Handmade gift idea: Pretty Seed Packets from your Garden

Seed packets I made for my friend's birthday recently

If you garden, and you have gardening friends, you probably trade seeds from time to time. Wait, you don’t? You really should try it. I’m not just talking about leftover seeds from packets you bought, but also seeds you gathered from your own garden.

I’m only just getting into seed gathering and seed saving. I haven’t yet braved a big seed swap event like the Washington Gardener Seed Exchange, but I have started sharing seeds with my friends. In fact, seeds from your very own garden can make a pretty awesome present. My friends Jon and Hannah recently moved to a house with a great big sunny back yard, and have grand plans for gardening. So when Hannah asked for gardening supplies for her birthday, I knew exactly what I wanted to give her.

She’s really into rainbows, so I actually already had some pretty rainbow scrapbooking paper purchased for her. When I bought it I didn’t know how I’d use it, just that I wanted to make something for her birthday.

Rainbow!

I had five kinds of seeds I wanted to share with her. All were easy to grow and I know they grow well in our area. This was important since she’s a relative beginner in terms of gardening. I always have tons of dill seed every year, plus I gathered marigold, basil, oregano, and echinacea seeds. These have all reseeded before so I know they'll grow true from seed. (Not all plants you may buy will.) 

I turned to a few of my favorite regional gardening books to research planting information. For each kind of seed I wanted to explain how and when to plant, what to expect in terms of size and spacing, and also benefits I know of from my experience. For example, letting basil go to flower attracts tons of butterflies and bees, as do the purple flowers of oregano. Dill of course feeds Black Swallowtail caterpillars, so I wanted to suggest she plant extra to share with the caterpillars.

This Black Swallowtail caterpillar is eating carrot greens, which are related to dill.

Originally I’d hoped to hand-write all the planting notes, but I had too much information for each seed. I typed them up instead, leaving plenty of room for hand-drawn illustrations. I experimented with different label sizes until deciding that about 4x4” was right.

Once I knew how big my labels would be I could make the packets. I wanted some of the paper to show around the label so I created a template for 5x5” packets. In order to make a tidy seal I also allowed for ¼” extra on either side of the first 5”, plus a ½” flap on top. So this meant I cut out rectangles that were 5½” x 10½”, then trimmed off some of the side, like this:

I folded and glued the packets shut, leaving open the top flap. While those dried I drew illustrations of each plant on the respective labels. I’m not a terribly good artist but that wasn’t the point, I just wanted to get something close enough to be recognizable and also colorful. Seed catalogs with pretty pictures are always more fun and inspiring to read, so I wanted to make sure my seed packets would convey the same sense of “Ooh, I want to plant that!” I made sure to illustrate a Black Swallowtail caterpillar on the dill packet too, so she knows what to look for.

Not the best drawing of a BST caterpillar, but probably recognizable!

Next I put generous amounts of seed in each packet and glued the labels on. I added little dessicant packets when I remembered to do so; again this wasn’t crucial since I expect the seed will be planted very soon.

I glued the top flaps shut and let them air dry. When we were ready to go I decorated the bundle with some gold starry tinsel and tucked it into a gift bag with a pair of colorful gardening gloves.

Hannah was very happy to receive the seeds. Jon is also excited to use the herbs in his cooking. I hope they grow well for her! I’ve offered to help break ground for the new bed or give other advice this summer. Since I work in the horticultural resource library at Brookside Gardens, if she has any questions I can’t answer from experience, I can certainly find plenty of answers at work!

I love to spread garden inspiration to my friends and neighbors. I especially have fond memories of helping my parents garden when I was small, so I hope my friends’ children enjoy helping in the garden too. I look forward to spending time in the gardens this summer on my own as well as with my friends.

Don't toss those apple scraps-- make easy apple peel jelly!

 

Save the scraps and peels from making an apple pie, and turn them into a beautiful (and delicious) jelly

We always make apple pie at Thanksgiving. Usually my mom and I make a couple others as well: cherry, plus blueberry or peach. Apple is a given though, and for the past few years it's been my responsibility to peel and slice the apples. Seven or eight medium size apples go into the pie, and no matter how careful I am peeling and coring them, there's inevitably quite a bit of flesh that gets removed. 

I felt so guilty about discarding all this edible fruit.  I was sure there must be a way to make something out of the peels and cores, but had a hard time finding any suggestions. This year, though, I finally found a way to pull as much usefulness out of the peels as I could, courtesy of A Year Without Groceries: I made apple peel jelly!

I am amazed how simple the process was. You don't need to add any extra pectin, since there is so much pectin in the apples themselves. I have never made jelly or jam before, so was a little nervous about the process (especially with my family members all waiting to sample the results). It came out so well, though, I am considering making a big batch of apple butter or another pie when I get home, just to have peels to make more jelly!

Ingredients:

Apple peels and cores

Water

Lemon juice

Sugar

Cinnamon (optional)

Instructions:  

1. Put the apple peels and cores into a large pot, and fill with enough water to just see the water below the top peels.

I used a mix of apples in the pie and therefore in the jelly: Jonathan and Granny Smith. This jelly is very sweet so you probably want to include at least some tart apples.

 

2. Bring the water to boil and cook, uncovered, until the peels are quite soft. The water will turn a lovely shade of pink. 

We tossed the cooked peels outside for the birds and squirrels after straining the liquid. At home I would have added them to my compost pile.

 3. Now strain the liquid into another pot.  You want to use a fine-mesh strainer (not a colander) to make sure things like seeds don't end up in your jelly. Press the solids against the strainer to make sure all the juice is squeezed out. I'm pretty sure a bit of pulp made it through my strainer, but the jelly still turned out nice and clear.

You'll want a smaller pot for boiling down the liquid. It starts out looking fairly cloudy.

4. Measure how much liquid you have at this point. (I had 3 1/2 cups.) Add 1 TB lemon juice for every 2 cups liquid, and 3/4 C sugar for every cup of liquid.  I also added about 1/2 tsp cinnamon.

 Bring the liquid back to a boil. Watch closely; when it gets close to being done it starts to foam up. You don't want it to boil over!

As the liquid merrily boils away, you can see it starting to clarify already.

You have to boil the liquid for quite a while to reduce and concentrate it. I think my batch took about 40 minutes, but I forgot to check the time when I started, so I'm not sure exactly.  The temperature of the liquid has to get up to 220F and stay there for a while before it will jell. 

5. While the liquid is boiling, put some ice in a small bowl nearby and get a small spoon ready. Periodically scoop a small amount of the liquid with your spoon, then place the spoon on the ice to cool it rapidly. Once cool, tilt the spoon over the pot to see how runny it is. When you first start, it will be very runny. A little later it will start to get thick and syrupy but still pour off the spoon in an even stream. When the jelly is almost done it will be even thicker but still drip off the spoon. It's done when the chilled spoonful has solidified and doesn't form drips. 

You can see the level had reduced quite a bit by the time the liquid was ready to jell, and the color darkened and clarified.

 6. Now ladle the jelly into clean, sterilized jars. According to the original directions, you should put on sterilized lids and process in a water bath canner for ten minutes. I haven't yet overcome my anxiety about this step of canning, though, so I skipped it and am storing the jelly in the fridge.

I ended up with two small jars of jelly, plus a bit extra. Such a gorgeous color!

We tested the jelly by slathering it onto little baked scraps of leftover pie crust dough. Yum! The next morning we also had the apple peel jelly on toast and English muffins. 

Like I said, this was super easy to do. You get beautiful, delicious jelly from scraps that would otherwise be discarded. I hope you'll give it a try this winter, whether for your own household or as gifts for friends and family. Enjoy!