My idea for this winter is indoor basil. One basil plant gone to seed in the summer produces a LOT of seed. No need to conserve, harvest as much as you can. Planted indoors, even in relatively poor light, but good light would be best, I'm predicting basil will germinate and grow some. I figure some is good enough. Basil is basil flavored and smells like basil from the cotyledon on. Hmmm google these words: micro green basil. I think I'm behind the times, this has already been invented. Oh well, I'm doing it anyway. Plant seeds close and harvest plants young for winter. Yum.
This picture shows some micro parsley. There is a story too. I had a lot of parsley seeds and I planted them too closely. They got all tangled up and I got demoralized about ever getting them into the ground. Then a swallowtail butterfly found them and she knew they were yum. When I saw the little (still black) caterpillars I brought them indoors on their micro parsley pots to sit safely in my garden window and grow away from parasitic wasps. It was such good luck, my parsley now had a purpose beyond making me feel guilty for not planting it. Not only did it raise 3 lovely fat cats, it provided fras for my orchid (the little pile on the plate). I've returned 2 of the 3 cats to the outdoors, 1 wondered off to pupate somewhere in the house. Before they finished growing they were polishing off a micro parsley pot over night (see the pot with the stalks but no leaves in the background) and another for the day. I only had a small amount left so in the picture I'm trying to persaude them to try some fennel. No luck, cats started on parsley reject fennel. Other cats of the same type love fennel, I had 6 or 7 of them in the yard last week on a single small fennel. I had to move them to a larger fennel patch, they liked the original plant nearly down to a bare stump. I think they have pupated now as well.
I may try micro dill, micro fennel, micro oregano...whatever I have enough spare seeds for.
