Herb Help ** And a Bit on Gardening

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Hello Rivkah,

 

Maybe a bit off topic, but here goes...

>

 

Not at all off topic .. its right on the money. Oils & HERBS. ;-)

 

 

> I am growing sweet basil (doing GREAT)

>

 

Good it is .. it will go to seed quickly if you allow it .. keep on

harvesting the leaves and pinching the tops off. Depending on where you

are .. odds are that later in the summer it (and many other green things

around your garden and yard) will be attacked by Japanese Beetles .. when

that happens you will need to get a bunch of Beetle Traps .. at Lowes or any

farm supply store. Last year we put up 8 or 10 of them and I was dumping a

gallon of beetles daily into a bucket of water .. then when they had gone

over I burned them in my burn barrel.

 

 

> Cilantro

>

 

Cilantro is indispensable in salads and soups .. and I like to eat it as is

... as I do Parsley. In fact .. I've heard Cilantro referred to as Chinese

Parsley.

 

 

> what I THINK appears to be lemon thyme (it doesn't have tinted edges to

> the leaves, though, but definately smells strongly of lemon) and oregano.

> Basically, I need help with them.

>

 

You came to the right place. ;-)

 

 

> The basil seems fine. But the Cilantro seems to be growing what looks

> like a weed in the middle. Is this normal/healthy. It's NOT a weed, it's

> just the new growth. But I don't know if I should pinch it off or what.

> Basically, I want as much usable cilantro (for food) as possible.

>

 

It is trying to procreate .. trying to seed .. pinching the tops off is the

right thing to do .. if you don't do that it will grow so tall it will fall

over. In time it will go to seed and next year you will find Cilantro

sprouting up in the area it is in now and even dozens of yards away from

there. This will also occur with Dill and a few other aromatics.

 

 

> The oregano is new. I just put it in the ground today. Anything I should

> know about it?

>

 

Yep .. don't over water it .. don't plant it (or anything else save

Cucumbers and Melons) in hills .. plant them in a trough and slowly pull

soil to them as they grow. Its a perennial and will sprout right back up

next year. The leaves will always be great for cooking (fresh or dried)

but they will be milder (less Carvacrol) prior to blooming .. most Americans

are not used to the taste of pure Oregano because that which is sold in

little cans contains both pure Oregano and spent plants .. those that have

been distilled. McCormick's purchases the spent material from distillers

in Turkey.

 

 

> As for the lemon thyme...I really want to know what this plant is and

> how it's used. I'm almost 100% that it's lemon thyme, except for the lack of

> different colored rims or edges to the leaves.

>

 

This is our first year to plant Lemon Thyme so I have no personal experience

with it .. we have Creeping and Common Thyme from last year. Go on Google

or any other search engine and type in Lemon Thyme Recipes and you will find

many hundreds of them.

 

 

> I'm a novice at growing...so please be kind and speak as if you were

> speaking to a dummy!

>

 

We are all novices at doing everything until we learn .. well .. maybe there

is an exception to that statement. Babies are born psychologists and by

the time they are 2 and 3 years old they are professional managing directors

of the household .. able to lead parents around by the nose .. and we like

it. ;-)

 

I was into gardening all of my life until I went to Turkey in 1988 .. didn't

return from there till 2007 and planted our first garden in 2008 .. this

year is our second. My wife, Tanya, had spent a lot of time on her

grandmother's farm as a youngster so she knew a lot about how to grow

different things .. in Russia .. which has a totally different climate than

most of the U.S.A. We live on a 2.5 acre tract in Henry County, TN ..

south of Paris and near Kentucky Lake. The 1/4 acre we planted last year

had never been tilled .. had to get a fellow with a tractor to cut the

ground the first time .. then I tilled it over and over and we raked grass

out for two days .. which, by the way .. turned out to be some fantastic

compost. Those who don't have a compost pile should consider starting one

... NOW. We have two large compost piles on the place .. they are invaluable

as a source of nutrition .. to keep down growth of grass and weeds .. and to

make the soil more workable.

 

Last year we were working with clay soil that had compost mixed in .. from a

pile the previous owner had stashed. We had produce that could have taken

prizes at any county fair .. Broccoli heads as large as my head ..

Watermelons over 40 lbs .. 2 + pound tomatoes .. it would be easier to list

what we did not grow than it would be to list what we did.

 

This year I dumped close to 1.5 tons of our compost on the ground prior to

tilling it .. plus dumped 40 each 40 pound bags of composted manure .. its

cheap .. $1.09 a bag. Fresh manure should never be used .. the potential

for bacterial infection is too high .. too dangerous. This year our soil

is very soft and workable and it will be better next year. Many small

organic growers and almost all large farmers prefer the " No Till " method and

its the right thing for the farmers but a bit too idealistic for those who

want large vegetable gardens .. many vegetable crops don't take well to No

Till.

 

If you get into Organic growing Big Time .. you will find many fanatics who

put out a lot of idealistic theory but if you know what its all about you

can easily tell that most of them are not .. and have not .. practiced what

they preach .. or if they have .. they have a very small veggie garden.

Its not a lot different than the " purists " in Aromatherapy .. they easily

talk the talk but rarely walk the walk .. and those who do .. have a very

small stash of Essential Oils .. plus they generally can not be sure that

they are all Organic .. or even unadulterated. Its all about the Emperor's

New Clothes. ;-)

 

This year I fenced the garden because we have three dawgs now and they love

to play in it .. we had a feral and sweet critter named Hunter who came to

us around 18 months ago and decided to stay .. he is appropriately named as

he spends most of his time in the woods. Then two months ago we picked up

brother and sister Chocolate Labs .. around 5 months old .. who had not been

properly cared for by a knuckle head .. and now they are happy here and

named Duke and Lady.

 

Aside from sinking post holes and putting some of the posts in concrete ..

burning some brush and spreading compost and tilling .. I did absolutely

nothing in the garden this year. Tanya grew the seedlings in our sun room

... she planned the garden layout (using companion planting as a guide) and

planted each plant and seed .. I did not touch one of them. The best way

for me to describe how the garden looks now would be to say .. Picture

Perfect! :-)

 

We have dozens of herbs and 40 + different vegetables. *We are now

getting around 2 gallons of Strawberries each day from 60 plants. Having

Strawberry desserts nightly and morning with cereal .. and drinking lots of

Strawberry juice. I had never had Strawberry juice before except in one

city .. because I had never had enough Strawberries. I visited Tel Aviv

for a week and they had street side juice stands .. I drank 3-4 glasses a

day while I was there.

 

Our mature Blueberries are turning Blue and our immature Blackberries are

turning Black. Our Cherry tree will be ready for harvest in another two

weeks .. gotta cover it soon because the birds got half the Cherries last

year .. and our Peach, Pear and Apple trees are full of small fruits. I

planted another Cherry Tree and a Plum .. plus three Raspberry bushes* this

year.

 

On Apple and Pear trees .. some of y'all might notice that the leaves on

your new growth are dying .. especially those of you who live in areas where

there has been a lot of rain and little sun .. we had three weeks of

thunderstorms here. It will be a form of Blight .. a fungal condition ..

most likely Fire Blight. There is only one cure for that and if you don't

apply that cure you can lose the tree .. odds are you will not find that

cure in the average store .. some farm stores have it and some can order it

... its a form of agricultural streptomycin .. specifically for Fire

Blight. It is as close to Organic as you can find and whether one wants to

debate that or not will depend on whether or not they want to sacrifice

their trees to the Idealist Oganic Gawds. ;-)

 

We're eating radishes, onions, lettuce, frying green tomatoes. turnip

greens and eating a half dozen herbs now. We use a lot of Rosemary in

cooking and we use Lavender in our salads .. both are perennials and

Lavender makes for a great decorative plant.

 

The Garlic we planted last winter is tall and looking good .. an expensive

herb this is and one that folks should try to grow themselves.

 

A herb you did not mention is Arugula ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruca_sativa .. I think no garden is complete

without this fantastic plant. In the many fish restaurants in Turkey two

of the first things they put on the table are Red Onions .. and the leaves

of this plant (Roka in Turkish) .. and I always had them make up a salad of

chopped Roka and chopped Garlic smothered .. and I mean Big Time Smothered

... with X-Virgin Olive Oil. Then came the Raki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raki_(alcoholic_beverage) .. an aromatic drink

also referred to as Lion's Milk because it goes from clear to white when

mixed with water .. plus after a couple you roar like a lion .. and later

bray like a donkey. ;-)

 

Then there is Dill. In my opinion .. no salad .. or pickled anything .. is

complete without Dill. It is a perennial and will come back the second

year in places you did not expect. Same goes for potatoes, melons,

cucumbers .. though they are annuals you will find them reseeding themselves

and popping up where you least expected. Actually .. all plants will

reseed themselves .. its just that some of them can't survive the

temperatures in certain climates.

 

We do our best to live as close to the land as possible .. last year Tanya

canned over 600 jars of organic fruits and vegetables .. some in the form of

pickles, jams and jellies. We later learned that was a tad too much so we

have given away a third of it already. ;-) She also filled 2 freezers ..

and I filled two more with Whitetail Deer, Wild Turkey, Wild Ducks .. and

fish from Kentucky Lake.

 

I'm lucky in that my cousin and her husband own a 2,000 + acre farm around

ten minutes from us. I didn't know they were here until August 2007 .. I

had not seen her in 24 years prior to that so it was an accident that we

settled in the same neck of the woods. Their farm has more Deer than our

county has people .. and they have more Wild Turkey than they have Deer ..

and both of these critters are TOO ABUNDANT in Henry County .. we are NOT

overpopulated with Human Critters here. My cousin's husband estimates

that he loses $10-$15 thousand a year just to Wild Turkeys. They come out

of the woods and walk down a young corn row and pull up the entire plants ..

one at a time. ;-) Farmer's here accept this and they grow enough for

them and the wild critters. Besides the major crop damage they inflict is

the danger of driving around here .. Deer hit cars more often than cars hit

Deer. In Henry County alone, and in 2008 many people were injured and two

people died due to Deer-Car collisions.

 

Some folks protest anything .. and that's fine but those who protest hunting

often prefer to eat antibiotic and hormone filled meat from a slaughter

house where animals who were raised in substandard conditions are treated

poorly prior to being dispatched. Long ago man upset the balance of nature

and now its man's responsibility to check that problem as best he can by

proper, professional game management .. Tennessee has one of the best Game

Management programs in the U.S.A. and Henry County has one of the best in

Tennessee. :-)

 

In time .. which I don't have much of right now .. I'll tell you folks how

to deal with insect pests in an organic manner .. there are ways to do

this. I'll also post some photos of our garden this year .. I had a bunch

posted in the Photos Section from last year but I see they are gone now .. I

think cleans off photos from time to time.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruca_sativa>

Enough of my carrying on. ;-)

 

 

> Thanks,

>

 

Welcome you are. I don't write a lot anymore .. don't have the time or the

desire .. but you have now learned that I am not known for brevity .. ask a

simple question and you get an essay. ;-)

 

 

> Rivkah

>

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch ...

http://www.AV-AT.com<http://www.av-at.com/>

 

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