Mr. Green Jons

My crops planted for fall harvesting are coming along quite nicely, thank you.  Well, most of them are.  Some items like the rutabagas and the lettuce could do with a little more (as the brothers Nelson would say) “love and affection”.  It is apparently good weather for radishes of all types as my daikon and my mystery radishes are doing quite well. I call them my mystery radishes because the seeds were culled from my culinary cabinets.  I grow my own salad greens in a jar and radishes are a type of sprout you can eat.  I figured, if you can sprout it, you can get a whole radish off of it.  So, I put it in the ground.  We’ll see what I get, until then, it’s a mystery!

My rutabaga and lettuce aren’t faring very well.  Something keeps dining on the rutabagas and the lettuce was put in shortly before we had the terrible heat of a few weeks ago.  Lettuce hates heat, so two weeks over 90 degrees didn’t help it along much.  I think next year I will grow no spinach.  I just don’t have good luck with it.  In the fall, I’m going to have a list of “banned” items that I won’t grow in this garden again.  Spinach, at least this variety of spinach, will be on that list.

I am excited for my beets.  I have several planted and they look good.  If they keep growing the way they are, I will have delicious beets come fall!  This year I planted something called corn salad,or mache.  I’ve never tried to grow it before, nor have I ever eaten it.  It’s apparently popular in Europe and it’s a cold weather loving crop, so it will overwinter.  I’m excited to try something new.  Speaking of trying something new, I planted arugula.  I’ve never planted or eaten it before, but all my gardening friends say “You’ve got to try it, it’s peppery and delicious in a salad.”  I finally caved and got some seeds. It’s growing well, but the plants that I thinned tasted like eggs and bell peppers, so I am not sure I’m going to like it.  You can see in the picture that I’ve got one established row and one follow up planting.

I’ve got bok choi going and it’s doing well.  The ones pictured below were put in during the aforementioned heat, so many of them bolted (produced flowers for seeds) which meant that I had to replant.  When a plant bolts, it will grow vertically and not develop much girth.  Bok choi needs girth to be very useful, so this was not a welcome arrangement.  I’ve plucked the flowers off, but that will only serve as a stop gap.  The new plants will hopefully solve the problem and I’ll eat their thinner, taller brethren.

My marigolds have had their fun and their once-bright little tops are drying up to a pinkish brown.  The little dessicated heads carry a secret, though:  from them, new life will spring next year when I plant them in my garden.

About three years ago, I bought some pretty marigold plants in a six-pack container.  I don’t normally buy potted flowers because seed work really well for most flowers and the potted kind are usually marked up quite a bit.  I should back up one step and state that I always plant marigolds in my garden somewhere because they have properties that repulse some types of bugs.  You get to kill two birds with these stones:  they are pretty and they are natural pest-repellents!  I enjoy the smell of marigolds, too, so that’s an added bonus for me (although some might find their fragrance a bit astringent).  Anyway, I bought these lovely flowers and they grew very well and made some downright beautiful flowers for me.  When they died and dried up, I saved the seeds from the heads.  My mom taught me this trick long ago with our simple orange and orange/red marigolds that she used to plant in her garden.  Save the seeds in a cool dry place and you can plant them the following year.

So, as my marigolds are drying up, I am snatching the pods (dried flower heads) off of the tops and putting them in my seed storage jars.  I use a simple plastic jar system of about 18 plastic jars in a lockable case.  Below are some helpful hints for making the most of marigold seed pods.  Incidentally, after I tear the little suckers off the plants, they should produce new heads.  This is called dead-heading.

• Carefully remove the pods from the plant by using both hands.  One hand should pinch at the narrowest point of the flower’s neck and the other hand should hold the living plant in the ground as you pull.  Do this wrong, and you’ll have no plant left in the ground.
• Dead heads are identified by their color and texture.  They should appear brown and shriveled from the top of the pod to the narrow neck.  They might maintain a bit of color from when they were alive, so there may be some pink and orange on the pod, even though the pod is now dried.
• If you want the same flowers as you had the year before, think again.  Those pesky genes are amazing things.  The flowers you bought in the plastic pack were hybrids and when you save the seeds of a hybrid, you invariably end up with a new plant the following year.  My original flowers had larger petals and were lighter in overall color.  My flowers from the seeds I’ve collected are more diminutive and have a richer color palette.  This hybridization/dehybridization thing should stabilize after the first replanting.
• If the seeds aren’t quite dry, set them on a paper towel in a cool dry room of the house and leave them alone for a week.  You want them to dry on the vine as much as possible to allow for the completion of the plant’s innate genetic cycle.  Take a flower off too soon and you might end up with sterile seeds.  Then you will have no flowers the following year.
• The following summer, you can enjoy the fact that you grew something of your own and saved money by not buying new plants and the carbon on shipping those plants from nursery to store.