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It’s Not Too Late to Start an Herb Garden
Garden centers are mostly sold out of flowers and vegetables by now, but there seem to be plenty of herbs still for sale. Now that you have (hopefully) gotten your veggies and annual flowers planted, this is a good time to plant some herbs.
My vegetable garden –where I have always grown herbs – is somewhat remote from my house and down a set of stone steps. But this summer I have an herb garden between my car park and wood pile – just 10 steps or so from the house.
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So how do I grow parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme (and others not included in Simon and Garfunkel’s song) in a spot that sounds so inhospitable? I am growing them in a wooden container called a VegTrug that I got from Gardeners Supply (www.gardeners.com). It’s big and deep: six feet long, 2 feet wide and up to 18 inches deep in the middle of the V-shaped container. It is on legs and stands 30 inches high. Very nice, no bending over.
Filling up the VegTrug with appropriate planting mix is important: you can’t just dig garden dirt and shovel it in. The soil would compact and the plants wouldn’t thrive. But it takes over 400 quarts of soil mix to fill this behemoth. To buy that much potting mix would be pricey.
Getting the mix right is important: you want your mix to stay fluffy, hold water and offer nutrients. But if you just used a standard commercial potting mix, your growing medium would need weekly infusions of liquid chemical fertilizer. Adding compost introduces organic matter and beneficial microorganisms that work with the roots of your plants to share nutrients from the compost and organic potting soil.
I buy good quality compost each year that a local contractor makes from cow barn scrapings that he turns and aerates and makes into lovely light-weight compost that is relatively weed free. I mixed that compost with peat moss, “Moo-Grow” (an organic potting soil), organic fertilizer, limestone, perlite and vermiculite.
Vermiculite is a fluffy material made from heat-expanded mica that holds water. It is used in most potting mixes, though you might not notice it. I also added perlite, another heat-expanded mineral. It looks like Styrofoam, but is great for containers: it has a neutral pH, holds water and air, does not deteriorate or compress. I used a total of 6 quarts of each in my VegTrug. Perlite and vermiculite go a long way.
To make my soil mix I used a 5-gallon pail to measure, adding roughly 2 parts of compost and 2 parts of Moo-Gro potting mix to one part of peat moss. I stirred up that mix in a huge garden cart. I added half a cup of limestone per bucket of peat moss to counteract the acidity.
Once the ingredients were mixed, I add Pro-Gro, an organic bagged fertilizer. I used a total of 2 quart containers of Pro-Gro in the 100-plus gallons of soil mix I made. I added one quart of Azomite, a source of diverse mineral micronutrients, in the total mix. Azomite is optional. You could add rock dust instead, if you can get some very fine rock powder from a tombstone maker or a rock quarry. Or you can leave it out altogether.
It is important to get the ingredients well moistened before adding them to the VegTrug. I did this by adding water from my hose to the mix, and stirring with a shovel. Dry peat moss can be very hard to moisten; I wet it, stirred it, let it sit, and repeated until it seemed evenly moist.
So what am I growing? In the middle, where the soil is deepest, I have a tomato plant, one I started from seed called ‘Summer Sunrise’. The seeds came from the Hudson Valley Seed Library (www.seeedlibrary.org and is suited for container growing.
What else? I have about a dozen lettuce plants, 3 flat-leafed parsley plants, 2 kinds of sage, a rosemary and a thyme plant. I dug up a chunk of chives from my garden, cut it back and planted it in the VegTrug. Marjoram and a nasturtium are doing well – the latter has edible flowers, and will flow out and over from the VegTrug.
I planted dill and arugula by seed – both are up and doing fine, though I also bought a small pot of dill at my local Food Coop – another good source for pots of herbs. Lastly I planted a 4-pack of small basil plants. Everything is thriving!
Watering is important for containers. This VegTrug has shallow soil near the edges, deeper soil towards the middle, so the edges dry out quicker. I find I need to give it 4 to 6 gallons in hot, sunny weather. It only gets sunshine from 9am to 3pm, but that seems adequate.
So whether you invest in a VegTrug from Gardeners Supply or just grow some herbs in pots on the porch, go plant some. I am so delighted with my herb garden I know I will plant it again every year. And the collection of herbs in this nice cedar container is pleasing to the eye as well as the taste buds!
Read Henry’s blogs at https://dailyuv.com/
The Value of Gardening
The Value of Gardening
There is, I believe, great value in gardening. I am healthier for the exercise I get gardening and for the food from it. I believe that there is a spiritual component too. I can feel at one with the world when I garden, and a connection to the generations before and after me. I can feel my grandfather (some of whose tools I still use) with me in the garden at times. And in this day and age, it makes financial sense to have a garden.
I recently chatted with Alice Elliott of Richmond, Maine. Alice is by nature a record keeper, and for the past two years she has counted, weighed and measured the produce from her garden. Her garden is not large – just a space about 20 feet by 25 feet – but in 2010 she harvested 642 pounds of veggies, with a value of $2,102.48. Each week she gets the average market price for organic vegetables from MOFGA (the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association) and, using the state average price, figures out how much her garden has earned for her.
Foley Food Mill
Alice also keeps track of her expenses – seeds, potting soil, row covers, fertilizer and mulch. She has, by her own admission, “A seed habit. I can’t pass by a pretty seed packet,” she told me. She likes to try new kinds of tomatoes every year – and grows a dozen different varieties. Last year she spent $317 dollars – including an amazing $176 in seeds. One could have a much bigger garden and spend just a fraction of her seeds costs – especially if you save seeds from open pollinated plants like tomatoes and beans.
So what does Alice do with all the veggies she grows? She and her husband eat from the garden every day of the year – which means that she preserves, stores or freezes vegetables now for use when the garden no longer is producing. She has a blog that shares her garden successes (and failures) and has recipes, photos of the garden, cost/benefit analysis of the garden and more. Go to www.henbogle.com to see her garden.
Here is an interesting recipe from Alice’s blog (see her “Yankee Pantry” dropdown for others), a good one for this time of year when our gardens are winding down for the summer, but sage and other herbs are still plentiful:
Sage Butter Sauce with Parmesan
- 4 Tablespoons butter
- 20 fresh sage leaves
- 4 Tablespoons stock, broth or wine
- 5 Tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
- Fettuccine or linguine for 4, cooked
Over medium low heat, melt butter then add sage leaves and cook until edges curl and butter is dark amber (5-6 minutes). Drain crisped sage on paper towels. Add stock and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in parmesan. Serve over pasta, fresh sautéed vegetables, or roasted butternut squash; garnish with crumbled sage leaves.
One of the most important steps you can take when preparing food for winter use is to develop systems that will save you time. Alice and I agreed that doing large batches of food at once is a time saver. Buy a big blanching pot instead of a small one if you want to freeze large quantities of kale, for example. (Kale and many other veggies need to be blanched by immersing briefly in boiling water before freezing).
Alice makes lots of tomato sauce, and starts by roasting the tomatoes in a 400 degree oven for 30-50 minutes. That reduces the quantity of liquid and imparts a nice flavor, she said. She just cuts tomatoes into 2-4 chunks, and cooks them in Pyrex pans (oiled to keep the tomatoes from getting glued to the pans) until the skins turn dark and much of the moisture is gone. She then runs them through a tomato press to get rid of the seeds and skins. I found the one she uses at Gardeners Supply for about $70. I have an ancient Foley Food Mill, which does the same thing. Finally she freezes or cans the sauce – she uses a pressure cooker for canning to save time and reduce the chance of botulism. She suggests reading about botulism – a horrible illness that can be fatal – at the Web site for the National Center for Home Food Preservation at http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_home.html.
A tip I shared with Alice is that I use my grandmother’s wooden chopping board when cutting up tomatoes. It is long enough to span one of the two basins of my sink, allowing me to chop without making a mess. With a flick of the wrist I can push juice, seeds or waste into the basin of the sink, reducing mess. When making sauce, I core the tomatoes and squeeze out most of the seeds and juice before tossing them in the Cuisinart for pureeing. And I do that all right at the sink.
I’ll never be as organized as Alice. I will never count, weigh and calculate the value of the food I get from my garden, this I know. But there is great satisfaction in preparing dinner –as I did last night – using all my own ingredients. Now if I could just grow my own salt and pepper!
Henry’s new book is Organic Gardening (not just) in the Northeast: A Hands-On, Month-by-Month Guide. His Web site is www.Gardening-guy.com.