Seeds of Success – Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Warm, ripe summer tomatoes. Sweet, crisp sugar snap peas in spring. Spicy fall arugula. Crunchy, sweet carrots as winter approaches. Herbs as a garnish to shower over a dish before it’s ready to serve. All from my garden. Fruits, leaves, roots. All delicious. But as a harvest, we rarely focus on seeds in our gardens.

Flowers are the organs of sexual reproduction in plants. After pollination and fertilization, the ovules of a flower form into seeds with an embryo inside, and the ovule is usually surrounded by the ovary, which becomes the fruit. I want flowers to form on many of the plants in my garden, so they will eventually morph into tasty, thick, fleshy fruits. Think tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, green beans, zucchini, and squash. But I usually ignore the seeds. Other plants, mostly the leafy vegetables, such as lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and kale, as well as the herbs, I never want to flower. When they bolt (flower and go to seed), the vegetation changes in flavor, making them less desirable. Roots – carrots, radishes, and beets – get pulled and eaten long before the flower forms.

There are few plants that I want to go past the flower and fruit stage to the mature seed stage, although I rarely use seeds from my garden in recipes. But with a few plants, I let them mature past their regular usefulness so I can harvest the seeds. It’s not that I want to cook with them; rather I collect the seeds to plant for a future harvest.

Yes, this saves me a bit of money each year during the cold winter when I pore through seed catalogues and order my annual supply. But that’s not the main point. By saving seeds I get the varieties of plants that I want; those I already know work successfully in my garden. But even more importantly, I find it fascinating to experience the whole life cycle of the plants I grow, as they are providing me with a bountiful harvest. It gives me insight into our natural world, and an appreciation for farmers and generations of our ancestors who initially domesticated the food that we grow. Plus, the flowers attract necessary pollinators into the garden and add a spark of color and beauty as well.

I don’t save seeds of every plant. When you buy seeds they are often bred as hybrids – seeds that will provide desired traits in the first generation, but may grow with undesirable characteristics if the seeds are saved and used for future generations. Seed companies do this with the express purpose of preventing you from collecting and planting seeds from your own plants. After all, they make money when you have to buy more seeds the following year.

But some seeds are heirlooms – “open-pollinated – or pollinated by insects, birds, wind, or other natural means – and ‘breed true,’ or retain its original traits from one generation to the next,” according to the Seed Savers Exchange. Passed down within a family or community for generations, with heirlooms, you know what you’re going to get. These are the seeds you want to save in your garden.

I started saving seeds many years ago when I noticed my scallions blooming into bizarre orbs. I ignored the flowers, letting them go to seed, and the following year I observed tiny little scallion plants popping up out of the ground. They had seeded in, one generation being replaced by the next. I now purposely collect the seeds and scatter them in to help my scallions along, and as a result, I have had a crop of scallions growing in the same spot for at least a dozen years.

I also collect seeds from other plants – cilantro, fennel, leeks, sage, dill, and chives and I have grown Echinacea (cone flowers) and marigolds from collected seeds as well. While I don’t yet bother saving seeds from plants I harvest as fruits, maybe in the future when I have more time on my hands, I’ll look into saving seeds from heirloom varieties of tomatoes, squash, and peppers.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep letting some of my plants flower beyond their culinary usefulness and form seeds, so I can collect them and store them (fully dried, air tight container, with silica gel desiccant packets) for planting the following year.

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin seeds are one kind of seed that should never go to waste. Although I don’t grow pumpkins in my garden due to lack of space for the long, winding vines, this time of year I always try to roast the seeds from a squash we purchase. It couldn’t be simpler, and roasted pumpkin seeds make a great, healthy snack.

45 minutes, makes 1 cup

1 cup pumpkin seeds from 1 large pumpkin

1 Tbsp. olive oil

½ tsp. kosher salt

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 ^oF.
2. Cut the top off the pumpkin and remove seeds and flesh. Separate as much flesh as possible and discard. Wash the seeds in a large bowl filled with several changes of water, until they are free of most remaining flesh. Pat them dry with a paper towel and place in an even layer on a sheet pan.
3. Place the sheet pan in the oven and roast for about 10 minutes, stirring once. This will completely dry off the seeds.
4. Add olive oil and stir to coat the seeds, then sprinkle with salt. Return to the oven and roast 20 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally until toasted and golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

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