Going to Seed

Now that summer is hitting it's stride I am keeping a close eye on what is happening in the garden.  The lettuce has long since bolted since temperatures have been in the 90s.  I will let them reseed themselves again since it worked out so well for me this year.  I was eating fresh salad daily for months before they were done.

The volunteer radishes have passed their prime and are going to seed too.  They make beautiful little pink flowers and the seed pods are tasty when they are still green.  I will let the radish reseed itself throughout my garden because they don't take up much space and they grow really fast - faster than I can eat them.

The peas had been putting out a decent amount of pods for the past couple of weeks, but now they are struggling with the high temps too.  I am allowing what is left on the vines to mature and dry out so I have some peas to plant next year.  I haven't saved many varieties of seeds, but peas are easy enough and I like the short, fast growing variety that I have.  I think plants adapt to their environment over time, so by saving seed grown in my garden I hope to have more vigorous varieties as the years go by.

I have dill and cilantro in abundance in my garden beds so I have decided that I would give some away to co workers so that it wouldn't go to waste.  I could literally cut bags and bags of the stuff and never be able to use it all.  I am just happy that there are more people that want what I can grow so it has somewhere to go if I can't use all of it.  One of the onion beds has been taken over by dill that is flowering like there is no tomorrow.  I think next year I will do a better job thinning the dill volunteers as these may have gotten a little out of hand.