That is neat. I planted them too for the same reason, but I haven't even looked for seeds. Never thought to.

Which kind of fennel do you have? Florence fennel, which is used for the bulb? If so, I have a recipe for that. Or, if you have regular green or bronze fennel, are you looking for culinary uses for those 2?

I grow regular fennel, bronze fennel and Florence fennel, and they all reseed freely and pop up everywhere the following spring. This year, some plants sprouted in late summer, grew and are in bloom now, so I got two rounds of them in one year. Sometimes the autumn sprouts freeze before they can grow much, but this isn't one of those years.

I mostly grow them for the butterflies.

Somewhere I got it in my head that you shouldn't grow dill and fennel near each other? Do they cross? Is fennel parthenocarpic? Is the fennel bulb licorice tasting? I don't have much luck with dill, I wonder if I would kill fennel. Other than Italian sausage, I have never cooked with it, but the bronze fennel looks so pretty. It seems my chickens don't like black swallowtail cats, I need someplace to relocate them because DH freaks if they eat his parsley.

They don't cross, being related at the family level only, so not related closely enough to cross with one another. I have dill and fennel pop up randomly all over the garden, and I leave them wherever they appear as much as I can because the butterflies love them and need them. I have heard that fennel is allelopathic, but as grown randomly all over my garden, it doesn't seem to have a negative effect on anything, so I have reached the point of wondering if the allelopathy of fennel is just an oft-repeated old wive's tale. Dill and fennel grow side-by-side and intermixed on the northern and eastern edges of our garden and, while they may be competing for space both below ground and above ground, neither seems to win the war, so they are forced to peacefully co-exist side by side, beautify the world and feed the caterpillars. The florence fennel does bulb and does have an anise-type flavor, and even an anise-like scent. The Tiger Swallowtail cats love all the fennels and dills I grow, and they are the primary reason I grow them. They've achieved springtime weed status in my garden, popping up all over the place and often in places where I don't want them. I just leave as many of them as I can, and remove the rest.

This year a Florence fennel plant slugged it out for space with a pineapple sage plant. The 2nd-year fennel plant did its best to shade out the pineapple sage, so early in the season (before the plant went to seed) it seemed like the fennel was winning. Later in the season, after the fennel finally went to seed (which took it forever and forever), the pineapple sage rejoiced and spread out more and took over the space formerly occupied by the fennel. The pineapple sage still is in bloom along with the autumn sage and salvia farinacea. The only fennel plant in bloom now is a volunteer plant that popped up some distance away in a watermelon bed in late summer.

Amy, The swallowtail cats in our garden normally eat fennel and dill before they eat the parsley, but occasionally it is exactly the opposite, so I don't know how protective the dill and fennel would be of the parsley. I just grow enough parsley that there's plenty for the cats and for us, in case we get a bunch of cats that only want to eat parsley. With those swallowtail cats, I never really know what to expect as they seem a bit unpredictable.

The swallowtail choice this year was parsnips, but they don't seem to have done much damage. There is root parsley growing in that bed but mostly they were on the parsnips. An article I read today said the seeds of both dill and fennel would taste strange if grown near each other. I thought that had to be wrong even if they did cross...shouldn't affect the current season seeds. The more I read on line, the more I realize some people just regurgitate something else they've read and there's no way to know if the source is reliable. This article was a source I usually believe!

I couldn't keep pineapple sage alive this year. I love the flowers.

Amy, I have reached that conclusion about a lot of things we see repeated ad nauseum online....that stuff gets repeated over and over as gospel without people having first-hand knowledge that supports it. All I can say is that my fennel seeds taste like fennel and my dill seeds taste like dill and neither has an off taste even when grown side by side.

I can keep pineapple sage alive for three seasons of the year pretty reliably. Now, whether it survives the winter can be iffy and largely depends on how cold we get (usually we get too cold for it). I did have one survive in the ground last winter, but then, that was the winter without winter weather. It is the one still in bloom now. Another one in a different raised bed did not survive last winter and it was in better-draining soil, so I got the exact opposite of what I expected. Gardening can be full of surprises that way. I'm contemplating maybe digging up this pineapple sage, potting it up and moving it to the greenhouse before we freeze. We're supposed to be in the very upper 70s from midweek thru late in the coming week, so I haven't moved anything to the greenhouse yet. We currently are expected to dip into the 30s on Friday night/Saturday morning, so I might move everything to the greenhouse Friday afternoon. Or, I might just throw row covers over the tender plants in pots and let them ride out that cold night right where they are right now. If we are having only the one cold night and then more warmer weather behind it, it probably is too early to move plants indoors. I wouldn't want them to roast in the hot, sunny greenhouse if we stay abnormally warm during the daylight hours for a while longer yet. I'll wait and see what the 7-day forecast looks like around Thursday before I decide what to do.

shp123, If you want the bulbs, be sure to get seeds or starts of Florence fennel. It is the one that bulbs. If you have voles or other ground-dwelling beasts that like to eat the fennel, you might want to put it in containers. I can grow Florence fennel in the ground in our front garden which is highly-amended clay that formerly was very dense, compacted red clay. Out in the back garden, where there is mostly a very sandy-silty loam, the voles devour the Florence fennel bulbs, so I do not/can not grow it there. Or, I can grow it there for a while, but inevitably the voles find it and eat it.

Dawn

One year I put a clay pot over lemon verbena and added leaves and it came back. I need to remember to do that with my pineapple sage, but then I would have to cut it back so it would fit under a pot. I have had to do that with rosemary too.

I like your idea Dawn on digging it up. I just put a pot of sweetgrass in my house, and if it doesn't make it, I will have to find a place to plant it, just that it spreads too much, and I don't know where to put it.

Jessaka, I've done things like that too, sometimes using clay pots and sometimes using bushel baskets, but the weather is so highly variable from year to year that I find it hard to trust that what worked in one year will work in another year because, you know, one winter it will be wet, cold and snowy and another will be hot and dry and I don't always remember what kind of year we had when I overwintered something.

Sweetgrass would be good to hide something like a gas meter or an ugly fence, perhaps? Or, you could harvest it and weave baskets from it and have yourself an entirely new career. Things that spread that fast can be scary as they can get out of control so easily.

I had mint get very out of control growing on one edge of the garden and in the yard. I thought maybe I'd never get rid of it and would have to dig it up constantly for years and years to keep it from taking over the garden. Ha! Along came the incredible drought and heat of 2011 and the mint didn't stand a chance after I stopped watering. Not one bit of that mint came back in 2012. Now, I play it safe and only grow mint in containers. Lesson learned.

Dawn

I have a huge pot of mint. Will it be safe outdoors or do I need to put it in the barn?

Dawn and iuvncannin, I had three pots of mint that were giving up on me, so I planted them in a shady spot where I don't care if they take over or not.

I got the sweet grass to make braids with. I spent 8 dollars on one I have and thought I could just plant the stuff. we do have a large field that probably could handle it. maybe I will plant the grass in the field and mark where I put it.

Kim, I think it should be fine. Are you zone 6? As long as you have normal winter conditions it ought to do okay in a pot. Just remember that plants grown in above-ground containers are considered to be growing one zone colder than their actual zone due to the loss of insulation normally provided by the soil to plants growing in the ground. Since containers generally are above ground and more exposed to cold air, you lose a zone. One way around that is to sink the containers into the ground for the winter for extra insulation.

The bigger threat in our climate is that the shock of being 70 degrees one day and 20 or 10 or 5 degrees a night or two later can be hard on the plants. All plants tolerate cold weather better if they've gradually cooled down over the autumn and developed more tolerance of the cold over time. It is exactly the opposite of the way we harden off transplants to warmer conditions. There's really no way to expose your container-grown mints to colder temperatures in autumn until those temperatures actually arrive, so just be aware that sudden cold might hurt them but gradually increasing coolness won't.

It is really hard to kill mint. All that's ever killed it here is the absolute worst and most prolonged drought weather without irrigation. Flooding hasn't gotten it. Cold temperatures haven't either.

This week at our house will be a perfect example of how prolonged warm weather weather has not prepared plants here for the coldness. We haven't had any frost or freezing temperatures at all this fall, and really haven't even made it into the low 40s very often, so a lot of plants still are flowering and putting out new foliage, including peppers, tomatoes, southern peas. winter squash and watermelons (silly watermelons). We'll be near 80 degrees by midweek, and then falling into the 30s on Friday and Saturday night. Since the plants are used to warmth and haven't become conditioned to cold, I expect those cold nights will not be kind to my plants. As wonderful as an abnormally warm autumn can be, there comes a point when the plants pay the price....and for my garden, I think the time to pay the piper is likely to be Sat nite/Sun morning.

Dawn

I think i will bury that pot in mulch in side a black tub. I have some wood chips and i can surround it I am trying to get ready for Friday night. I got 29 sweets dug only 10 to 20 more. Plus 60 plus producing tomato plants