Blue Planet Garden Blog

Girlfriend, do yourself a favor and add rosemary to your garden

And other solid herbal advice, courtesy of Morningsun Herb Farm.

Tuesday night was my master gardener association meeting and the topic was herbs.  Not to dis our association meetings which always feature knowledgeable speakers, but let’s just say if not for the cookies and the fact that someone is always giving away some plant or other for free, I wouldn’t necessarily be a regular attendee. This past Tuesday there weren’t even any cookies, but thanks to the excellent presentation provided by  Rose Loveall of Morningsun Herb Farm in Vacaville, CA, the hour flew by.  A few of the highlights:

I had always thought that herbs became bitter once they flowered, but this is true of annual herbs only, such as basil or cilantro.  Perennial herbs like oregano, sage and thyme do not lose flavor or potency after flowering.

As anyone who has grown herbs knows, one of the frustrations of growing basil is its tendency to flower quickly, and it turns out that just pinching off the flower bud is not enough.  To keep basil from turning bitter, pinch back not only the bud but a few sets of leaves as well.  An even better option:  Rose introduced us to a new basil cultivar called Pesto Perpetuo, which acts almost like a perennial and does not flower.  Not only that, but it is slightly more slug and snail resistant, more cold tolerant and even more drought tolerant than Genovese basil. If  Daffodil Planter's pick an herb  contest wasn’t already over, I’d take back my disdainful words about basil coasting by on the coattails of summer tomatoes and vote for this.

 

Pesto Perpetuo Basil

If like me you are somewhat careless in looking after your herb garden, consider planting chives.  Chives behave like the canary in a coal mine, and are usually first to show stress due to lack of water or inadequately amended soil (nitrogen being the key nutrient for most herbs).  

 

Chives

And now for the fun stuff.

Poor circulation?  Try adding rosemary to your bath.  And if you are curious as to whether the prostrate forms of rosemary often used in drought tolerant landscapes work well as culinary herbs, turns out it’s better to stick to upright forms, as they have a higher oil content.

Looking for an excuse to indulge in an extra glass of wine?  Consider growing stinging nettles (carefully of course).  Distilled into a tea, they work to cleanse the liver.

Interested in upping your chef cred?  While thyme is a fairly mild herb, it can be a good alternative to salt if you are following a low sodium diet and also is effective at melding other herbs together.

And finally, the answer to the title of this post.  Herbal folklore states that if a home has rosemary growing in front of it, then the woman of the house is in charge. 

So what are you waiting for ladies?  Let’s get planting!

Photos courtesy of Morningsun Herb Farm

 

"It all starts with a pile of junk"

 replied Chad Glashoff, the wonderful creator of my new garden sculpture, when I asked him about his process.  Process. I feel so arty.

I’ve been a fan of his work and his father Philip’s for years, and after spending Saturday afternoon at their open house in Fairfield, CA, finally bought a sculpture of my own.  Here is my Peace Lady, who will be the centerpiece to the new garden makeover I still haven’t gotten to, due to my previously posted attempts to build my media empire.

Philip and Chad delivered the sculpture personally this afternoon, and Chad shared that this piece was inspired by a concept his mother came up with – so he brought her idea to life as a Mother’s Day present.  Now why does the cute card I gave my mom seem a little inadequate all of a sudden?  He went on to say that Peace Lady has become the first in a series of other pieces incorporating symbols,  but at this point I got distracted by the giant check I was writing him and did not catch what the symbols were.  Chad, if you’re reading, feel free to comment and enlighten us.

and a close up so you can see the crazy detail

Beautiful though she is, my Peace Lady is quite modest in scale compared to many of the larger than life sculptures on display at the open house.  I asked, and these do get sold, generally to shopping malls and places like that, but I get the impression it can take some time. 

 

well, this one probably won't get sold

 

One hip Santa

 

For you garden bloggers who post pictures of the birds at your feeders during the winter, one of these 10' tall babies will really up your game

 

Nick liked this one, but it was clearly too big for our garden. (Thank you, powers that be)

Yes. I’m Tweeting. Will my garden ever see me again?

 

If you’ve stopped by my blog in the last two weeks, then you know I am one social media application closer to permanently chaining myself to my computer and never seeing an actual garden again.  Thanks to peer pressure – always a very effective method with me – from my fellow designer and garden blogger Laura Schaub, I’m now enthusiastically tweeting away.

If you don’t know, Twitter is a social media application where you answer the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less.  But most users tweet all kinds of things, like links to articles and websites, quotations and general observations on the human condition.  If you’re not sure that Twitter is for you, then my observations on how Twitter compares to two activities you already enjoy might help you decide.

Twitter and Garden Blogging
Both start with the same premise, i.e. “My garden is so interesting, I bet lots of people will want to hear all about it – at least once a week, and maybe even once a day!”  And amazingly, for many blogs this is actually true.  But with a blog, your posts need some sort of story line or theme; and to add even more pressure, new bloggers quickly discover that  some of the most popular blogs are the ones that are packed with photos.

With Twitter, no need to worry about having a lot of wisdom to share about the new crop of tomatoes you just planted. “Put in six tomato plants today – looking forward to yummy in the tummy come July!” is all that’s required.  Have a photo? No problem, attach a tiny URL.

See the attraction?  Now I can talk about myself more often, while taking less time to do it.

Twitter and Gardening
Except for the fact it doesn’t involve an actual garden, Twitter and gardening have a lot in common.  Garden tweeters in general are quite knowledgeable, with just enough baloney, misinformation and outright bragging thrown in to make the typical gardener feel right at home.  Tweeters also offer other tweeters unsolicited advice, again, just like all the other gardeners that I know like to do.  And while tweeting is nothing like garden design, with its emphasis on measured, thoughtful planning, it’s quite a bit like the impulse style of gardening many of us secretly prefer. I love the speed of the Twitter experience:  "Think it, type it, hit send" which is only a little faster than the speed at which many of us shop for plants "see it, like it, plant it."  We’ll worry about the details later.

FYI, my original topic for this post was outdoor lighting, but I’m missing the pictures I need to illustrate the concepts.  When I called my favorite lighting rep at Unique Lighting to ask if he could provide some photos for my blog, his response was “Sure!” followed by a long pause, and then the words “Now, what’s a blog again?”

 But I’m working on him.  He’ll be blogging and tweeting in no time.