Spice Seeds Instead of Seed packets

In Asian Grocers/International Markets, and in the Mexican Aisle of most North American Grocery stores now.....

For a couple bucks you can buy seeds sols as SPICE and get many more seeds than you can at the local nurdery or hardware store as seed packets.

So I tried it.

Mustard
Coriander(cilantro)
Sweet basil

I'm in zone 6B and the yellow mustard isn't probably the same species as the mustard greens I from California I buy in bundles as produce as groceries.

The leaves are smaller but it grows okay here and the "eat" just like the big ones.

Cilantro is hard to grow here because the weather tends to go from too colod to too hot all of a sudden in mid spring, but I got a decent crop last year.

The Sweet basil sold in Asian Gricers as a spice is used in a fruit drink(based on the packaging) and it's not the same as italian sweet basil.

It's sweeter, more like Holy Basil(Tulsi) smaller leaves.

But here's what makes it fun:

I'm lazy.

I don't like planting little seeds 1/8" deep, or 1/4" deep.

What i do instead is weed my Hugelhulture berms in the late fall, and bang the roots our of big weeds that come up with dirt.

That makes lots of loose soill.

So I just toss these Cheap seeds out like grass seed, let the rain bury them.

Why pay $1.99 for 150 seeds when you can get 10,000 seeds for he same price?




Crap I posted this in the wrong subforum, how do I fix that?

I love getting seeds from groceries!.

I hadn't thought of looking in the spice aisle so thanks for the suggestion.

Do you know if these would make good sprouts?

Anne Miller wrote:Do you know if these would make good sprouts?

These spices make great sprouts:

Mustard seeds
Fenugreek
Cilantro/Coriander
Basil

But I've never managed to get seeds bought as organic spices to germinate. Maybe they are dried at too high a temperature to be viable for germination.  

Asian markets sound like a much better bet for getting seeds that will germinate.  

I just picked up some seeds to try! I've had good luck with the bagged beans/peas/lentils (although not the split peas!) and this will be the first time I try planting a "spice".

Worst case, I can reuse the glass containers!

Some more that have edible seeds as a spice, and leaves or stems as an herb:
Fennel -- but if you grow fennel seeds sold as a spice they might not bulb up. I use the stems, leaves and seeds anyway.
Fenugreek -- The leaves are used in Indian cooking sometimes, and they are a legume, a nitrogen fixer in the garden.
Dill -- if you find dill seed sold.

For a while one of my favorite greens I was growing in my greenhouse for a few winters was a mystery mustard, somewhat like arugula in salad. I must have used some seeds in cooking or making pickle, and must have swept the cooking detritus into the mulch. I tried buying two likely mustard seeds I might have used, but they grew out different. Luckily of course these ones bolted and set seed.

Many of these, like coriander, dill, fennel, mustard, are eager to bolt and set seed, so you really only have to buy a seed packet the first time. If you keep just a few plants to set seed you'll get much much more than a measly packet's worth. And in my experience, homegrown seed is often much easier to germinate and grow than a commercial packet seed.

I have tried sprouting a lot of these, as well as radish seeds, and most of them worked and were good to eat. I learned not to mix different seeds together when sprouting, though, because they may take much longer or shorter.

Simon Torsten wrote:In Asian Grocers/International Markets, and in the Mexican Aisle of most North American Grocery stores now.....

For a couple bucks you can buy seeds sols as SPICE and get many more seeds than you can at the local nurdery or hardware store as seed packets.

So I tried it.

Mustard
Coriander(cilantro)
Sweet basil

I'm in zone 6B and the yellow mustard isn't probably the same species as the mustard greens I from California I buy in bundles as produce as groceries.

The leaves are smaller but it grows okay here and the "eat" just like the big ones.

Cilantro is hard to grow here because the weather tends to go from too colod to too hot all of a sudden in mid spring, but I got a decent crop last year.

The Sweet basil sold in Asian Gricers as a spice is used in a fruit drink(based on the packaging) and it's not the same as italian sweet basil.

It's sweeter, more like Holy Basil(Tulsi) smaller leaves.

But here's what makes it fun:

I'm lazy.

I don't like planting little seeds 1/8" deep, or 1/4" deep.

What i do instead is weed my Hugelhulture berms in the late fall, and bang the roots our of big weeds that come up with dirt.

That makes lots of loose soill.

So I just toss these Cheap seeds out like grass seed, let the rain bury them.

Why pay $1.99 for 150 seeds when you can get 10,000 seeds for he same price?




Crap I posted this in the wrong subforum, how do I fix that?

I don’t know if your post is in the wrong sub forum or not, Thank you for posting here.

This fall, I’ll make sure to remember to add some spice seeds, esp cilantro, along with my usual fava bean covercrop to my hugelkultur bed. I never seem to plant enough cilantro.

I harvested loads from my neighbor’s yard this year. They planted cilantro from seeds from the grocery store all along the backyard perimeter. I’d love to see a hugel full of cilantro next winter.

And you know, I think I’m going to try to grow cilantro indoors today. I have a clear container that was sold with strawberries in it (my mom’s, not mine. I buy from the local farm stand).

Thank you all for this forum.

Logan Byrd wrote:I just picked up some seeds to try! I've had good luck with the bagged beans/peas/lentils (although not the split peas!) and this will be the first time I try planting a "spice".

Worst case, I can reuse the glass containers!

I’ve wondered about sprouting lentils. I will give that a try.

I tried spice shop Fenugreek because I rarely see it sold for seed. It sprouted fine, but it seems to be a bird/slug favorite because they almost all disappear before reaching 4"+. It's leaves are an ingredient in vindaloo, among my favorite dishes, but I had to go without. I hope the birds' curry was good.

This has inspired me! We have a 40 lb bag of black oil sunflower seed that we are not going to feed to the birds (we noticed some of our cardinals have a disease, so we want them to disperse for a while.)
I have a big swath of land cleared by the power line company. I'm going to broadcast these seeds and grow a ton of sunflowers for very low cost.