Seed Saving ~ Let's share seeds 2010

For the past few months the boys and I have been saving seeds from our garden to use again next spring and summer. Then in July I joined Earth Mama in her 2010 Seed Share. What a great idea she had! We would save our seeds (like we always do...) and send some of them all over the country to new friends who would do the same thing and send some back to us! (Sadly we can't send them internationally, I guess customs frowns on things like that.)

This afternoon while everyone was busy playing I sat down for a little while and made some seed packets for our seeds to go traveling in!

I used a simple template for my packets and painted a flower or vegetable on each one.

Wild violets. Local wildflower, one of the first to bloom each spring.

 Purple flowering sage. Bumble bees love this stuff! So do I!

 Sweet William, a lovely little biennial flower that smells very spicy-sweet!

Ruby Queen Okra. Nice and tender and soooo yummy! Prolific too!

 Orange cosmos..self sows in my flower beds and in the veggie garden. Very cheerful and attracts lots of good bugs!

 Mullein, a local wildflower (introduced here from European settlers in the 1700's) it is a great medicinal herb... good for coughs and congestion.

 Calabaza Squash... a very yummy Guatemalan winter squash, not very sweet, excelent in savory dishes!

 
Guatemalan seeds brought to me by my mother-in-law several years ago! We save seeds for these mild chilis every year! Guatmalan Chili Dulce.

 Hungarian bread seed poppies... I don't have seed packets made for these yet, but we do have the seeds saved!

 My larkspurs, they are some of my favorite spring flowers. They self-sow every year and are so easy to care for!

We have several more types of seeds saved that I might be able to share, so I am hoping to get some more seed packets made up soon! I had fun messing around with the paints this afternoon, and before long the boys had abandoned their own projects and where seated at the table painting with me!