Gone to Seed

With fruits, including tomatoes and gourds, you want the plant to bloom.  With vegetables and herbs, however, flowers generally mean you might as well pull the plant.  It will no longer produce tasty leaves.

In the current nose-to-tail mentality of restaurants and home gardening, I intentionally let one of my fennel and all of the cilantro bolt.  I was very happy with my pot of cilantro, something I don't say every year, but the season is short in zone 11a.  As soon as the temperature hit 75º, away they went.

It takes a lot of patience to grow your own seeds.  First, you were growing the plant for a couple of months for its intended purpose.  Then you have to wait a month or two for the flowering part.  Finally, you have to keep the plant alive until the seeds form and dry in the summer sun.  Then you pick them, but they still have to stay in a paper bag for several weeks to finish drying before you can store them for the winter.

When all this is done, though, I'll have at least a year's worth of fennel and coriander seeds.  They'll end up in soups, stews, pickles, and breads.  Some of what's left in January will be planted.  I haven't really saved any money, and I'm not a fanatic about being organic.  For me, it's about appreciating where your food comes from.  It's the "I made that" factor.