September 9th, 2024

Over the summer Outdoor Education Department staff visited almost all 84 of the WRDSB Monarch Waystations.  While some are still dominated by tall grass, most have a mix of local and introduced wildflower species that significantly boosted schoolyard biodiversity and added a splash of colour to the site!

All of these wildflowers have been grown from seed, either in the soil at your school or by Green Industries Students at one of our Greenhouses.  Some of this seed was bought but a lot of it has been harvested from gardens by WRDSB students and staff over the last three years.

Now that most of the Waystations have enough plants to harvest from we are encouraging staff and students to collect a few seeds for redistribution.  If you send us your seeds we will find a school that could use them.

In these first few weeks of September  the Milkweed isn’t yet ready for harvest.  Instead, look for the following…

These are the dried seed heads of Black-eyed Susans (rudbeckia hirta).  These are ready for harvest.  When the seed head is crushed the tiny seeds fall out.  They look like this:

Coreopsis (coreopsis lanceolata) will also be mostly ready (though some plants will still have blooms on them).  The dried, brown, seed heads should look like this:

The seeds can be gently shaken out of the heads and should look something like this:

Several schools will also have Blanket Flower (gaillardia aristata) finishing its bloom about now. 

When Blanket flower seed heads start to look all frosted and dried out they are ready to harvest.  Leave the yellow seed heads another week or two.  The seeds should crumble out into your hand when you rub the seed head.

If you decide to harvest some seeds from your Monarch Waystation please remember to leave most (90% or more) for the garden and wildlife. Harvested seeds can be put in a paper envelope and sent to one of the WRDSB nature centers for redistribution.

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Categories: Field Note