Gathering seeds

I am trying to harvest some seeds from my flowering plants, so that I can spread them around a bit, save some money, and have some continuity of colour through the garden.

I picked all the seedheads on a dry day, put them in paper bread bags, and set them at the non-steamy end of the kitchen....

The purple aquilegia are all gathered in, out of the seed pods, etc (nearest different coloured flower is about 50 metres and a house away, so should be fairly true to colour?)

The two different coloured foxgloves (mid pink, and a near-cerise pink) are a little slow to dry, and I've cut most of the semi-ripe seed pods off the stems, thinking that the thick stems were probably holding too much moisture in the bags?

It's the poppies I'm most concerned about.
I picked the two sets (one a fancy double sport, the other a simple single/double flower) whilst the pods were just starting to change from pale green to sand coloured, and before the "pepper shaker" opened at the top. I've just been checking through the bags, and they seem to be a little damp, even though the paper bags do let the moisture out. (We get stale, dry bread, not mouldy bread).

Thanks to the patisserie chef previous owner of this house, our oven has very good temperature control, and can go down to 30 degrees. I am thinking of popping the seeds in the oven at this temperature for 30 mins, to help dry them off. After all, we had temps of 35+ degrees just 10 days ago... Do you think this will work? Or damage the seeds? (For info I use the 30 degrees as a proving oven for my bread, very successfully).

 

I think there's only one way you're going to find out whether the oven will work for your seeds Sian. I'd be more inclined to put them on a sunny windowsill for a couple of days as long as it's not to hot.

 

Well, watch this space!

The "normal" ones, singles and semi doubles, had lots of seeds (most of the poppies were like this). So these seeds were a little more moist, and a couple of pepper-pots were starting to grow a mould. Fearing I would loose these, I popped them on a shallow tray, in the oven at 30 degrees for an hour. They didn't come out miraculously dry, but they were no longer damp to the touch.

The "specials" - fully double, like peonies, I was more nervous of damaging, so I didn't treat them. There are also fewer seed heads.

Both sets are now spread out on trays under a "cloudy" window sill. (We have had two days of rain - at last!!)

 

I only ever collect from pods that have ripened on the plant in order to avoid this problem.

 

Thanks, JWK - just the sort of info I was hoping for!
As you saw, in the end I did resort to a little very gentle heat, in order to save one batch of seeds. The rest I will do my best to air-dry the natural way.

 

Time will tell now then Sian.