Collecting Nigella Seed

I purchased a packet of Nigella, or Love in a Mist, last season thinking it would be a great plant to fill in some empty space in my flower garden.  Nigella is an annual flower that prefers full sun to part shade.  Growing just over a foot high and wide the airy leaves complement larger leaved plants.  My scheme worked well but one packet of seed wasn't enough to cover all the space I wanted.

Nigella will reseed if left to its own devices but I decided to collect some seed to make sure I could scatter it in spring right where I wanted it.

I particularly wanted to collect seed from the plants I have to make sure I got the exact same variety of flower.  These blooms start white with a hint of blue, then begin to darken turning a stark blue and finally almost purple.

These pretty flowers darken to a purple before completely fading away

Buying another packet of seed can sometimes mean the flowers aren't identical to what you already have.  Collecting your own seed from your own plants is the easiest way to ensure you get exactly what you want.

Nigella is a very simple plant to collect seed from.  Once the bloom fades and falls away the seed pod swells up to a very noticable size.

The seed head left behind blows up like a balloon.

Wait until the seed pods are dry and you can hear the seeds rattling inside before collecting the pods.  This year my seed pods were not dry enough to collect from but there was wet weather on the way.  Rather than risk the pods getting wet and moldy I pulled the entire plant from the ground and hung them to dry in the garage for a week or two.

Plants were hung upside down from the garage rafters

It wasn't long before I could hear the pods start to rattle when I touched them.  As the pods dry they begin to open.  Be sure to untie your plants at this stage otherwise all the seed will fall to the floor!

The dried pod starts to crack open revealing black seeds inside

Once the plants were dried I picked the largest well formed pods to collect seed from.  This helps ensure you have well formed and healthy seed.  I found the dried seed heads quite sharp and pulling them apart hurt my hands.  So I decided to put my new screen to use.

This vintage screen was purchased at a local antique shop and I'm smitten with it.  The edges are worn smooth from years of use.  Building a screen like this shouldn't be too hard though.  Some fine wire and a few pieces of wood.  Screens are also available for purchase at various shops like Lee Valley.

Quickly rubbing the pods across the screen tore them apart and the seeds fell through the wire mesh.

I finally found a use for the Walmart flyers!

A sheet of newspaper under the screen keeps things tidy so you can scoop up your seeds afterward.

The stems and pod that didn't fall through the screen were easily tipped into the compost.

Seeds and some chaff were left behind on the paper.

If I had a smaller screen I would have used it to further sift the seeds but in this case I simply sorted the remaining seeds from the chaff by hand.  The black seeds of Nigella are fairly large and easy to sort so it's not a difficult job.  A lot of seed is produced by just a few seedheads so I'll have more than enough to plant up the empty spaces in my garden this coming season.