Herbs in the Garden

Posts Tagged ‘Herb Garden’

OK, no herbs or gardening stuff for you today, because everything in the herb garden is still frozen, and I haven’t gotten into the greenhouse yet. Sheer laziness on my part…

So- instead I have a video for you!

As I was driving my Herb-Child # 4 into town yesterday, we spotted a pair of Bald Eagles. This may come as no surprise to many of you that live in Bald Eagle country, but it really floored us!

Now, normally we see scads of Red Tail Hawks, Kestrels, Owls, and other birds, but these two were simply phenomenal!

We’ve seen Eagles once or twice fishing at the lake about 7 miles from here, but these two were just hanging out in the cornfields, and lounging in the wind breaks.

Sorry the quality is poor-

I caught them with my little Flip camera and was driving the backroads simultaneously. I know, don’t say it.  It was worth driving into a ditch or bean field in order to get this film!

I don’t know if it’s any better in fullscreen-but you can try and see if there is any improvement.

Wow!

Yes, you can and it  lives to tell the tale.

Although freezing fresh sage is possible, it’s not the usual was to preserve it.

I have been known to grab some frosted or frozen sage from the garden in a pinch and I am happy to report that the flavor was still fine for cooking.

I dry my herbs, then pop them in the freezer to kill off any lingering insect eggs that may have hitched a ride on the undersides of leaves. Sage is not much bothered by pests, but by habit, the dried herb still goes into the freezer for a few weeks.

This photo shows some potted sage in the snow.

Potted Sage in the Snow

No, it’s not dead, although I admit it doesn’t look terribly healthy at this point.

The good news?

As a perennial herb it will come back in the spring, or when I bring it inside…whichever comes first.

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Weeding…

You either love it and find it relaxing or you hate it and would rather be tied naked to an anthill.

Regardless of your feelings weeding still needs to be done.

 
Weeds not only look messy in the garden and in pots, they also crowd out your herbs and will cheerfully rob your plants of much needed  nutrients.

Whether you garden in containers, or in the garden, various weed seeds can be present in your soil.

It’s true that weeds are a problem in the garden, but they are actually a bigger problem when you grow in pots and containers!

Why?

You spend time watering and feeding your herbs, but when weeds are present the darned things repay your kindness and generosity by growing at ridiculous rates and sucking the life out of the plants you wanted.

Do your herbs a  great big favor and yank the weeds.

I know first hand that if the weeds get too bad you’ll want to throw up your hands and give up, and sometimes that is advisable.

I have been there and have the overgrown garden pictures on this blog to prove it…and I am blushing as I write that admission.

Weeds Growing With Herbs

Even if you really hate weeding, just take a few minutes a day and pull a few weeds. Unless you have a huge garden planted, a few minutes is all it takes to keep your herbs growing well and looking good!

Do you know how to read a seed packet?

There are lots of companies out there, and each will list different information on their seed packages. In this video I explain a few of the things you might find on a seed packet and what they mean.

I mention plant hardiness zones in the video.  If you aren’t sure what that is, learn more here about that topic!

Yes, it’s me with woolcicles forming on my face gear. And yes, I know my cold weather gear is not color coordinated.

Me with antlers and woolcicles

I took a leisurely stroll out to the greenhouse yesterday morning to check on things. It’ was a balmy -2* inside the greenhouse and naturally everything was frozen solid. On the way to the greenhouse I saw that several herbs were heaving up out of the ground in the medicinal herb garden beds.

It happens after a wet fall followed by hard freezes. I will just have to replant the things I will lose this winter.

This is why I rarely have the same garden two years in a row!  Plants come and go, and herbs and plants that don’t do well either get moved, or are lost due to weather conditions.

Although we haven’t had much snow yet, it’s been really cold. More  snow is expected. I like the snow. Besides being beautiful, it protects the plants when they are well covered sith snow. White mulch.

After it all melts though it is a bit disconcerting to see what’s left alive after the winter and what has died off completely, and some years it is just downright discouraging!

I’d better break out the seed catalogs…Who knows? By the looks of it I may be redoing a LOT of garden area this year

It started snowing earlier so I took a few shots of these Echinacea (or Purple Cone Flower) seeds heads before the snow got heavy.

I like to leave the seed heads on a lot of my flowers and herbs out in the garden. Birds and other creatures eat the seeds during the winter and then in the spring I always find lots of these little starts under my pine trees.  Why?

The birds nest in the pines! After the birds have eaten the Echinacea seeds, they get “gift wrapped” in bird poop and deposited beneath the trees.  It’s a sort of  messy little fertilizer package !

Since Echinacea won’t thrive on the heavy shade of the pine trees I end up yanking most of the volunteer starts, but occasionally I’ll replant some of them into a new herb bed. When the Echinacea plants are three years old I dig up the roots for tincture making. These plants will be dug up next fall.

I have found a few ambitious youngsters in need of some cash. They are digging out the raised bed concrete blocks in the flooded,weed filled garden. Here is the garden at the beginning of the makeover.

So as not to burn the kids out, the removal phase of the project has been tentatively scheduled to take two weeks,weather permitting…which leaves the next two days out.

It’s almost unbelievable how fast these weeds pop up! This  photo I took not long ago shows the garden devoid of any vegetation.

You can see where some volunteer sunflowers have taken off. I plant them every year for the birds, bunnies, and goats.

Gold Finches come around every summer eat the seeds right off the flower heads. I guess we’ll just work around the sunflowers for the time being.

I have not transplanted any herbs from this little square bed at the foreground of the photo below. They are so happy here that I am going to leave them in place and replace the concrete with a wood bed.

Garden Overhaul in Progress

See all the concrete blocks the kids have cleaned and carried to the back of the garden so far?

I am hoping to get some photos of my shy garden helpers in a future post!