Hidden Harvest

Hidden in Plain Sight

In the fall of 2016, HP, our newest volunteer, asked out loud if we collected seeds since the plants in the Road Garden and Parking Lot Garden were starting to ripen and she was concerned that the seed would be lost. Frankly, we had never thought about seed collecting as we were still focused on the summer production of ornamentals in the Entrance beds, nurturing the vegetable gardens, and generally weeding everywhere. HP proceeded to collect a few of the more obvious seeds from the Road Garden.

This year, KL, our provider of native plants, showed all the volunteers how to identify and collect seeds from the native beds. We spent two hours last Wednesday identifying and collecting seed samples from twenty-seven different plants, then storing them in paper lunch bags to dry. Here is the list of seeds that we collected.

Thank you KL for giving us excellent guidance in seed collecting. 

We now recognize that there is a second harvest at Riel House. Once the vegetables have been collected and donated, then it will be time to rigourously harvest the native plant seeds. We will require larger paper bags than the lunch bags we used last week, more patience than what is required to harvest vegetables, plus dry weather so that the seeds will not develop mould once they have been harvested. Our goal is to sow these seeds in other parts of Riel House so visitors may see what the property looked like before it was overwhelmed by non-native species.

HP has now moved to other volunteer opportunities. Thank you HP for inspiring us to gather this Hidden Harvest.

July: Growing towards Harvest