Harvesting seeds is not my favorite thing. It's a bit tedious, a bit messy, and the benefits are delayed. However, it is very satisfying to look at a jar of pickles and know not only are the cucumbers, onions, and garlic from my garden, but also the coriander, dill, celery seed, and mustard seed!
Step one - Grow the plant
Mustard seed comes from mustard plants, dill seed comes from dill plants, celery seed comes from a year 2 celery plant, and coriander comes from a cilantro plant.
Step two - dry the plant
Dill, celery, and coriander dry sufficiently well on the plant in-ground as long as you're not getting crazy rain or over-watering. Mustard must be pulled and dried to a crisp. If not sufficiently dried, the harvested seeds can easily mold. Which happened to the seed I harvested last week! Boo, so disappointing. At least it molded quickly and before I tried to use it.
Step three- seed collection
Dill, celery, and coriander can be collected straight from the plant into a bucket or bowl and then transferred into a storage container. I really like to use sanitized glass jars and keep the lid off but handy. This allows good ventillation, I can write on the side, and there's no organic matter in the container itself to mold (such as would be in a paper-based container).
Mustard seeds are in seed pods that pop open when crushed or even sometimes touched. The trick is to remove the seeds from the pods without seeds going every which way and without too many pods getting into your seeds. I've finally settled on crushing the pods over a giant bowl and then skimming the pods off the top before transferring to a glass jar. Another trick- if I blow at the seeds while I pour, some of the smaller chaff blows away. It's a labor of love because it makes a big mess and is a huge project both in space-occupied, and time it spends lying around drying out. But my goal is to one day have enough mustard seed to both add to pickles AND make home-made mustard! Plus, the bees LOVE the flowers and it grows easily.
