Collecting flower seeds with children

 
Photo credit: Will Heap/Kyle Books (Image from 101 Things For Kids To Do Outside)

Seed collecting is perfect for the lazy gardener.  Whenever someone looks sniffily at your bolted lettuces or wonders why you haven't been deadheading the flowers, you just have to say in lofty tones, "oh, I'm going to be collecting those seeds of course".

It is also a great garden activity for children so I made sure to include it in 101 Things For Kids To Do Outside.  They can begin by creating their own homemade seed packets by decorating plain envelopes.  When I do this activity with pre-school gardening club, the children tend to make fingerprint flowers which are simple but look really effective.  Older children can get a little more artistic with paints or coloured pencils.

Also, very importantly, they need to include the name of the flower and some growing instructions (easy to look up if you're not sure).

Some of the best seeds to collect are from annual plants. Because they only live a year, they have lots of seeds they want to scatter.  if you have plants like cornflowers (Centaura cyanus), pot marigolds (Calendula officinalis), poached egg plant (Limanthes douglasii) and nasturtiums, just leave the old flowers on after they have finished booking and wait unto the seeds are ready to be released.

I also like to leave the odd lettuce and radish to bolt as it's good for children to understand vegetables have flowers too and that this is how they can produce more seed.

The easiest way to check if they are ready to be harvested is by putting a paper bag over the seedhead and then shaking it inside the bag - if it releases its seeds, they're ready for collecting.

Next, cut off the seedheads into a labelled paper bag (use a different one for each type), and then, when you've finished collecting, carefully put the seeds into the correct packets.

One tip: some plant seeds are poisonous if eaten (although not those I've listed here) so to be safe I ask the children to follow the simple rule - never put any in your mouth and always wash your hands after handling seeds. 

Comments

[Anna]

One thing my girls are really excited to help me with in the garden is with seed collecting. We even took it a step further one season and I taught my older daughter how to make seed pods form on two of my tropical hibiscus plants that were living in the house then, which included teaching her the birds and the bees about the plant and why what she was doing worked. She also collected the seeds for me from the pods and we've grown them on. We're excited to see what the blooms look like on two of the seedlings we kept.

I love the idea of having children make their own seed packets too. I'm going to do that!

Another great gardening activity with children, especially in areas where it's cold and snowy all winter, is a method of sowing seeds called Wintersowing. My daughters help with it and on the winter solstice, we've started a little tradition including Wintersowing that sort of celebrates the longer days ahead.

Wonderful post, thank you!

[Dawn]

Hi Anna - thanks so much for that comment. I'm incredibly impressed by the hibiscus pollination and intrigued by this wintersowing idea - might have to try that one myself