With the act of saving your own seeds you are enhancing the adaptation of the plants. As well you are acquiring any horizontal genetic traits from that year's growing exposure. Plants have the innate ability to adapt. Plants can adapt to the soil, climate, pests and diseases. By selecting the best performers you are improving your seed stock. At some time in your seed saving effort you need to restrict the input of other sources. This localized selection process confirms the genetic traits already acquired. The saved seeds can only get better as you improve your selection criteria. After a few years you need to restrict the regressive nature of out-sourcing. Strive for a close system which must now can include your seeds. As you acquire the skills of saving you can add to the pool of traders. Offer your seeds so carefully garnished and perhaps invite trades for other varieties or species. Share the efforts as we preserve the heritage of heirloom seeds. Well done all you seed savers.

Yes, I save seeds, mostly from flowers, but did Bull's Blood beet (took two years for it to seed; it's a biennial) and got a baby-food size jar full, I also do some heirloom tomatoes. This year I had salvia, vinca, ageratum, poppies, zinnias, kiss-me-over-the-garden gate, and hollyhocks, lots more that I can't think of right now. I also did daylily seeds for the first time a couple of years ago. I had them in nursery rows in the garden ready to bloom this year and then got blasted with the hard freezes several days in a row, so no blooms this year. Lots of fun to see what you end up with.

Image by: wintersown Hibiscus Seed Capsules Seed saving is a lot of fun and it's easy to do! This is how I do it....and these are general and universal instructions. Mother Nature is pretty easy to figure out if we keep with the idea that SHE needs to keep it simple too. Take a good look at a flower. When the flower fades leave it where it is, do not remove it. Eventually at the base of the flower there will be some swelling. This is where the seeds are forming. Do keep the petals where they are and let them fall naturally...I don't touch it or bother it, I just leave it be. The base of the flower will swell even more and soon you'll notice that the flower stem and the swollen base are turning a papery-brown. This is a very good indication that the seeds are almost fully ripe....in effect the plant has achieved it's goal of reproduction for that flower...it has produced viable seeds and no longer needs to expend energy to keep it alive, so it doesn't sends it's sugars and water up to the stem anymore. That's why it's turning papery-brown. It's no longer being supplied with nutrients and so it's dying back. The drying action will continue and as the swollen pod continues to dry you will see it start to open....some pods will open in a starry design, plants like poppies create a ridge of tiny little circles near the top of the pod....they make themselves into something like a little "salt-shaker" (sorta...but you could imagine it). All flower pods will open in some manner when the seeds are ripe....it's so they can disperse their seeds. When you see that the pods and stems are both brownish in color, AND you notice that the pods are starting to open you can then collect the pods. I place the pods on an open plate or in open bowls in a safe place where they won't be disturbed and let them continue to dry naturally for another week or two. Then I remove the seeds from them. To assure that the seeds are thoroughly dry I let them dry on an open plate for a few more days...I even will stir them every now and then to make sure the bottom layers will get a chance to dry too. Storing the dried seeds is easy. I use paper envelopes. I make my own with my printer, but you could use coin envelopes or even mailing envelopes will do fine too. Label them so you know what's inside. Store them where they'll be away from heat or direct sunlight. I use cardboard file boxes to keep my seeds in and those do just fine. Another good place to keep them is in your dining room drawers. Those are dark places and your dining room is sure to be safe from extreme fluctuations in temperature. Good luck with your seed saving! Trudi

Winter 2013/2014 was a brutal winter for Asian wisterias! Neither my Japanese or Chinese wisteria 'trees' bloomed last spring and the Chinese one, which usually has a smaller secondary summer bloom, produced only a couple of wimpy summer blooms. This winter has also been hard so I fear there may be no bloom this spring either - although it's to soon to tell yet.... Mine are much younger plants that yours. I've never had any dieback of the woody branches like you are describing - I wonder if that is due to the age more than winter kill...? They are known to be able to live for hundreds of years so I think it's likely to be able to survive a reasonable amount of damage! If the graft union a visible bulge? i.e can you tell for sure that some of the new growth came from below the graft? If so, I'd definitely get rid of the stems arising from below the union. The concrete patio would certainly be a limiting factor in trying to get rid of the vine if it is dead. I'd be inclined to wait to see what is alive or clearly dead this spring. Anything clearly dead I'd cut off as low down as possible. Anything living but of dubious origin in relation to the graft, I'd also remove. If that means the vast majority of it is gone, then I'd remove the rest as best I could - and probably replant with something else entirely - one or more of the vigorous and hardy clematis perhaps. If I still wanted a wisteria, I'd plant one (on a very sturdy upright support) as a free-standing tree. It is much easier to prune and control them when they are kept short in a tree form than it is to climb up on a pergola to prune IMO! I'll keep my fingers crossed for the survival of both our wisterias....:-)