STEEMIT SEED SAVERS - COLLECTING SEEDS FROM A DIPPER GOURD THAT I RECEIVED FROM "PA MAC"

This really impressed me!

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The man in the photo above is "Pa Mac" from the YouTube Channel "Farm Hand's Companion." I was blessed enough to meet him last year and learn a bit from him over the course of a couple days. For those of you who are unfamiliar with him, here is the trailer for his YouTube channel.

I really like his videos because they can be understood by anyone around the world, since he simply shows people how things are done without talking about it the whole time. Over 29,000 people are subscribed to his YouTube channel and he is a well known homesteading in some circles.

While we haven't made it out to his homestead yet, we hope that we will have the chance this year. He's a kind and knowledgeable man that has a lot of hand's on experience, and we really enjoyed interacting with him last year.

DIPPER GOURDS

Pa Mac had a few dipper gourds for sale for $1 each when we met him last year, so I purchased a few. After all, $1 is pretty cheap and dipper gourds can be crafted into all sorts of tools or crafts. Plus, they are full of seeds, so we can grow our own. Since I am not sure exactly what I'll choose to use them for yet, I just cut a small hole in one side of the gourd for now.

Immediately the loose seeds began to fall out. Prior to opening the gourd, it had sounded like a large rattle, which was also rather fun. The question for me now was to find out exactly how many seeds I had "purchased" for the dollar I paid for the gourd.

SEED COUNTING

Much like the birdhouse gourd that we grew and opened last year, there was an impressive amount of seeds inside. That much I could tell right away. In one small birdhouse gourd that we opened last year, we found almost 300 seeds! That is a lot of potential plants.

Inside of this one dipper gourd from "Pa Mac," I counted 379 mature seeds! How crazy is that. I love the fact that when you grow things like these useful gourds, you can also have free seeds for coming generations of the same type of plant. Whether the plant is ornamental or edible, the seeds can be collected, saved, and planted. That is one of my favorite things about gardening!

Since the gourd and seeds can be used, all that is left is the tiny part of inner gourd that is dry and brittle. I am pretty sure that even this has its uses, since it can at least be used as a kindling for starting fires, or composted to create more nutrient soil, as can the rest of the plant once it is done producing the gourds.

As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:

proof-of-a-whole-lot-of-seeds

Until next time…

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GIF provided by @orelmely

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