Herbs Up Front

One of the things I keep taking up garden space with is herbs.  I've thought about putting them in large planters next to the house, but they always look so lovely, adding a lush look to the garden.  Besides, their flowers are pretty even when they've bolted, and I love having the various scents wafting around while I work as I brush up against them.

And a giant plus for most of the herbs:  no insects or diseases.

This year, I had so much volunteer basil that the only new type I bought was Purple Ruffles seed.  I started them indoors around the middle of May only because I had expected to find potted ones at Lakewood Gardens in the spring.  They've had them in the past, but this year they said they don't sell enough to stock them.  Columbia!  What is the matter with you guys?  Purple Ruffles is fabulous.  (My sister makes a gorgeous gin drink with it.)  So, I planted lots and lots and expect to collect enough seed to start me up earlier next year.  I may have to thin these out, but they look good now.

My volunteers included sweet, Thai, lemon and purple basils, and no doubt some crosses.  They came up in several places, and rather than weed them out, I just let them be a part of each plot where they showed up.  

I almost can't have too much basil.  It's great on tomatoes, it's beautiful and it smells heavenly.  And if you're a gin drinker, I hear it's delightful.  I once made a scrumptious loaf type cake with Thai basil and key limes.  But mostly, I just like to look at it and smell it.

Last year, I had globe basil in the mix as well.  It's such a darling thing when it's young, but if you don't have it crowded in somewhere, when it gets older it flops out and loses its rounded form.  Well, it loses it even if you have it crowded in, but it doesn't look so objectionable.

Now, here's an herb I am really sold on, but purely for ornamental value.  I bought it at Lakewood Gardens the first year of my garden not knowing what it would grow into, just because I wanted a variety of oreganos.  Turns out, it really is just an ornamental oregano:   Origanum rotundifolium 'Kent Beauty'.   I suppose you could eat it, if you really wanted to.

Is it not gorgeous?  And look how great it complements the Thai basil that has flowered next to it.  I wanted to save seed, but it turns out the flowers are sterile "or will not come true from seed" (according to Dave's Garden).  Don't ask me where they get the seed, then, because, Lakewood didn't have this plant this year, either, and I've never seen it anywhere else, but I did find a seed source. I ordered some that I found on Etsy from a company called You Make Me Smile Seeds.  (I see they also sell on Amazon).  It wasn't cheap, but that's understandable if you can't easily save seed from year to year.  There were just a few seeds in the packet, and only four germinated when I started them indoors the middle of May.  They were so very, very tiny and grew so very, very slowly, but I was babying them along until one fine day my sister came out to visit and we sat under a shade tree and I forgot my poor seedlings out in the sun.  This is all I have left:

Pitiful.  Apparently they are usually produced by division, and so if I can get this guy to any size, I'll try dividing it and overwintering it indoors.  I'll also leave a little mulched well outdoors, because my other oreganos come back every year and spread rapidly.  However, the Kent Beauty I put in the first year didn't come back.  If I don't get enough off this one to save, I'll have to buy more seed and be more careful.  Because it's just too marvelous.

Another favorite (okay, all my herbs are favorites) is chives.  I was worried about them taking over, but this clump is sandwiched between packed mulch paths and a planting of other kinds of oreganos that really do want to take over.  I do make it a point to deadhead the chives before any seed drops.

Across a mulch path from the chives is a lavender plant.  I thought that would be hard to keep alive, but it comes back every year and is radiant in the spring and early summer.  It's even still blooming now, but has slowed way down.  This is it in early June:

This particular one is an English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia 'Hidcote').  (I bought some Spanish (aka French, aka Italian) lavender this year (Lavandula stoechas) and put it in a pot.  It still hasn't bloomed.)  This guy has grown quite a lot since I put it in the garden two years ago hoping it would at least live a couple of months.  The Mexican tarragon quickly outstripped it that summer.  You can see it was just a few little flower spikes then at the first of July.  (And you can see Golden Zucchini ignoring boundary lines.  It thinks the whole world is its playground.  Which is why I'm going to try growing it in tomato cages next year, a tip I read on the Baker Creek Seeds site.)

I don't know if Lakewood carried the curry plant this year, but I got one from them the first year (2014) along with the Kent Beauty and Purple Ruffles.  It did smell like curry, but it tasted like I imagine dry field weeds would if I were to try them, and the flower wasn't pretty enough to make it a keeper.

I kind of went crazy at Lakewood that first year.  They have a great selection of herbs.  I got a stevia plant and a lemon grass.  They both performed very well.  No insects attack stevia.  None.  I tried planting several of them this year to see if they were somewhat repellent, but they didn't seem to be.  Insects dined quite well on beets and okra planted right next to stevia.  

The lemon grass plant got so huge I had a hard time digging it out, so the next year, I planted that in an area outside the garden, and this year, I got one at the end of the spring season that was quite pathetic (but half-price) and planted it sort of under my okra.  A raccoon dug it up the first two nights it was planted, but it hung in there.  These guys are tough.  It's not so huge, and I'm okay with that.  I don't use it for cooking, but I found that steeped with stevia leaves, it makes a soothing, refreshing sweet tea that doesn't leave a sticky aftertaste like sugared tea does.  I don't drink much tea, but I'm still planting lemon grass and stevia.  

This was the first year's plant about half way through the season:

My sister got one of the 4" pots of lemon grass at the same time I did and put it in a planter on her deck.  She said it didn't get very big.  Maybe they're like goldfish and will grow to fit their container space.  :-D

Oye, Cilantro!  Ojala que siempre tengo el cilantro.  Somehow I had it in my head that cilantro is hard to grow.  Once I saw how readily it seeds itself, I had struck it rich.  Like basil, I just let it come up wherever it wants as long as it isn't in the way.  Each plant bolts fairly quickly, and once it does, it's no good for harvesting the leaves, but it does have shocks of delicate white flowers (which attract beneficial insects) and then I let it go until the seeds are brown, pull the whole plant up, shake it a couple of times to release the seed and let it grow up again.  It's great.  It produces so much seed that by collecting some, I keep a jar full to sprinkle in bare spots and to keep a steady supply to make sure I'll have some fresh leaves from frost to frost.  What a marvelous plant.  Me gusta mucho!

Yeah, it's not a Mexican native.  So why are Mexican dishes about the only thing you ever find cilantro in?  It grows wild in Europe.  I wonder if they use it there for anything but the coriander seed  (and Mexican food).

A couple of mentions:  

Sage: the plants with the very broad leaves come back every year and generally look good till frost.

Orange thyme:  very, very, very slow growing; doesn't like too much water.  When it flowers, it has a lovely lavender bloom that looks like hell when it's spent.  A pair of scissors takes care of that.

Do you have any unusual or great-smelling herbs you like to plant?  Or some that you consider staples for cooking?

Everybody wish on a star tonight to bring us some cooler weather so we can go out and smell the herbs. 

Til next time.