Seed Collecting Season

Miranda and Marlene Smith of WOCB assessing whether seeds from some Ironweed are ready to collect - at the USGS Bee Lab in Fall 2024

While it’s technically always seed collecting season, early fall is when things really get going. All the summer blooms ripen into seed heads that are full of potential. Growing your own native plant from seed is rewarding and frankly, addicting.

Seed collecting is contagious, and the bug was passed on to me by my amazing friend Marlene Smith. I met Marlene in January of 2024 when I went to my first volunteer event at the USGS Bee Lab. All I knew when I signed up was that someone would tell me what to do to help them propagate native plants, and in return I could take some home. Bonding over our shared love of spreadsheets, Marlene, the President of Wild Ones Chesapeake Bay (WOCB), took me on as a student and partner-in-crime. Together with Bill, Marlene’s witty and kindhearted husband, and Misty, their pampered service pup, we raised around 2,700 plants last year.

Last fall, we tottered around the Bee Lab identifying plants and snipping seed heads into seemingly endless numbers of brown paper bags to start the process over again.

The seeds are already piling up this fall, drying in their paper bags on a clothesline in my house. It’s essential to wait to collect the seed heads once they are brown and the seeds easily come out. Sometimes the hardest part of seed cleaning is distinguishing the seeds from chafe, which I achieve mostly by looking up the species on Prairie Moon Nursery’s website.

Seeds collected from my home garden and the Bee Lab drying while they wait to be processed - which usually occurs when I need to perform a calming task while listening to true crime podcasts.

The propagation obsession took hold for me once I saw those little green sprouts arrive that first spring. Now, over a year and a half later, I’m starting a native gardening business that will grow a stock of its own plant material.

There is an enchanting seasonality to being a gardener. The cycle repeats and there is always something to be done to prepare for the next phase. The seeds we collect this fall will grow into the plants that fill the gardens of our friends and neighbors next year. Although the blooms are beginning to fade, I rejoice in the seed collecting season - and the blooms it promises us for the spring.