Herbs for household use

I’m constantly trying to root things. You know, a little piece from here, a whole bunch from there – this piece cause it’s pretty, this ones calming, this smells good, this one repels bugs…and so on.

My intentions were good, but some how  I’ve managed to kill most of them. Oh yeah, I’ve done em all! I’ve left em in the car, a plastic bag or my backpack. This one wouldn’t root, I kept on forgetting to water that one, If I only had planted that one.  Jeez, I’ve actually found some I’ve been looking for years and sadly their no more.

Paul Simon only had 50 ways to leave your lover, I’ve got at least 100. I left it out back Jack. It fell off the stand Stan. It was abused Rue. It died Clyde.

What I didn’t realize is what I had. I have a lot, I mean alot of fresh plant material to use around the house if I use it before it’s useless…

I’ve been doing this along time. Now, Instead of eternally hoping its gonna root, or thinking I can bring it back from droopy and brown or even black I use it before it gets there!

Now…I put it down the sink (to freshen it up) … or in a basket in the bathroom … or make tea out of it … or sometimes I just cup in my hands, close my eyes and breath deeply… 🙂

We know who we are, we’re the romantic plant killers.

We just have to learn how to let go and use them as a resource not just a romance. And sometimes…just sometimes they root and we grow a little bit more 🙂

Being ruthless and getting rewarded for it

When I first started gardening almost nothing grew well. In fact, the other vendors  teasingly said I was gaining a reputation for  selling ‘gourmet baby vegetables’ at the market. Not that they were or I had done it on purpose, its just thats all the bigger the stupid little things would get!

Each year I would learn new things about organic matter, nutrients, microbes, ph, light, water, varieties that actually grew in my area, etc. As the years progressed my plants turned from puny ‘gourmet baby vegetables’ into lusher and much more nutritious full size vegetables.

Along the way one of the hardest things I had to learn was thinning. I mean I had literally spent years with small veggies that wouldn’t grow, to  bigger, sweeter, and more nutritious veggies. Now this guy I’ve been reading wants me to kill perfectly good plants on purpose, just because they’re a little close.

The first few years I tried to separate the plants. But as careful as I was, I still ended up stressing both plants. Sometimes killing them but mostly severely stunting them. I finally started cutting out the smaller ones. At first I did it when they were really small, but now I wait until one of them starts to dominate the others and thinnings will be of edible size. The dominate one is the one I want to keep growing to maturity. The others I simply snip out to give the best one the room it needs to mature.

It was a hard lesson, but I finally became ruthless in thinning. Now its kinda like veggies with benefits. My full size produce is healthy and nutritious and the thinnings are truly gourmet baby vegetables!

The problem with garden fresh heirloom tomatoes

You know what the problem with garden fresh heirloom tomatoes is? No shelf life!

I think I’m gonna sacrifice that oh so scrumptious flavor for hybrids that will sit around for a week or two. I’m getting really tired of having to go out to the garden so often and pick these delectable sun ripe heirlooms.

Whose says you can’t save hybrid seed.

The tomatoes on this plant are from a famous one that rhymes with ferrari that I got last winter. Not all of the plants from these seeds look like this one, some had bigger tomatoes, some didn’t set trusses. The point is, save seeds from the tomatoes you like (for whatever attribute) then select and save em again next year, and the next … btw I ate one earlier today and it tasted oh so good !!!

Just Plant Something

Lettuce, mustard, collards, and chives

They say the hardest part of a journey is the first step. I think in gardening planting the seed or transplanting those plants I just had to have from the store is definitely the hardest part for me. Once they’re in the ground I will almost move heaven and earth to keep them alive, but getting there is another story. I always have the best intentions when I’m fanatasizing about how my garden will look this year, or how that new variety of tomatoes would be perfect for salsa, or how that hanging basket would add just the right ambience to that corner of the porch.

Well this Fall/Early Winter is no different. They said it was too late to plant anything, so of course, my attitude sprang into action! I can still plant something, can’t I? Well it took me about a week to finally find a store that had some seeds for sale (75% off by the way, thank you very much). On the way home I picked up the perfect planter (also on sale) for the window I had in mind.

About a week later the planter was still empty sitting in the window with seed packets laying there, ready for something or someone to magically plant them. Well darn it not this time. I spent about two minutes filling the planter with mix and maybe another 5 minutes opening the packets and broadcasting the seed.

Yup, I’m a gardener!

Pushing the Envelope – part deux

Last year I planted my fall crops when I was supposed to for my area. Beautiful beds of cover crops, collards, turnip greens, carrots, leeks, kale, chard ,onions, asian greens. Everything I was going to need for eating fresh throughout the Winter ( in fact it was the first year I had actually planted everything on time.) So I got to say I was a bit disheartened when snow came early and heavy (not typical in this area) and covered everything.

A Master Winter Gardener (wannabe) outstanding in his field

My plant selection was proper for this area, but the snow laid everything down to the ground for most of the winter. Much of it resprouted the following Spring, but my goal this year was to eat fresh all winter, not get an early start on next years garden.

I did have a little hoop house going – I didn’t plant enough for an abundant winters harvest, but it did show me what a hoop house could do! This year I’m combining the two, with proper planting times and hoop houses to get an abundance of fresh food all winter long.

I’m not talking about those big expensive metal bowed greenhouses you see at the local nurseries. I’m talking about the other ones. Small, inexpensive, easy to put up by one person, with strong sturdy metal frames that last for years.

I wrote an article last year on using a mini hoop house in the Winter, but this year I’ve integrated it more into my growing system to eat fresh 365.

6 inch snow load

If you’ve got summer crops still growing that you want to protect – put a mini hoop house over them. If you started your Fall crops already and want to give them protection from snow loads, freezing temps, and cold winds – put a mini hoop house over them. If you haven’t planted yet, seeds are cheap and planting them just takes a few minutes, and you guessed it – put a mini hoop house over them!

Next year I’ll be using hoop houses to push my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants earlier and later. I’m sure it will work, I’m just not sure how far I can push them.

Even though these little hoop houses are excellent for season extension, they can be used in so many different ways. After all, isn’t that what a beginner gardener does is try new things and learn.

The sky's the limit

For more pictures, ideas, and discussions check out Mighty Mini Hoops on Facebook. Plans for building your own metal hoop bender are also available.

Plant more Tomatoes in October, I don’t think so!

If your year was anything like mine, I had fresh tomatoes every possible way there was to have them (zone 6b-7a). Tomato sandwiches, sliced tomatoes on the side of everything, sun warmed tommy toes right out of the garden, that squirt all over and quench any thirst on a hot August day. In fact, I guess I got a bit tired of them. So now with freezing weather imminent, planting another tomato plant in October just doesn’t make a lot of sense. Or does it?

I know when January gets here, and I’ve been eating those expensive,  tasteless, hard red things that are labeled tomatoes from the store, I’ll find myself  longing for that first ripe tomato of the season. Well, tomatoes are perennials aren’t they?

A couple of years ago my better half planted a tomato seed in September and grew that tomato plant in our sun room. She didn’t get alot of tomatoes, but she did eat that one vine ripe tomato in February (the chickens ate the plant once and the dogs laid on it more than once, but she persevered) I never got to taste that tomato, cause I sorta laughed and said that’ll never work, but I did get to see that look of supreme satisfaction on her face (damn, I bet that was probably the best tasting tomato she ever had) and it’s haunted me ever since.

So this year, I’m gonna try it and you should too.

All we have to do is take a few cuttings

Root them

Grow them inside

… and eat them

Let me know how it turns out!

Full seed saving mode

It’s kind of funny how I seem to wait to the last minute on most things, but in the case of seed saving it’s not really a bad thing. In most cases, the longer a seed is inside the fruit, the riper (and more viable) it will be. This week has been especially “fruitful”. I’ve collected adapted seeds from  ♫ 5 different types of cherry tomatoes, 4 chile peppers, 3 echinaceas, 2 winter squash, and a green flowering conehead. ♪♫

Yes, it has been a good year! All the seed I’ve collected is from plants that have been growing here in WNC in previous years. Some for almost a decade, some just this year. The point is, they are from varieties I enjoyed this year and  I want again next year.

Oooo, gotta go! I think I see a ripe seed head over there!

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Just another heirloom in the making

Where do heirlooms come from anyway. The right seed catalog? Your next door neighbors great Aunt’s best friend? or…?

It seems Heirloom has become one of the current gardening marketing words, along with Organic. But what is the definition? Some say it has to be handed down for at least five generations. Others say it needs to be open pollinated and at least 40 years old. Me, I’m thinking more along the lines of  open pollination, and adapted to your local growing area.

How then can the heirloom seed packet you just bought from a “local” company, that ordered it in bulk  from a huge seed distributor in the Northeast, that purchased it from a seed grower in the Midwest, be an heirloom in your Southern garden?

I sell plants and seeds for a living, and one of the most frequent discussions I have, is someone challenging my “heirloom type” seeds and plants, saying they like hybrids better because they produce more, or have better disease resistance (funny they hardly ever say they taste better).

For now, my response has and will be, yes that can be true, but heirloom seeds were originally saved for a reason. Whether it was taste, production, or disease resistance, no one would invest generations of saving a sucky seed.  Hybrid seed, on the other hand is typically manufactured for one year. You can’t save it from the produce you grew this year and have the same characteristics in subsequent years. Although it can be pretty good for that one year, you’ll have to buy it again next year.  “Heirloom” seeds can be saved, the problem is the seeds are commercially produced now (usually in growing conditions very different from your garden). In essence, when we purchase that seed, we are starting over at year one.

The big difference is, when you finally find that taste, size, production, or whatever you’re looking for in a non hybrid, you can save the seed and plant it again through subsequent years. Your saved seed will eventually adapt to it’s area, providing you with produce that magnify’s the traits you (the gardener) have selected it for. Making a true heirloom you can hand down for generations.

Okay, I’m sorry I did it, but I did it any way

There was this sweet little native columbine, along the side of the road, I had been watching for a few years as I went to work. The road department decided it was going to widen the road, and the bulldozers we’re getting closer and closer to the my little aquielia canadensis. I had to act soon.

Even tho its illegal to dig native wild flowers, or so I’ve been led to believe, I rescued this plant and brought it home, as an act of mercy. Sad to say, over the years I’ve lost it.

But today, I’ve gotten a couple of clippings of one of the finest forsythia’s I have ever seen. It flowers brillianty light yellow, all at once, without many green leaves. I don’t know if it’s a native or hybrid, but I’m going to do better with this one!