Saving Seeds

I managed to save a few seeds from the okra and, surprisingly, the Christmas beans.

After reading a little on what to do, I left a couple of okra pods on the stems until all the other okra was finished and we cut them down. The trunks were so thick I needed help.

I had previously tried saving the seeds inside ripe okra after I'd cut it, but they shriveled up into nothing. So later I could see that growing and drying on the vine was the correct way. They looked just like the seeds I'd planted.

I'm clearly not good at estimating (if I had I would have guessed 50 seeds), so I actually counted the okra seeds and came up with 211 seeds from the two pods. This will last me a lifetime probably, since I won't be planting much okra in future.

The dried pods looked like spiky fingers. If I ever need to make a scarecrow, I'll know what to use for the hands.

And the Christmas beans were a total surprise. When I pulled up all the cream pea vines, I noticed one small bean plant underneath that had a few dried pods. Inside were full grown beans. So I thought this was the plant's way to say it was giving me another chance and to try again. I'm going to try planting in the early spring next time.