I grew some really great zucchini this year. In fact, of the four potted plants and almost a dozen seeds we planted provided us hundreds of zucchini all season. By the end of the season in October there was still one lone plant STILL producing fruit until the temperatures dropped and the last and final zucchini of Garden-2011 finally froze to death.
When my mom was here she noticed that there was one zucchini that was HUGE. No, really HUGE. It was approximately the size of a large baby if babies were just long and chunky without arms and legs.
My mom suggested I harvest the seeds.
Huh?
Here is why I poo-pooed her.
1. Zucchini seeds are a dime a dozen. Literally. Pennies for an entire bag of professionally harvested seeds. In the spring I can happily, and quite easily, find dozens of varieties of zucchini seeds all just hanging out waiting to be purchased and buried. It's not like these zucchini seeds were SPECIAL. I mean, they produced wonderfully but I'm pretty sure another package will produce too. (Side note: my uncle sent me really old seeds that belonged to my grandmother who hasn't had a garden in over twenty years and has been dead for almost twelve years. Some of the seeds even came from relatives in south America and Italy. Now, THOSE are special seeds. They also didn't really produce all that great but it was fun to eat some of the arugula that my grandfather used to love to plant!)
2. Who am I kidding? I claim gardening love and admiration of my beautiful garden and I lovingly spend hours and hours and hours out there from early May well through the chill of September. However, that talent of mine stops short when I attempt to do something like harvesting seeds. Okay, I have no friggin clue how to actually do that.
When it was time to harvest the zucchini we noticed that there wasn't one large armless/legless baby out there but FOUR. I decided to try to harvest the damn seeds so I can prove to my mother that I did it. So, I sat there one afternoon and picked all the whole seeds out of two of the zucchini's. Actually, I found the process kinda relaxing. I let them dry on a tray for a few days. When they were dry I put them in a bag and put them in my cabinet on a shelf that I have dedicated to seeds.
By Golly, I think I did it.
I told my mom that I was going to send her some of those damn seeds since she made such a big deal out of me harvesting them in the first place, insisting that I keep the zucchini on the plant until it got bigger and bigger. I also planned on surprising a cousin in Los Angeles who commented a few times about my garden and "sending some zucchini down to her" so I thought sending her seeds would be fun.
A few weeks later I decided to mail the seeds down to southern California.
And noticed that the bag had mildew.
Shit.
What?
See! I knew I didn't possess the necessary skills for harvesting seeds.
Next year I am not keeping any seeds unless they come from my grandmother's old seeds. Period. You hear me, mother? Those zucchini's are coming off the damn plant come hell or high water and I will not leave any "on the plant to go to seed". No.
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