Herbs and Seeds

This was what I pulled off the herbs in our garden before the first frost.  There wasn't a ton, but I did get enough to be useful.  The basil leaves were pulled off the stems, chopped and mixed with oil and divided into snack size baggies, then stored in the freezer. I kept the stems but divided them into bundles to use as aromatics in soups, sauces and stews.  I chopped and divided the sage and did the same thing, as I also did with the rosemary.  The oregano was dried in the oven and crumbled for immediate use.  I'm storing it in a container with a paper towel to help keep it dry.  It's much better than the stuff from the super market!

This is one harvest of marigold seeds. I've done three or four but now that we've had our first snow, I'm done for the season.  When I was processing this batch, there was a guy at the house doing an installation and he made a joke about it being weed.  I gave him a small bag -- he was still interested once I told him what this stuff was.

It's amazing that anyone buys marigolds more than once.  You can harvest more seeds than you'll ever use from just one plant.  This stash is from a bunch of plants we had this year which were planted from seeds culled the year before.  The flowers were cream color rather than the bright gold most people plant.  TBG hates that color but likes the cream variety.  I  love them because they are so easy to grow and critters won't dig them up -- a real problem for us.

I have been known to buy the gold variety in the middle of the season when another plant/flower has been ravaged -- they are cheap and fit the bill when I don't have time to start from seed. 

The best thing about this is that I have grown hundreds of plants from the original batch I got years ago.  While I don't do much of the actual yard work, the marigolds and herbs are my domain.  One of the most important things is to save what I can in the fall before the snow ruins it all.  It's a bit time consuming, but it's worth it!