Mount Grace Priory: Herb Garden
Image by Ambersky235 via Flickr

One of the best ways for gardeners to spend an autumn day is strolling through an herb garden that’s setting seed. The plants send up a fragrant aroma as your legs brush against their branches, and flower petals cling to their last bit of summer color. You will be able to replant your herb garden next year using materials you already have in hand by collecting seeds from your garden herbs.

How Seeds Form

Before you start saving seed from your herb garden, it’s a good idea to make sure you understand the basics of plant reproduction. Plants grow from seed. There will be two leaves on a seed that has just sprouted. Those leaves sprout new leaves, and they and their progeny keep sprouting more leaves until a plant is formed. In order to nourish the leaves above the ground, the seed also sprouts downward into the soil.

Like everything else in nature, the plant’s strongest desire is to reproduce itself. Plants reproduce from seed; a plant’s mission in life is to produce seed to guarantee the survival of its species. Plants are able to produce seeds by growing flowers, these are then pollinated by the wind or bees. As the flower petals shrivel and dry up, the seed matures, and the wind shakes the seed off the plant and onto the ground where it germinates and sprouts two new leaves, and the process repeats itself.

How to Collect Herb Garden Seed

Presumably, you will be harvesting your herb garden plants throughout the growing season and using their leaves and flowers for medicinal or culinary purposes. Halfway through the season, choose a few healthy sturdy stems from where you will collect your herb garden seed. Tie a colored ribbon around the branches to mark them, and stop harvesting leaves from those stems.

When the flowers are almost fully ripened, cut the stems at the base of the plant. Bind several stem ends together with a rubber band and hang the bundle upside down from a clothesline hung in a warm, dry room. Place the hanging end of the bundle inside a paper lunch sack, and secure the bag around the bundle with string or a twist tie. After a few days, shake the stems and you will find that full ripe seeds will drop.

How to Save Herb Garden Seed

Once you have collected seeds for an herb garden, the seeds will remain viable for several years if they are stored in paper envelopes in a cool, dry place. Make sure that you write the name of the herb outside the envelope so you will know what you are planting next spring.

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