I didn't take this picture, but if I did, I would frame it.
Last Fall I decided that I’m going to start saving seeds whenever I eat an especially good organic vegetable. This despite not knowing if I’ll get a plot in my town’s Victory Gardens — which is so popular that there’s a waiting list. But such a minor impediment of no garden space doesn’t deter this stouthearted plant killer. Oh no. I’m saving seeds.
I began with an exceptional butternut squash. Its insides were the crisp, warm orange of a fall day, saturated beyond the limits of a my squashy dreams. Did I get pictures? No. Were there butternut squash guts splattered across the counter as I separated out seeds? Yes. The SavvyRoomie was exasperated, but I know she loves me. Mr. Savvy didn’t bat an eye.
I ate the heck out of that squash, then rinsed the seeds and let them dry for a few days on the counter, flipping them once. Then I parked them in an envelope, labeled it, and packed everything away until Spring.
A few weeks later, a delicata squash called to me, and I dried those seeds too — on a plate on top of the refrigerator this time, so as not to harass the SavvyRoomie beyond her tolerances. She loves me, but I can only go so far, you see. Which is why it was funny that SavvyRoomie recovered my delicata squash seeds no less than three weeks later from the top of the fridge where I had forgotten them.
No matter. Once again, I put the seeds into an envelope, labeled it, and put the delicata enveloped in with the… wait a second, where are the butternut squash seeds?
“What?” SavvyRoomie asked from over the top of her computer.
“The butternut squash seeds! I put them in an envelope and put them right here,” I said, indicating the bookshelf basket full of junk that Mr. Savvy and I like to pretend contains office supplies.
“Are you sure? Maybe they’re in the drawer with the computer cords,” SavvyRoomie said. But she was giggling, because this is a typical conversation. Mr. Savvy and I have only three places to put odds and ends in the house, and we lose them somewhere between the computer cords drawer and the bookshelf basket on a regular basis. I don’t know how it happens. SavvyRoomie finds it funny, but as a self-proclaimed minimalist, I am ashamed my friends.
I looked in the bookshelf basket again, then the computer cords drawer, then the potholders drawer (our third hiding place). I took a quick swing through the bedroom, just in case, before admitting defeat.
“I guess they’re gone,” I told SavvyRoomie, and I lamented their loss because those seeds made up half of my future garden. And now all I’d have to grow was delicata.
A few days later, I was hanging clothes to dry in the little room we use mostly for storage when I noticed something funny peering through the side of my plastic yarn bin.
Ah. Because clearly that’s where butternut squash seeds go. With the yarn.
Sometimes I wonder how I’m ever going to get this farm thing off the ground.
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©2012 at Simple Savvy, the simple living blog where my seed saving collection is whole once again, let the animals rejoice. judy_and_ed took that first image, but I’m using it via a Creative Commons license. The second image is mine.
Tags: butternut squash, farm, seeds
Welcome to Simple Savvy! Updated twice a week with posts about my quest to live a mindful, eco life.
I love how you are saving seeds, it is very comendable. I hope they sprout when the time comes! On the other hand, I pride myself on remembering whereever I put things for safe keeping; that said I recently could not locate a certain document put aside. I checked all my known safe places, to no avail, until this morning when getting stamps out of a drawer, I checked my documents drawer and there it was! Ah-ha, thank goodness!
Ah, that sounds like me. Sometimes I’m such a ditz. I can have something in my hand and be in the process of going to put it away and then *poof* it’s gone. That’s why I try to keep things in the same spot all the time, otherwise I’ll never find them. Of course I have a high failure rate with this goal!
That is an awesome picture!
Not to be a downer on your excitement, but squash seeds are hard to save for replanting because they have most likely been cross pollinated. So even if you are getting seeds from a pristine butternut, unless there were no other type of squashes growing ANYWHERE near it, it likely won’t grow to be a butternut.
I have random squash grow out of my compost pile all the time, and we eat them. They are always a cross of something. The one last year was shaped like a butternut, but the fat end was at the top of the vine, it had no seeds, and it tasted like pumpkin.
Its always worth a try, though!
Au contraire! Knowing that doesn’t diminish my excitement, but rather makes growing squash more like a game. It’s a SURPRISE squash!