On Wednesday, I had a leisurely start to the day, so leisurely I forgot to go do chores until 9:30. My general helper would be here at 10, so I finally started zipping around getting ready.
When she arrived we went out and dug the ashwagandha. It had started to make fruit but it had not ripened. But it’s been cold at night and I’ll be gone until Monday and not able to do anything if there’s a frost. So it was now or never. Wednesday was a beautiful autumn day again.
The roots were much smaller than they had been on the very first one I grew in 2020, above. That one had been planted in a timely manner and had fully matured. This year, due to the huge amount of cleaning out we had to do, it was planted much later. The drought didn’t help any either.
This is my largest bowl, 24” across and these are the roots from the 2 plants I grew. I washed them carefully, trying to get out all the dirt. Then my helper cut them into 1” pieces.
Then we loaded them onto trays and got 5 trays full and got them started drying.
We went out to do errands and shopping and when we got back, we harvested a big bowlful of Tulsi basil. The good thing about Tulsi is you use the leaves and flowers for tea.
Many of the flowers were gone by, so we just concentrated on the leaves. The drought had weakened the plants and there were an awful lot of buggy leaves.
I only got 1¼ trays of good leaves for tea and about a whole dehydrator (9 trays) of buggy stuff I will save for the chickens. All but 2 trays were filled in the 2 dehydrators.
There’s a lot more out there and if we don’t get a frost by next week, I will harvest more of it.
On Thursday she comes back for 8AM and we are going to empty lots of the bags we brought down from the attic. I don’t know if we can get through all of them. If not they will be put in the office, as I need to clean up the dining room for the lunch for my mom and brother on Friday. Thursday is to be cold outside though sunny so working inside is ok.
I’m supposed to go to lunch with my husband’s cousins and aunt and uncle at noon on Thursday. I’d hoped the weather would be nice so we could sit outside, but it’s iffy now.