The Push to Procreate

During this late summer, transitioning into early autumn period, Friday was in the 80s with a touch of humidity - tomato weather...

Green tomatoes on one of the five stray plants in the blueberry planter - buffeted by the winds, competing for light and space and nutrients. Initially it seemed that there would be only one little fertilized blossom, but looks like there is a little green cluster; they WANT to bear fruit and set seed, despite the odds.

... and then overnight it rained (hooray! Celebration for any little drops we can get!), and a cold front set in, and this morning it felt positively like Fall.  It was still cloudy, a bit damp, hard to get out of bed weather.  The type of weather that, even after one rolls out of bed and manages to get to the sofa, one feels the need to draw up the throw and take naps while watching television.  And I gave in and did just that.

But after catching up and trying to make up for the sleep deficit, the sun had come out, and a survey of the garden showed the plants were hydrated - but so were the weeds, trying to survive and leave their mark.



Little Japanese maple, with four pretty established leaves now, surrounded by clown violets of varying shades.  But tucked in between them all are weeds, strong, overcoming one of the weaker clown violets.  The rain seems to have reinvigorated the weeds, or it's the cooler weather.  Couldn't let them get to another generation.

Is it noticeable?  The patchy, barer areas where the weeds got yanked?  They were pretty succulent and grassy, fresh-smelling.

Yanked and gathered into a container.  I cut them up...

... and then, in the method of mulching in place, sprinkled the cut weeds back into the planter where they had grown.  Hopefully, they were too mutilated to re-root with whatever roots might still have been intact.

And then there is the shiso - pervasive.  I am attempting to keep it in control for next Spring.  Actually, this year's crop was not so bad.  The shiso were relatively contained to their pots.  I think that was owing to the constant early harvests - weeding and eating while they were still young.  Nonetheless, I decided now that it is Fall, and they are in full flower for the Fall mass seed production, a little birth control might be in order.  So, the flowers of the curly purple shisos growing errantly in the pot with the straight shisos got snipped, and the reverse in the pot dominated by the curly shisos - the straight flowers got snipped.  We'll see whether there will be any success to that strategy....

Before - pot with predominantly straight-leaved shiso, full buds.

After - same pot, note missing flowers from the curly-leaved shiso.  Barely notice, you say?  Well, look closer - flowers are gone.

Snipped shiso buds gathered in plastic container.  The buds snipped went into the pot containing the matching predominant strain.  Hopefully they'll just compost in place.  No attempts at exotic flavored ice cream this year.  My shiso bud ice cream from a few years back wasn't half bad.  But I just can't be eating that much ice cream, and I don't really have the freezer space.  So composting in place is this year's strategy.

Close-up of the process of de-nuding the shisos of their flowers.

The buds of this bi-color shiso (green dominant leaf with purple underside) got to stay.  Marmy indicated she didn't have any come back, so it's probably a variety I'll want to re-seed.  It's currently growing in with the curlies, but I'll have to see if I can isolate the seeds and get them into a separate pot.  There are some empty pots available....

The little struggling hibiscus transplant continues to cling on.

The little bud is still green and alive.

I decided to experiment and prune down the portion that was clearly dead.  Maybe I should have pruned down to where the little green bud is.  But maybe this will still be enough to channel the energy to the little green bud.  We shall see.

And then there are the ripe little tomatoes - trying their darnedest to set seed.  The wind made me think better of leaving them out there on the vine.  When I eat them, I'll save the seeds.

Round ones at the top are the Patio Tomatoes.  The others are the sweet grape tomatoes grown from seed saved from last year.

The Fall means my eating season, what of it there was, is drawing to a close.  Not an epic eating season, but not too bad.