Shaking down the plants

I haven't had much time for blogging lately.  Perhaps you noticed a lack of posts on Wed?  Whoops. 

But I have had enough time to shake my plants down for seeds.

Basil, apparently, stops being "sweet basil" after it blooms.  However, the leaves still taste good in a pasta sauce, and blooms lead to seeds.  I sent two friends away with basil seeds for their own garden.

Morning glory seed pods dry out, and it's easy to harvest the seeds for next year's use.  I've heard, however, that the flowers that bloom from a second-generation vine always come out white, and not the vibrant blue of my current vine.  We'll see.

Of course, the gerbera daisies keep popping up new blooms; big, bright yellow flowers that live for a few days and then die.  The middle of the flower becomes a dandelion-esque hank of seeds, which can be replanted.

The stock grows long seed pods that look sort of like beans.  They dry out, and if you pull them off and open them up, the small, flat disks inside are the seeds.  I've now got a pot full of stock seedlings, some of which I had to weed out and replant in order to make room for the rest.

http://diffflowers.blogspot.com/2010/04/beautiful-pictures-of-marigold-flowers.html
Not my picture.  Didn't think to get the camera during the seed heist.

The marigolds - after the flowers die, the petals turn brown.  They can then be pulled out from the husk to reveal the flat seeds, again rather reminiscent of dandelion fluff (except with less fluff and more dried-yellow-petal). 

Peeled a bulblet off my amaryllis, too.  Replanted it in its own pot - ironically, the new pot is larger than the old one, so the old amaryllis is still rootbound.  Whoops.

I really don't know what the lavender seeds will look like, but I've got a bunch of flowering lavender. 

Oh, and I got more flowerpots.  Hit the clearance aisle of Lowes.  Don't ask how much I spend - just know that it was much less than it ought to have been.

Have you ever grown a plant from a seed?  What's your most successful from-a-seed (or a bulb) adventure?