everything into one jar and dump it out into the hedgerow I want to have more plants.

You could keep more than one jar in your backpack and only put seeds you can visually distinguish into the same jar. I also like the idea with the multiple ziplock bags.

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My backpack is my man purse. It is a combination of bug-out bag, work briefcase, diaper bag, first aid kit, and riding/hiking bag. Zip-locks are easy to pack and can be used for seed collection, fruit & berry gathering, and water storage. I prefer brown paper sacks for gathering seeds though. The paper sacks allow the collected material to ripen and dry with less chance of molding.

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11

I really like all of those different answers and their different contexts! I was vaguely imagining making myself some kind of leather drawstring pouch or maybe a foldable “seed wallet” or something. Which would both obviously work and also be overkill - but potentially fun projects if I happened to have the time and energy to work on them.

In the meantime, you’ve each given some very viable options to consider. I don’t really get out a whole lot, but I have thought of a couple of places to try checking out for when I do.

And I really like the idea of gathering seeds when I’m out, just letting them mix together and chucking them into the hedgerow… I’ll definitely have to do that kind of thing once we get our hedgerow established.

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Ive also been doing this!! I found some feral asparagus with berries that i picked, some black walnut, some great tasting feral grapes, and some hickory seeds on the road that i walk my dog on. Ive also found some spice bush seeds and other feral grape seeds that ive picked elsewhere this season. It feels like im always on a treasure hunt!

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Feral asparagus!? Wow… that is hard for me to wrap my head around, but I guess it makes sense that it would grow wild somewhere lol.

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If you have a dog, like me, you can reach for those empty poop baggies that are stuffed in every pocket of every garment. I’m never disappointed. It also makes you look like a good neighbor, cleaning up dog poop while “stealing” seeds and cuttings. (Wait, but where’s the dog?!) Also, I must say, that NYC parks department may have made a mistake in listing the location and species of every single tree in the city. Got all my honey locust seeds and suckers (for nitrogen fixing in the orchard) with the help of that map and I’ve only just started :sweat_smile:

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Haha that is pretty awesome! I wonder if other cities have done something similar…? I live out in the middle of nowhere, but I do visit family in Tulsa sometimes and something like that could really be useful. And I can imagine others in different areas might find that sort of thing even more useful than me.

This seems like the kind of thing that would be great to gather all together in one place as a compiled resource if it is an even remotely common thing and someone hasn’t already compiled it… :thinking:

We do have dogs, but I’ve never picked up their poo after them because we’re so far in the country - plus we’ve often had chickens which delight in doing that picking up for you. The idea of picking up after your dog is something I hadn’t even heard of until I was an adult and it still feels pretty funny and foreign to me even though I understand now how important it is in more populated areas and how quickly things would get gross if people didn’t do it. It does make sense that you’d have lots of those bags on hand “just in case” - I don’t want to imagine what you have to do if you find yourself without any bags… :grimacing:

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Check this website and see what it has for your city! :smiley:

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I kind of love just stuffing my pockets with seeds. It’s a fun thing to uncover later.

I recently harvested a bunch of rose hips from the local grocery store flower beds. The hips are huge - easily the size of a quarter - and they’re surprisingly sweet tasting. I may have also gathered some false indigo from that same bed…

In a downtown walk a couple weeks ago, I found a bunch of ripe canna seeds and a large and lovely St. John’s wort shrub that will be getting some pruning next I see it. :grin::crossed_swords:

If I’m out in the woods foraging, I have a belt with a double-pocketed pouch, a knife, and a set of pruners attached. It will generally work for most things I’m gathering unless we find a huge flush of mushrooms or such. I’ll have to sort it later, but that’s part of the fun.

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Rush,rush, they’re sprouting!

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Wow, that’s awesome! I’ve heard they’re delicious!

It may have been one of Samuel Thayer’s foraging books that talked about how to harvest and store butternuts for maximum deliciousness. May be worth looking into. :slight_smile:

According to Google, Juglans cinerea is butternut, Juglans regia is English walnut, and Juglans nigra is black walnut. So it looks like they’re all different species in the same genus!

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I’ve been stuffing my pockets with seeds for years! I used every pocket in my jeans for different kinds of seeds in my outings. Now that I’ve learned about landracing it all makes sense and this summer I’ve collected so many seeds more intentionally.

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