Harvest Time

While many of my blogging friends north have already put their garden beds to sleep for the summer, I'm just now cleaning mine up. I was still getting some tomatoes, but the plants themselves were very overgrown. The resulting tomatoes were on the small side, and by the time I remembered to get out there, they were usually on the ground, where the insects had made short work of them. Ugh, gross.So I just pulled those suckers out of the ground and threw them in the woods.

I started saving seeds last year, and I had an overwhelming crop of marigolds and basil from the previous years seeds. The marigold blooms I saved and froze for fiber dyeing, but I had way too much basil, and I still do! I've been saving the marigold seeds all summer long for next year, and although I have harvested some basil seeds, I'll probably just wait 'til they freeze, then harvest them. Marigold seeds and the last of my marigolds. Sorry for the sucky pictures - they pretty much all turned out like this!

My Thai basil (Queen of Siam) and the seeds look like. The Thai basil is really different from regular basil, but I do grow both.

The above interesting plant was sent to me in the form of seeds as a bonus when I ordered some nicotiana seeds (which I've NEVER been able to grow!) The seller labeled them as Datura Inoxia, Money Plant. What I remember as a Money Plant from growing up had seeds that looked like this, which we used as coins. You know, make believe coins. I'm not cultivating funny money or anything!

Turns out what I was growing was indeed Datura Innoxia, or Datura Inoxia, also know as Jimson weed. But definitely not Lunari annua, or money plant, seeds pictured above. Well, damn!

My parsley is making a comeback from the hungry little caterpillars and the hot weather, but so far the cilantro hasn't shown up again.

This is the one four o'clock plant I have. My sister started it for me, and it finally decided to grow. I think it was afraid, because when I was little I used to pick the seeds and pretend they were pepper. I never ate them, just used them when we played house outside. You know, a delectable stew of leaves, acorns and 4 o'clock seeds!

They kinda look like little hand grenades. What a great accessory for GI Joe dolls. Excuse me, GI Joe action figures.
Last, but not least, are my moonflowers. These are the seed pods, which aren't dried out yet. The flowers look like this:

If you go to this link, you'll see how one woman (I assume it's a woman!) grew her moonflowers from seed.

For those of you who aren't asleep yet, thanks for stopping by to spend some time in my autumn garden. With any luck I'll soon be able to show you the Swiss Chard, lettuce, mesclun and squash I planted!