Everythings Going to Seed

In the San Francisco Bay Area we have a cool crop season, which is now coming to the end of its cycle. Always leave a few of your favorite plants in the ground to go to seed. Most likely they will become a weed, or you will at least have a large number of seeds to start again next year, not having to keep purchasing them.

Sometime you may even be surprised by a beautiful flower, like I was last year when I let this Curly Endive go to seed, and I was rewarded with the most amazing periwinkle blue flowers. This is only the first flower, but it must have produced thousands from just this one plant. I vowed to plant endive everywhere so I can let it go to seed, just to have the beautiful flowers in my garden.


This is the first year I grew stock, so I am surprised to see the long, slender seed head it produces. I like it. A nice little package to store its seeds in, similiar to California Poppies. And look at all those seed heads! This is just one plant here.

Parsley is also beautiful going to seed. Leave only one plant in the ground for many seeds.


I also have my favorite Cilantro, Lettuce, Arugula and Calendula to save for another season.






















Be sure your original plants/seeds were open-pollinated or heirloom varieties, so they come back true to form. If they were hybrids, they probably won't come back as the original.