Collecting my own seeds

For a while now, I've been trying to collect some seeds from the plants I've grown this year.
So far, my first attempt was to collect borage seeds. Most of them had already blown away by the time I inspected the plants.

Something that I've learned in doing this, (something that I probably SHOULD have known) not all seeds develop properly. When you buy seeds most have been graded and only the best quality seeds are sold. In DIY seeds, the percentage of bad seeds is easily 30% in the plants I've seen so far.

I have managed to collect a few different seeds and put them in envelopes to dry. Poppies of various varieties and other flowers. I'm still waiting on my perpetual spinach seeds to ripen. I desperately want to grow them again next year.

I'm hoping to try and collect livingston daisies too, before the plants are put in the compost bin.

Not to mention the seeds I've bought for next year. I have rainbow carrots, rainbow beetroot, rainbow chard. I have pink currants ordered and on the way. I have PINK blueberries ordered. I have yams on order, Shetland black tatties. Anything weird and wonderful, I'm going to try it.

I can't wait for next year. 

Seedlings galore

Late 2014, my mam was clearing out my grandad's cupboards. She found my late granny's old seed box. She found rocket and a few other things that she gave to me to try. The seed was 15 years old. Not much hope for germination, but it got me thinking, what ELSE could I grow the following year.

Around March/April this year, my mam was starting to propagate her seeds for the coming summer. I was inspired.
A few weeks later I agonized over seeds in the Planticrub at Tingwall. I knew I couldn't try everything at once, as much as I wanted to.

I came away with Kale, Leeks, Corncockle, field cornflower, primroses and strawberries.
My mam decided she was going to try her usual assortment of annuals including pansies, livingston daisies and for the first time, tomatoes.

I sowed my seeds in my garden shed. Unheated, dark, cramped and not much light. Having no shelves, I constructed flat surfaces out of old bird suet boxes on which I laid propagation trays. It was a mess.

After a few weeks some of my seed trays showed life, others none at all. It just wasn't warm enough to make the seeds happy!
In desperation I bunged everything I had in the back of the car and headed north to Heylor with them. I begged my mam to find room for my trays otherwise I'd have a very bare garden.

Being the wonderful mam she is, she squeezed my trays in among hers in the considerably warmer and lighter potting shed.

My granny's potting shed

Old school glass sheets instead of plastic to trap the heat and moisture

Shelves and shelves of plants!

After I handed over my seedlings to her, I had a very lazy few weeks, gardening wise. It was an awful time at work as we were in our busiest period of the year at the same time as having our office refitted with custom built units. Whilst that was going on, I was also working on a huge commission for a children's book.

My mam soldiered on and pricked out all my seedlings and brought them on for weeks by herself. Poor her!
However she did pinch all but 2 of my primroses and strawberries and a kale plant. So it worked out not too badly for her.