THERE'S nothing like a cold blast of wind and some heavy rain to clarify priorities in the garden.
Among the fall gardening chores of cleaning and mulching, try to make time to collect some seeds and dried flowers. The rainy summer and long sunny slide into fall has produced an abundance of flowers and seeds this fall and every garden should have some sort of seed to collect or flower to hang and dry.
Drying flowers and berries from the garden is a time-honoured ritual of fall. Plants have been collected and dried for centuries and used in herbal concoctions, as food or displayed as ornamentation.
Going out on a cold day, wandering throughout the garden's bounty is truly inspiring for the mind and healthy for the body.
I have talked to many "driers" who collect flower and seed from the garden and most say the same thing about how to collect and dry flower, fruit or stem.
Collect lots, cut long and hang in a cool, dry and dark place to allow the plant to cure properly and dry out. High temperatures and bright light will cause the collected specimens to wilt prematurely and look disfigured.
Collecting flowers or berries is best done in the morning but with busy schedules, the best time to collect is when you have time, but preferably on a dry day.
Cut the stem long to allow yourself the opportunity to cut shorter later. Always choose the best flowers, stems or fruits for drying to obtain the best possible presentation. Hang your collections in bunches and wrap the end of the stems tightly with a rubber band to keep them together while they hang and dry. The rubber band shrinks with the drying stems and prevents the collection from falling to the floor.
Berries will dry but they may shrivel somewhat. Rose hips dry reasonably well, ash tree berries (Sorbus species) not so much. I have not tried pyracantha berries but they may dry as well.
The best dried flowers are harvested from annuals like statice or salvia, or harvested from perennials and shrubs that have ornate flowers or seed heads. When you prune off the drying material on perennial plants it doesn't matter where you cut because perennials go dormant and lose all of their current year's growth, so no lasting damage occurs.
On shrubs, however, try to make shorter cuts when harvesting to avoid unnecessarily damaging the branching structure of the shrub, since it takes a long time for a shrub to grow well developed branching.
If your collections are moist or wet, give them a shake and allow them to dry off a little before you hang them to dry which will avoid mold or rot. I regularly collect several dried flowers and stems from my garden in the fall to make dried arrangements to cheer up the house in during winter.
If you're a seeder, then fall is seed collection time. Collecting seeds from the garden allows you to grow more of your favourite plants inexpensively, especially annuals, biennials and short lived perennials that do not regrow every year.
Seed collection also provides you with barter material to trade with other gardeners to obtain something you may not have growing in the garden.
Seed collection and storage is quite simple. For dry seeds like poppies, foxgloves, hollyhocks and many other plants simply cut the seed heads off, take the seeds in the house and clean and separate the seed from the seed head.
After the seed is cleaned, leave it on some paper to dry off. Never store wet seed or it will turn moldy and rot.
For seeds that are surrounded by flesh or fruit like magnolia, the flesh needs to be cleaned, washed off and allowed to dry before storing it.
Once the seed has dried off, put the seed into an envelope, label and date the envelope and store the seed in the fridge.
Storing seed in the fridge preserves freshness for many years and fridge storage prevents desiccation, which will occur in a dry cupboard or even in the garage.
Refrigeration also allows the seed to accumulate "cold units" that are needed for germination. Cold units are the equivalent of time spent outside during winter frost and freeze which the seed needs to trigger germination.
Almost any seed from tree, shrub, perennial or annual can be harvested, cleaned, dried and stored for future use.
I once ate a delicious Mandarin orange that I liked so much I collected some of the seeds as I ate the orange and sowed them in my kitchen windowsill. One of the sprouted seedlings has now grown to be a two-foot tall orange tree that I am hoping will produce oranges in a few years.
Todd Major is a journeyman horticulturist and chief horticultural instructor at the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden. For advice contact him at [email protected].
