This is a subject close to my heart. The Seed. A few summers ago the Lord showed me the seed. What He showed me was one plant is started from one tiny seed but the fruit from that plant has hundreds if not thousands of seeds.  Why is this important?

From a gardener perspective this is a money saving wonder! How many times do we place an order for seeds and receive a tiny package with somewhere between 30 – 100 seeds. Depending on the type of seed you might get 30 corn but 100 carrot due to the size. Yet one ear of corn can have 100+ seeds on it! A carrot plant can have 1000+. Why do we spend dollar after dollar to buy seed from some other region?

We’re scared. Somewhere along the line someone told us we couldn’t, shouldn’t or we decided we wouldn’t. Saving seed is easier than you might think.

First you must start with a seed that will yield seed after its own kind as Genesis 1:11-12 talks about. In our day this is called “Heirloom”. If you are growing a hybrid the likelihood of the next plant being the same is very slim. A hybrid has a mom and a dad plant that are different types of the same plant and the kid plant is good. However, there after you never know if you’ll get something closer to the dad, mom, or kid plant.  On this note a GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) seed NEVER yields seed after its kind because it doesn’t have a mom and dad of the same genetic makeup. Hence I do not agree with GMO production. However GMO’s haven’t flooded the backyard gardener quite yet.

Second, you must leave room for your plants to continue to grow past its picking stage. In the case of root or herb plants (carrot, lettuce, etc)  this means just leaving one or two in the row to continue to grow into flowering and seed production. For the fruiting plants (tomatoes, cucumbers, etc) you would need to continue to pick the fruit till close to the end of that plants season and then chose the best producing plant to leave a couple of fruits on the plant to over ripen. This insures that the seed is completely developed before you harvest it.

Third you must pick, dry and store the seed in the proper way. To pick seed the most likely place is in the bottom of the flower pod. You can crack open the flower and find tons of seeds. (As pictured above. These are lettuce seeds from a flower pod) Also some plants produce a seed pod on the stem somewhere.  They tend to resemble some sort of “pea pod”. In the case of fruiting plants the seed obviously is in the fruit and so you must extract that seed and dry it. Pumpkins are super easy but tomatoes and cucumbers are a little tricky in that they prefer to be “fermented” first. I know! Your mind is swirling! Mine did too but when I found out that fermenting was as easy as putting the washed seed in a jar of water 3/4 full and leaving it in my window…. I relaxed. The good seed simply sinks to the bottom! Cool huh!

Drying and storing is fairly easy also in that to dry seed you lay clean, towel dried seeds out on a cookie sheet.  Turning them and stirring them frequently to keep them from molding. Once they are dry to the touch and somewhat firm, you can put them in paper lunch bags to store away from light and moisture. If they are a large seed such as squash plants store the paper bag in a dry arid place for a bit to continue to dry the inside before packing away. Do not use plastic bags because if any moisture at all is left in your seed it will humidify the plastic bag and mold your seed.

If you do these things and mess it up don’t worry, we all have. In this day and age you can still buy a new seed packet and start again.  Don’t give up though because the joy of growing little grandbabies in your garden is more than you can imagine. Some of the benefits are stronger, healthier, pest resistant plants that will produce so much more seed than you need and you can share! Sharing seed is a tradition that should never go away because it points us right back to our fellow neighbor in whom we should love like Jesus commanded us!

Which brings me to the next point. The Jesus in the seed. You see the Lord says that one seed (Adam) brought sin into this world because all his plants after him were of the likeness of him as stated in Genesis 5:3 and 1Cor 15:22. If you have a plant that produces cucumbers and you plant that seed, all you’re ever going to get is cucumbers…. right? This is why Jesus had to come and let us be born again of a new seed. His seed. So that when we grow, we produce fruit after His kind. These fruits are called sinless because Jesus did not sin though tempted (as in the wilderness). Each of us are first born of Adam, even a child born of a saved person is still first of Adam. We must all make the choice to change our seed to Jesus individually.

The neat thing about seeds is when you look at how many seeds come from just one plant you start to see the generational promise in Exodus 20:5-6. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.  When I bust open a seed pod I can see how quickly even one generation lost is so many lost and one generation taught is so many! If I am that plant, and my fruit yields seed…. hundreds and hundreds of seed….. I question quickly what plants my seeds would grow. If seeds saved from plants grown in the same environment year after year produce stronger, healthier, pest resistant plants, what environment should I be growing my children in? The answer is not wealth or ease but an environment that loves Jesus.

Are you still a plant of the seed of Adam? If so, the way to fix it is simple. The Lord says, if you believe in your heart that Jesus Christ is Lord of all and He died for your sins and rose again, all you have to do is confess this belief with your mouth and let the redeemed of the Lord say so! So to that I say… SO!

Amen