Do You Have a Gardener on Your Christmas List? Here is The Perfect Sustainable Christmas Gift!
by Jessica Grant
I come from a long line of avid gardeners in my family and despite having a small yard I still enjoy tending to a small garden every summer. Every year I harvest the seeds from the flowers, dry them and package them up for the next season. Having a small space to garden however, I’m often in excess of seeds. It occurred to me that this makes a lovely Christmas gift. This year I combined my love for drawing and created seed packets for each variety and bundled them up as gifts.
Harvesting the seeds is a simple process. Simply wait until late in the season and it’s best when the flower heads are dried on the plant. Simply remove the dried flower and bring inside the house and lay on newspaper until completely dried, crumbling apart to expose the seeds. One flower head can provide hundreds of seeds. For nasturtiums, it’s best to look under the plant and gather up the seeds that the plant has dropped, they will already have begun to dry up. Often the green seeds on the flower aren’t mature and won’t reproduce. If you gently lift up your nasturtiums you will find an abundance of seeds under the leaves around the root base.
Once you are sure your seeds are dry you can label and, if you choose, draw the flower/plant on the front as I have done here. I had a stash of these cool vintage envelopes that worked perfectly. Then store in a cool, dry place until you are ready to gift.
Alternatively, you can store the seeds in mason jars in the refrigerator once you have dried them and create tags or labels rather than use envelopes. There are plenty of fun options.
Happy giving and gardening.
Here are a few pictures of my garden last summer:
