It’s harvest time in the garden — not only for edible produce, but also for flower seeds.

Throughout the growing season, one of my favourite pastimes is deadheading flowers like zinnias, marigolds and salvias, to name but a few. Cutting back the spent flowers not only keeps the garden looking fresh and tidy, it encourages the plants to produce more flowers.

But as winter approaches, annuals are starting to shut down and will produce a crop of seeds if you let the flowers mature, so it’s time to put away the pruning shears and let nature take its course.

A dry, sunny October afternoon is the ideal time to start harvesting annual flower seeds. According to flower farmer Melissa Spencer, on www.almanac.com , some of the easiest flower seeds to harvest are bachelor’s button, cleome, cosmo

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