Thanks for walking me through that seed instruction, bgill. One of the cranberry bean pods is dry, so I can just pick it now, shell it, and place the beans in a jar with a date? I sprouted the plant from beans from the container of cranberry beans I had bought early 2013 at the health food store, so I don’t know how old those were.
I can certainly see how sprouting our own plants from seeds is cheaper, but I’m finding that the tomatoes I sprouted are just not doing anything exciting as yet. I have a few yellow flowers, but sometimes those shrivel. However, the plants we got from Lowes are going great guns!
I’d store the seeds in a paper envelope (like you’d mail a letter in) because the paper will allow air flow in case they aren’t completely dry. If they’re stored in a jar, any moisture in the seeds might cause them to mold. If you want to keep bugs out, then after a couple of months in the paper envelope you can put them in a baggie and long term store in the freezer or long term them in a jar.
I understand about the tomatoes. Mine, only the volunteers that popped up from the plants dropping tomatoes, planting themselves and overwintering are producing. My homegrown seedlings are very, very behind time because I had to start over 3 times due to two bad hail storms and 2+ floods that put gullies through the garden destroyed everything. I’m in Zone 8 so try to get tomato and pepper seeds started at Christmas. Of course, tomatoes don’t produce well in temps above about 95 and we’re looking at 100+ the rest of the week. Blah, it was already sweltering when I was watering this morning.
Oooh, the most wonderful tomatoes ever were my grandmother’s. She grew them down at the river bottom so they were almost aquaponic and fertilized with all the fishy river water. We’d go down and eat them right off the vine and wash the juice our faces in the river. She made the best tomato preserves! I think of her this time of year.