‘Dig’ The Earth

Eating fresh herbs from your garden is wonderful when they are in season. The bounty can be almost too much for a single family to eat at any one time. It is such a shame to see the plant with all it’s goodness wilt and die back in the fall with loads of wonderful leaves or flowers which could have been eaten. What can you do to prevent this tragedy?

Dry them! If you cut back your plant several times through the growing season it helps to keep the plant tidy and gives you herbs to dry for later use. Mint, thyme, oregano, sage, basil, rosemary and any other herb you’ve found in the spice rack at the grocery store can be processed this way. First of all cut the plant back so that there are still a few inches of stem and leaves above the ground so it’ll continue to grow. Take the stems you’ve harvested and wash them very well in cool water taking care to not remove too many leaves, but get rid of the bugs, worms, dirt and cobwebs that have gathered between the branches. Shake off as much moisture as you can and then spread the stems in a singe layer on a towel. Allow them to dry for a few hours turning every so often so that they dry evenly. Once most of the water has dried off tie the stems together is small bunches and hang them upside down inside a paper bag or pillow case in a dark corner or at least out of direct sunlight. I hung mine on my north facing back porch on a clothes line that was strung there before we even moved in and never took down. The paper bag or pillow case is intended to keep dust and bugs out but still allow some fresh air in that will help dry and not rot the leaves. After a few weeks or even sooner depending on the humidity you’ll have dried herbs in your bag.

Remove the dried stems from your bag and carefully remove the leaves by running your thumb and forefinger or your closed hand against the direction of the growth down the stem. The resulting mass of dried leaves can be stored as is or crushed and put in an airtight container. This will give you wonderful flavors of your summer herb garden well into the winter and following spring before your plants, if perennial, come for another season of growth.

It is so gratifying to be able to make meals with vegetables and herbs harvested from your own garden. Yesterday I made a mushroom soup that called for a mixture of herbs like sage, thyme, marjoram and rosemary. I had all but the marjoram – which I substituted with oregano – right in my garden. It felt really good to do that. I have a huge load of tomatoes that I need to process – chop and freeze or allow to ripen.

I did get one small watermelon from my garden this year. There were about a dozen sweet dumpling squash I was able to harvest. I might make some soup or pies out of them. Next year my plan is to make the garden even bigger so we can have more of a variety.

It’s Saturday morning and though I got a late start on seeding my flats this year I am pretty happy with my progress.  I have one mini greenhouse, one milk jug and 2 of the 10″ x 20″ black plastic flats with clear plastic domed covers planted.  After just 4 days I even have some sprouts from one of the flats.

Green Mini Greenhouse: The Basil Flat

I had forgotten how many varieties of basil I had until I went through my seeds the other day.  This will be my second attempt to get some decent plants out of these seeds.  Instead of using store bought peat pots or plastic trays in this mini greenhouse I used my hand rolled newspaper pots that I made a few years ago.  There was enough room for 11 rows of 7 little pots.  I labeled the lid with the seed name and L for left and R for right and the base with L and R so I could keep tabs on which row was which.  They were planted, watered and set in a south facing window with the cover on and vents closed on 4/14/09.

These are the seeds planted in the mini greenhouse from left to right:

• Cinnamon Basil
• Purple Basil
• Italian Sweet Basil
• Dwarf Bush Fineleaf Basil
• Spicy Globe Basil
• Greek Basil
• Fino Verde Basil
• Summerlong Basil
• Siam Queen Thai Basil
• Lime Basil
• Easter Egg Plant (no this isn’t basil, but I had an extra row )

Flat 1: Tomatoes and Peppers

I have a myriad of tomato and pepper seeds.  Since they have similar requirements for temperature and light I decided to plant them in one flat together.  The flat has 16 rows of 8 cells each.  The seeds were planted, watered and covered and placed over the top of my 30 gallon aquarium on 4/14/09.  The temperature above the aquarium and aquarium light is about 80 degrees providing a warm enough temperature to encourage germination.  After 3 days some of my tomatillo seeds (that are 6 years old) already started to sprout.  Yesterday morning, the 17th, I moved the flat to the south facing window.  This morning I noticed that one of Robbie’s Tomatoes had started to sprout.

These are the seeds in Flat 1 from left to right, and bottom to top (or front to back):

• King’s Choice Hybrid Tomatoes/Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Robbie’s Tomatoes/Spike’s Tomatoes (unsure of varieties, harvested from relatives gardens 2 years ago)
• Mom’s Tomatoes/Mystery Hot Pepper
• Olena Ukranian/Italian Market Wonder/Bonny Best/Golden Queen – only had a few seeds so I planted 2 of each
• Costoluto Genovese/Cosmonaut Volkov/Marglobe VF/TigerLike Tomatoes – 2 of each
• Assorted Tomatoes/Speckled Roman Heirloom
• Tomatillos
• Delicious Tomato/ Mystery Tomato
• Jelly Bean Hybrid (commercial ’07 pelleted)/commercial ’08 pelleted/harvested ’07 fermented
• Chile Arbol
• Chile Bola
• Chile Guajillo (4)/Cajun Tabasco (2)/Cuban Hot (2)
• Chile Ancho (aka Poblano)
• Green Bell Pepper/Red Bell Pepper
• Jalapeño Early Pepper/Serrano Pepper
• Marconi Red Pepper/Cayenne Pepper

Milk Jug Greenhouse 1: Mary Washington Asparagus

In this milk jug there are 19 hand rolled newspaper pots with Hoffman Seed Starter mix.  There are air holes cut in the top and sides and drain holes in the bottom.  The pots were seeded and watered and placed outside on 4/16/09.  The Mary Washington Asparagus seeds from 2004 season were put in warm water and allowed to soak for 10 days (hope it wasn’t too long; I kind of forgot about them ).

Flat 2: Herbs and Veggies

This 10×20 flat was filled with 8 9-cell trays.  Each tray holds one variety of seed.

These are the herbs and veggies planted in flat 2 listed as laid out in each tray (since I didn’t plant them in rows per se):

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Well then here is the start of my planting for the 2009 season. I truly hope I didn’t get started too late. I think this afternoon Yeyda and I will go outside once the baby falls asleep so we can start cleaning up the yard. It feels phenomenal to have the windows open finally after being trapped in the house for so many months.

It has been at least a couple of weeks since we have had any significant rainfall. And it’s been hot, really hot. With temps up in the 90s and little cloud cover of breeze the afternoons and sometimes even the mornings and evenings have been unbearable. Thank goodness for central air.

The poor plants have been suffering though. We were gone for three days during this dry spell and I’d say 90% of my potted plants that were outdoors died of thirst. I thought I’d given them enough water before we left, but it must have gotten too hot for them to handle. Gladly the majority of these are herbs and they can be dried before use anyway so it works out OK. The one I’m lamenting right now is my basil plant. There is nothing like fresh, green basil with tomatoes and mozzarella in a balsamic vinaigrette. Now I have only a dried out woody stem and hardly any seeds to speak of .

At least most of my indoor plants survived my absense. Especially, my basil plants. They are too small yet to harvest a great deal from them, but I’m working on getting spaces for them outdoors. That’s what I was working on this morning before it got up to 90 and just uncomfortable. When I checked weather.com and it said we had a 40% chance of rain showers I was hoping not to get stuck in the other 60% of the region. When the radar showed no clouds this morning about 10:30 I didn’t have much hope. About 3 PM it started thundering and just about 4 PM we started with a steady rainfall that the ground is sucking up like a hungry baby sucks on a bottle of milk.

So much for my weed pulling for the rest of the day. At least the plants are getting a much needed drink. This will make my work much easier too, the ground won’t be so stinking hard.

The blooms from my garden are beautiful this year.  Last year I had very few because the plants were fairly new.  This year my daylilies and asiatic lilies have decided to bloom.  I just wanted to share my bounty of beautiful blooms with all of you.

Enjoy and gain inspiration for next year .

Monday I spent most of the day driving around because I had appointments everywhere but home. It was nice though because my baby girl got to spend some time with her cousins. I took the opportunity to get some cow manure compost, petunias, basil, rosemary, sweet marjoram and lavender at the local Lowe’s store. There were a few groceries I had to pick up so I took the opportunity to peruse the garden center at Meijer and found they had Stargazer Asian Lily bulbs packed in bags shoved in a small end cap hanging box. I found one that had sprouted and was semi upright with no other signs of abuse. They were so cheap I just couldn’t leave them. Not to mention the Asian lily bulbs that I picked up last year probably rotted in the ground. Well, all but one that seems to have divided as well even though it never broke ground last year. I got them in a pot as soon as I could, but with all the stuff that was clanging around in the back of the car the little bud and topmost leaves got pinched off. I also lost half the basil plant (that’s why I got the biggest one I could find).

Tuesday, Earth Day, was such a nice day from the get go that we had all the windows open, the lights off and the air conditioning off. I don’t think I even turned the lights on in the aquariums that day. Poor fishies. Eh, they don’t care as long as they’re fed. It actually got pretty hot in the afternoon. My little one wanted to be outdoors with me and I doused her with SPF 50 before we went outside. She covered herself in sand while I spread compost and gypsum on the garden. After a little while even though she was mostly in the shade you could see the rosiness of her cheeks increasing. So, I convinced her that it was time for her afternoon nap.she wanted to go to her room, but since she was covered in sand (though I couldn’t see it I was convinced it was there and didn’t want to try and get it out of her carpet) I had her sleep on the couch, which she loves anyway. She was out for three and a half hours. Plenty of time for me to plant some 2 year asparagus plants, re pot all my herbs and plant the lily bulbs. I wanted to keep the herbs fairly close to the house so I found some old pot hangers and a birdbath that was left with the house and used them to display the little herb garden near my front door.