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Watermelons are cross-pollinators who need pollinators like bees and butterflies to spread their pollen in order to set fruit.  No pollinators- no watermelon.  Disaster!  As cross-pollinators, its best to save seed from as many plants as possible to prevent inbreeding.  Keep that fact is in mind when you're picking the fruits for seed saving.Watermelon seeds are easiest to harvest after a day or two of fermentation- here's the SUPER EASY step by step process of that:1.  Let watermelon fully ripen on the vine before picking- the seeds need to come from fully ripened fruit.2.  Dig seeds out of watermelon flesh and...

  For ease of seed cleaning and saving, milkweed seed is best harvested just before it "fluffs out" as seen in the third photo.  The fluff helps carry the seed far and wide, but makes storing/saving any quantity of seed tricky.  Milkweed seed is fully mature right before the pods open and fluff out, so the timing for this can be tricky- following these steps can help.1.  Start to check seed pods in late August or early September, the timing will depend on your climate.  It's hard to miss the seed pods, but just in case they are the oval...

Bee WatchingReady to do some bee watching this year?  One reason we love growing seed crops is that you get to see a plant through it's whole lifecycle- from seed through to flower and fruit and back to seed.  Having lots of plants flowering affords lots of opportunities for pollinator and bee watching.  One of our favorite insects to watch is bumble bees- and it's probably yours too!Did you know you can turn your bumble bee watching into data that can be used to help track and conserve bumble bee populations?  The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has an ongoing citizen science project called...

What a treat, in a season when a lot of what we are eating has been frozen or canned, to bite into a sweet, cold, crunchy carrot. I juice, roast, and make soup stocks with them. Garden fresh carrots all winter long can be achieved under conditions many people already have in an ordinary garage, basement, or cold room and do not require a root cellar. Planning for fresh carrot storage begins the previous summer. Though I could plant carrots all spring and summer long, I plant the bulk of my carrots in the spring during spring rains. I really...

Making Mason Bee BoxesSolitary native bees like mason bees and leafcutter bees are crucial, but often overlooked, pollinators. As opposed to the European Honeybee (also an important pollinator) native solitary bees do not live in colonies.  Instead, individual females find-tunnel like structures to lay their eggs in.  These might be hollowed woody stems, woodpecker holes in trees, or human-made nesting structures like the photo above.  Inside each tunnel the bee creates partitioned chambers out of leaves and petals (leafcutter bees) or out of mud (mason bees.)  In each chamber she lays one egg and deposits a pollen patty she has collected...