I've been wanting to start this process for years now but not having a garden or a home with proper ventilation has stopped me from doing so. Now that we finally have a home where we can ventilate in most rooms, I figured it was time to take the opportunity of collecting and drying seeds of some products I later wish to grow in our future garden.
With that being said, this is my first post in the Hive Garden community, I read the pinned post and think I'm ok publishing here. If not, please let me know because I'm not a pro gardener but a curious newbie.
I had this nice vision of finally having a balcony after the previous home where I'd be able to grow stuff on the balcony and enjoy some fresh veggies or fruit maybe. Sadly living this close to the coastline has turned out to be a deal breaker for that so far because of the extreme winds that literally blow away the furniture on the terrace. Now this is clearly partially due to the landlady putting very light chairs and a table there but still, it's not been very motivating to do something with it.
The balcony has one item that will never move from its place because it's an extremely heavy flower pot and although we bought ourselves some potting soil months ago, it's not been touched because of the heavy winds and lack of interest to risk things being damaged by the wind. Now that I started to collect some seeds, I'm going to see if there is one thing that I could try and start growing there even during the hot summer months, otherwise I will maybe just buy some flowers to put in there instead for some cool decoration when we sit there.
I saw them in the supermarket a while ago and decided to bring them home because I was hoping for these to be the type of sweet paprika that I was hoping to find. The previous ones I found were green only and not that great in taste. Luckily for me these were found on Monday morning with 30% discount, nice!
I tried them by roasting them in a baking tin in the oven, together with sweet potatoes, topped with olive oil. They were so tasteful that I was happy that I took out all the seeds and put them on a kitchen paper to dry. When I did so, I had no idea how long it needed to dry but I figured that I could check that later.
The start, of collecting the seeds..
I left them there for a week or so because I read it could take up to a week to dry, hopefully that info is correct, so far it seems to be going great because right now I added two more badges of the seeds and put them in one glass jar.
And this is where they are now:
But I figured I had to start somewhere. Right now I'm just collecting the seeds first and hoping I'm not messing it up long before they are going to be used. With my health being a bit of an issue lately, I haven't spent as much time on this topic as I'd hoped because other things have priority at this moment but I'll get there for sure because I believe at some point it will be hard to grow your own stuff and these seeds will become more valuable.
To have a place to grow them for the first time, if it turns out they can grow in the pot on the balcony, I will surely give that a test because I would not mind saving these euros by growing them myself. Then I would also have to learn about how to take care of them but I'm motivated to do that and already thinking which seeds I'm going to collect next because I don't know yet.
Do you grow your own stuff? What's your favourite veggie to grow? Did it take you long to properly do so? Let me know in the comments!
Wishing you a good week ahead!
All pictures above are my own...
