Seeds for Bees: A Free Holiday Gift Workshop with Madame Beespeaker

Saving Tithonia Seeds

This year I have made a resolution to work in the garden in November. Usually at this time of the year I'm ready to stay indoors wrapped in blankets sipping hot chai and reading gardening magazines. I really have to embrace the season and get outside in spite of the rainforest weather. This Sunday we held an All Soul's event at Moberly and I went out in the rain for about fifteen minutes to cut the stems of the tithonia that were going to seed. I was hoping to get some help harvesting the seeds, but I didn't get many takers. This is the first year I've grown Mexican sunflower and it was one of the latest to bloom, attracting hummingbirds and the final bees of summer. The tithonia is still blooming in fact, but it's also going to seed. However, seed collecting weather is just about finished here because the fall rains make seed heads soggy and rotten.

"Save some of those tithonia seeds for me," various people have been requesting. This has proven difficult because once the seeds ripen the chickadees eat them or they drop onto the ground. This morning I listened to Anna Maria Tremonti on CBC radio and carefully pulled apart the seed heads, finding about 4 to 8 ripe seeds in the pods that were nearing maturity. Usually the seeds I harvest basically save themselves. I collect the pods just before the peak of ripeness, put the upside down in large paper bags and the seeds drop in the bottom of the bag and dry out. These little tithonia seeds took a lot of time to harvest. If I had to charge minimum wage for the labor of collecting them, those individual seeds would be about a buck a piece. And that doesn't include the labor of growing them. Needless to say, this is not the optimum climate for saving these seeds.

I am crazy about seeds. When the bees are tucked up in their winter beds, I turn my attention to seeds. Every morning I run my hands over the purple and black scarlet runner beans  and the white "Neckarkonigin" beans that are drying on the table, and I choose some seed pods to harvest and organize. I can't wait to start getting the e-mails that tell me the new seed catalogues are online and ready for my perusal. Seeds make great Christmas gifts. Even if it's just a few "magic beans" from your own garden.

And in trying to keep warm, beans are the perfect food to cook to warm up the heart of the house. I am looking for that perfect comfort food casserole that you can serve all steamy and sloppy with lush layers of vegetables and cheese. Tonight I made braised red cabbage with apples (Martha Stewart's recipe with a squeeze of lemon juice). I try to roast chicken and vegetables so there are always  leftovers in the refrigerator to turn into quick lunches and soups. And I bake with seeds. I've been making ginger snaps rolled in buckwheat groats or sesame seeds to snack on with that spicy chai. Some of you may not be surprised that with all the seed saving I'm doing, we've got a few mice in residence this fall. At first we had one very sweet well-behaved mouse. Since it didn't go forth and multiply, I thought it must be a male. He was so well-behaved, limiting his nibbling on a little bag of birdseed I left on a bottom shelf. I would wake early to write, listening to my favorite feminist podcasts, and the little mouse would nibble quietly in the corner, listening with me. Then mister mouse must have brought in a girlfriend because suddenly we had wee little adventurous mice jumping about and nibbling my seeds. We battened down he hatches and put out the traps. My sweet listening companion heard his final feminist podcast and ate his last nyger seed.

So until we're positive we've caught every last mouse . . . (We haven't. One just run under the couch beside my left foot), I'd better put those tithonia seeds in  a safe place.) Happy seed saving!


Anyone want to venture a guess at the species of bumblebee in the photo above?


ETA: I've just noticed how phallic the florets are in the center of the flower, which explains why I found the mature seeds in the outer edges of the seed head. Also, note the large pollen grains.

Seed Study

It's already time to start saving seeds. I harvested my poppy pods a couple of days ago because I felt damp in the air and wanted to save them in case it rained. Turns out I didn't need to, but in a Pacific Northwest climate you have to be ready to take in those seeds before the rains start. Let's hope for a nice dry fall. When the poppy pods are completely dry, the lid pops up and reveals the holes designed to release the tiny black seeds. You can see in the photo, the pod on the left has popped and the one on the right is still sealed.

I love the sinewy muscular quality of these poppy pods.

Each pod and stem has a personality of its own.

My sugar snaps are starting to dry up and the cerinthe and borage are just about finished as well.

I love the bumps and ridges on seeds, carrying a profound sculptural resonance. Enjoy your seeds and take the time to meditate on their beauty. Let your fingers explore them in order to lodge their aesthetic power in your memory. Our souls need seeds.

Dig In!

Jody sets up for a the creation of a collaborative ephemeral maze with the pods, petals, and stems of the fall palette.

I just spend two lovely days working with my MOP colleagues at the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre. We set up in the light of a Yaletown morning, preparing the space for the students and families that took part on the workshops. The activities were a celebration of ecological art, with networking opportunities, artist talks, and an installation of photos of the works created by artists working in Stanley Park.



Purple asters or Michaelmas daisies are good bee plants for this time of the year.

I was thrilled to be working with seeds again. The warm, sunny weather has been perfect for saving seeds, so I made piles of them for the participants to sort through. Using 10 cups of red clay, 6 cups of soil, and 2 cups of seeds, we made 30 dozen seed balls in one session. So in all total we made 75 dozen seed balls. That's a lot of potential bee fodder!!


A typical day at the Roundhouse creates a found poem.


I created a seed game for the participants to become more aware of the shapes of the different seeds.

The grade four and five students at Elsie Roy created a lovely ball made out of ivy with Sharon Kallis.
These are the spools they use to crochet the invasive ivy. The plant has to be thoroughly dried out before it can be returned to the forest or it will take root and spread again.

I enjoyed watching Sharon and the volunteers strip the ivy of its leaves as people inside the foyer stretched to go out for a run. Some of the motions were very similar, but for a completely different purpose and with a different intention.


Jody did a lot of kneeling, bending and stretching to prepare, create, and clean up the ephemeral mazes and mosaics.


I was struck by the meditative quality of all three workshops, especially on the Saturday when the pace was very relaxed and easy-going. Once people got focused on one activity they were reluctant to break out of the zone to enter another. The intimate gestures of sorting seeds became conducive to sharing stories about food and gardening that lead to all sorts of interesting conversational threads and ideas about how to make our city more bee-friendly.

Saving Columbine Seeds at UBC Farm

Let the seed-saving begin! I was granted permission again this year to gather some seeds at UBC Farm, so yesterday I got to work. Those silvery grey columbine pods are quite striking against the patterns of the ugly concrete bunker. They are excellent spring bee plants and it is so satisfying to shake the pods into a paper bag. You can do this without damaging the plants, leaving them up for sculptural interest during the winter.

I collected lots of calendula and hollyhock seeds which of course come with free little earwigs, like a living toy in a crackerjack box, so I tip the bag out to leave them on the farm for someone else to enjoy. These seeds are great for teaching kids because they can learn to separate the chaff and outer parts of the flower from the seeds.

There weren't many cosmo seeds that were ready to gather. They are tricky to collect because they tend to fall off as soon as they are ripe.


Aren't these pumpkins gorgeous? They do look magical, like they could turn into a horse-drawn coach or happy-go-lucky scarecrow at any moment.


I'm very curious about these sunflowers with soft, silvery leaves. Who are they? Where did they come from and where are they going?

I took these photos last week when I was checking to see if the seeds are ripe. It has been raining since then, so it's still not the ideal time to collect seeds as they were a bit moist, but I can dry them out on baking pans in my back porch--much to the consternation of my partner when he wants to use the pans to cook our dinner!



The rudbeckias are stunning at this time of the year. They are the true late-bloomers here in Vancouver.


I've never seen this kind of amaranth before, and I like the colour. It would look amazing in a fall flower arrangement. Did I say fall? I meant late summer. Let's hope we get more days like this one so that seed savers all over the province can "rob the pods."