A Deposit into the Seed Vault

November 20th, 2009

I recently ordered a copy of Ken Druse’s Making More Plants. I wasn’t 10 pages into reading this beautiful book when I experienced serious pains. It was gardener’s guilt.

How many years have I gardened and failed to over-winter plants, start new plants from the ones I have, save seeds or pass along plant cuttings to my gardening friends? Druse makes it all seem so…so…natural. And worthwhile. And beautiful.

So this week during my fall garden cleanup, I made a particular effort to make a deposit into my ever-growing seed vault.

This is a scarlet runner bean, beautiful as much for its lovely vines and flowers as for its long bean pods. In fact, truth be told, I never ate the first bean because they became intricately intertwined with the malabar spinach that re-seeded itself and grows like kudzu in my garden.

But I did save the pods and now have seeds for next year. I easily have four times as many seeds as there were in the stingy seed packed I purchased last year. My plan is to try growing the vines up the clothesline poles and perhaps on a section of my white picket garden fence.

With all the news stories on Americans saving more, I must ask: Are you saving your seeds?

Posted In: Gardening

Tags: design, Flowers, scarlet runner beans, seeds, Vegetables, vines

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