two harvests, in a way

As summer ends, the time for fall harvests quickly approaches. I wouldn't say that I have "crops" to harvest, as my garden isn't large enough to qualify for that. I do have plants that are producing though, like it or not. I'll take a look at two today -- think of it as fall garden preseason.

The first is a plant that I never want to produce anything but blooms: the Buddleia or "butterfly bushes".

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In a perfect year I will remove every bloom as soon as it fades:

This year though because of the summer's heat I've been lax. Okay, lazy. I haven't removed the spent flowers, and the plant was able to do this:

Produce bazillions of seed pods.

As this small example shows, there are lots of these to remove. Hundreds I'd say. If I don't remove them I'll have even more Buddleia volunteers next year -- I've already let three large plants grow from seed, and I find the little seedlings all over the garden. I really don't need more of this plant, no matter how wonderful their flowers smell and how many butterflies they attract.

Buddleia seed is the first "harvest", and it's bountiful -- unfortunately.


Next up is potatoes! This is the first year I've ever grown potatoes, and I grew them in large containers on my driveway.

It's probably too early to harvest, but the plants are starting to decline and I was eager to see what's been going on. This one plant produced some tubers near the surface (I can't eat those, as they're poisonous to some extent after being exposed to light and greening up):

It must be doing good things underground, right?

So I chose the smallest of my spud containers and dumped the soil out:

Hmmm. Not exactly overflowing with potatoes, is it? Still a dig around in there revealed a few small tubers:

Okay, nothing to get very excited about. It was the smallest container, and harvest was a bit early. The others will surely have produced better when I dig them up in a few weeks, right?

Still, it's my first potato harvest ever, so notable and exciting for that reason alone.

If only the potato plants could have been talking to the butterfly bushes...

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