Monarda, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

My perennial herbs are back! Herbs are my favorite part of the garden. This is the part where I say how I use them to make little fragrant sachets, or flavorful bottles of vinegars to give as gifts, or mince them fresh for seasoning mouthwatering gourmet dishes.

But I don't.

I should, and maybe this year I will, but I have the same problem with herbs that I have with lettuce. I hate thinning and cutting them.

The thing about herbs is they need to be harvested at their very peak, right before they flower.

Here in Virginia, that's in June. Right about when they've grown up all green and healthy and fragrant.

That's why I grow herbs. For the fragrance in my gardens.

Last year I grew nine kinds of basil, just because whenever I brushed up against it the wave of fragrance was to die for.

Italian Basil, Prince Michael Basil, Sweet Basil, Thai Basil, Purple Basil, Greek Basil, Cinnamon Basil, Bush Basil, and Lemon Basil.

I love basil.

You would think I would have cut and saved some, but I just couldn't bear to cut the plants down.

So far the basil hasn't come up yet (it needs warmer weather, being a Mediterranean and Indonesian herb). But the rosemary is back with a vengence, little green spikes popping out all over.

The oregano is filling in, but still at that 1" stage. When the temps rise a little, it will grow quickly.

This is Woolly Thyme. It's actually a low-level ground cover, and just as soft and fuzzy as a cat's paw.

One of the easiest herbs to grow is sage because there's really nothing you can do to kill it. No need to water, mulch, or fertilize. The roots will spread, and new plants will spring up all along the root line. After the new plants are 5-6" tall, they can be transplanted by just diggin up the clump of dirt around them (severing the original root runner). Both mama plant and baby plants will continue to spread, mostly because secretly they are members of the mint family.

And then there are yuccas (also called Adam's needle). Not an herb, but I liked the way they looked in the rain. These are sister plants to the ones in the front yard, and all of them are transplants from the family cemetary up in the mountains. These two are in the Swing Garden, broke free of their plastic pots, and have new babies spring up all around them.

Yuccas have little hairs, like threads, that grow off the spikes. The Native Americans took those little threads and wove them into rope. Those threads are the strongest fibers in the natural world. Besides the threads, yucca roots can be ground up into a soap-like substance, and used for shampoo.

Except I can't stand to pull up the yuccas either.

A Rainy Misty Day in Virginia

And the perfect day for a greenhouse update. Remember a couple weeks ago when we planted tomato seedlings, covering them with plastic and setting them in water trays?

They're up! These are all Better Boy's, the big round red ones that are perfect for slicing up for burgers, or freezing, or just eating off the vine. By the middle of May, they will be ready to set out.

Lettuce is a little over 8", and in sad need of thinning and transplanting. Thinning is something I always have a hard time doing - the little plants are so green and enthusiastic, I hate to kill any of them. I've already transplanted part of this crop, and will probably move more this weekend.

Over the last few weeks I've been unable to refrain from picking up a few seedlings -mostly green peppers, bok choy, broccoli and Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes. The bok choy and broccoli can be set out this weekend but the green peppers and tomatoes need to wait. BTW -green peppers love heat - make sure you give yours lots of mulch. I've also used black plastic around mine -it seems they can't get enough heat, as long as their roots are kept damp.

The former potato bed still has potatoes coming up - the plant on the left is horseradish, while the smaller plants on the right are new potatoes. By practicing companion planting, in this case putting horseradish with potatoes, the possibility of insect damage can be avoided. While others in our area were inundated with Japanese beetles on their potatoes a couple summers ago, my plants stayed almost beetle-free - thanks to having horseradish plants sprinkled in among the potatoes. Horseradish is a perennial that reaches 2-3 feet in height, and easily spreads (everywhere a piece of root is left, a new plant will come up). The root can be grated and made into sauce. I enjoy the plant - it's a beautiful green, large and leafy, and needs no special care or watering.

And of course, the blueberries are leafing out, and flowering. Berries should start appearing during May-June. This is a good time to start collecting old CD's at yard sales for decorating the berry bushes and lettuce beds. By using these, I've eliminated the need for protective netting or wire fencing against bunnies and birds. The dangling CD's reflect light back and simulate movement to both birds and four-footed snackers. This is one of the new plants we added in February. The older five year plants are almost 5 feet tall, and loaded with buds.

Maybe this is the year we'll need a bucket to hold all the berries!

Cow Teat Tomatoes

Several years ago, my mother gave art lessons to my daughter and two other homeschooled friends of hers.


While the kids were stashed away with mom in her art room, their mother (Hi Margie! Yes, I'm going to tell that story!) and I offered to help Dad around the farm, even though neither of us had a clue what that would involve.


After an hour or so of picking peaches while trying to avoid the wasps, Dad either felt sorry for us or his peach crop, and we ended up parked on the porch drinking lemonade instead.


This initial visit was when he mentioned that he was growing cow teat tomatoes. I guess the looks on both Margie's face and mine impressed Dad, because he went out of his way to say cow teat tomatoes every chance he got.


Not just that day, but at least once during every single visit afterwards. Usually with a big grin on his face. For some reason he still finds it incredibly entertaining.

For the record, the tomatoes themselves are amazingly tasty, perfect for making tomato sauce.

They grow to about 5-6" long, in clusters of 3 or 4, looking for all the world like, well, like cow teats.

The Most Important Gardening Tool

...Is your pen. Or pencil, or microcassette recorder, or cunieform stick with clay tablet. Anything you can take notes with.

This last blast of winter is the perfect time to set up your garden notebook. This time next year, you will be wondering which specific blueberry bush yielded the most berries, which cukes came up first, which type of tomato was the sweetest or froze the best.

Or in my case, which sunflowers were the tallest and provided the most shade for the summer greenhouse.

In previous years I've just carted spiral notebooks around the garden, and years later I can still see the dirt stains, or find pressed leaves or stems in their pages.

The last couple years, I've made notes on scrap paper out in the yard, then re-typed them into a document on MS Publisher, adding all sorts of info of other info. I always try to do this same-day, and then print out each page as it's finished, and slid it into a sheet protector (adding whatever seed packets were mentioned, or other clippings or brochures that I used).

Every notation starts with the date. This alone tells me global warming is real -I have almost 35 years of gardening data to compare. What else is important?

Specific plants, their garden location, whether over-watered or underwatered, any garden pests that seem drawn to that plant, neighboring plants (from year to year this can provide companion planting info), catastrophes (hail, wind, animals as well as recovery from said catastrophes), possible fragrances or fragrance mixes, fruit or vegetable yield (amount, plus dates of earliest and latest), amount of yield frozen or canned.

Keep the seed packet - compare your results with what was promised. Did you maybe plant where there was only 4 hours of sun, versus the required 6 hours? Makes all the difference.

Next winter, this year's garden notebook will provide you not only with a motherlode of gardening in your specific location, but it will remind you what worked, what didn't, what you want to grow again, and what you definitely *don't* want in your garden.

And best of all, looking at your notes (and pictures, don't forget photos) will remind you of exactly how incredibly sweet that first tomato is, straight off the vine.

The First Full Day of Gardening

.....And the exhaustion that follows. This time of year I've been busy laying out the spring garden plan - a few new crops are being added, and some of last year's crops have to be rotated. I've also been making long lists of various outdoor housekeeping chores that will get the garden up to speed.



Once all that planning is done, there's that first long warm day in the garden. That happened this weekend. Never mind there's going to be three nights this week with temps at the freezing mark. We've started!



Yesterday was the first mulch run out to my folks farm. They have pine tree forests where I can rake up all the pine straw I need (blueberries are notoriously fond of pine straw), and the local tree-trimmers grind and dump their load of trimmings there as well, providing excellent mulch.



Raking pine straw is easy. We carry pitchforks and giant, contractor plastic bags to hold the pine straw (and they are re-used many, many times). This is one of those times I wish I had a pickup truck.

With a rake and a pitchfork, we can fill two bags in under 15 minutes. Each bag holds the same amount as 1.5 bales of pine straw if you purchased it at Lowe's.

Right after the pine straw we move the van over to the oldest pile of mulch, procured for free from the tree-trimmers. They love having a free place to dump because it means they don't have to drive to the landfill and pay to tip the truck. And we can use all the mulch we can get, in addition to sharing it with family and friends.


The van holds six large bags, in this case 2 bags of pine straw, and 4 bags of mulch. If I had remembered the string or twist ties, we could stack the bags longways, and fit 8 in the van.


Today the bagged straw and mulch was spread: pine straw on the blueberries and newly planted peas, and mulch on the new potato and tomato beds.

This is the blueberry patch - the little buds and a very few leaves are just starting to show, so the sixteen plants are hard to see. Before the pine straw was spread, we first added three bags of hardwood sawdust (only untreated wood is usable). Blueberries need a lot -a *LOT*- of water, and the sawdust will soak up rain and hold it for days, especially when covered with the pine straw.

The two rows of fencing on the left are going to be sugar snap peas this year, and the row to the right will eventually be green peppers. Further to the right will be various herbs.

The grassy area in the foreground was originally going have a canopy over it, with potted herbs, so I'd have some shade to work under. We have the canopy (actually 2), but it seems everytime we are ready to put it out, the wind picks up, and I can see us having to constantly take it down and put it up.

The eventual idea now is to make a wood pergola, and possibly a pea gravel floor. To prepare for that, this summer we'll lay down thick layers of newspaper, thoroughly wet them down, then lay wooden pallets on top. Some gaps between the pallet boards will be filled in with top soil, and then, probably in early May, gourd seeds will be planted. I love the smell of gourd leaves (like baking bread), plus their roots will help breakdown the grass, and the gourds themselves will sit on top of the pallets and stay dry and clean. After the growing season, we'll pull up the pallets, and the ground will be grass-free and ready for pea gravel, and hopefully our wallets will be ready to add the pergola.

This is a grassy patch from last year that was prepared for planting with a trailer-load of horse manure, and leaves. Today it was planted with garlic bulbs.

Before we quit today, with aching backs and faint sunburn, we also:

Planted four buckets of forsythia starts to form a live hedge (that hopefully will break the sight lines of our barking schnauzers)

Planted one bucket of rose campion up under the locust tree, as an addition to the flowerbed of purple irises.

Spread fertilizer, lime and manure on three beds that needed it.

Planted a 12x12 ft raised bed of potatoes. This bed has been lasagna gardened for years, with the latest layer being straw. All my daughter did was cut seed potatoes in half (makng sure each half has at least one eye), randomly sprinkled them on top of the straw, and then added a layer of mulch. No digging. We all hate digging here. It's probably genetic.

The middle of the potato bed has a circular wire bin, about 4 feet tall, that serves as a compost bin.

I just keep adding organic material to it: grass clippings, leaves, kitchen waste (except meat or dairy), coffee grounds, sawdust, non-diseased plants, anything organic. It decomposes, and feeds the entire bed. Last year, I planted cukes on the outside of it and tomatoes all around it. No need to fertilize this bed at all - the compost bin does it all (and no need to move the bin contents or turn it).

There's plenty more to do, but we got at least 80% of today's list done.

This week's weather is calling for lots of rain, and at least three nights of freezing weather, so all the additives and planting we did today will take nicely.

After the last freeze is over, we can start on ponds, rain barrels, gearing up tomato seedlings, and deciding whether or not to plant sweet corn this year.

Meanwhile I'm making more lists.

Vintage Ways To Collect Water

Back in the 1940's, a couple years before electricity made it up their Appalachian valley, my grandfather worked all for the highway department, then walked back up the side of the mountain to a two-room sharecropper's cabin that held my grandmother and five kids, packed a second lunch, and walked back down the mountain, to his own land, where he worked until midnight building a home of his own.

That home would be two-stories, with six rooms, heated with a large wood stove, and have no indoor plumbing or running water until the 1970s. Until I was fourteen, the only way to have water in the house was to manually draw it by hand, using a pump similar to the one pictured above.

The pump pulled water out of a concrete cistern that was buried next to the house. Water collected into it from rainfall, as well as from a deep spring that originated from high up on the mountainside.

Never in my life have I tasted water as wonderful as the water from that spring.

These are old wooden cisterns, probably from the 1940s, but built down on the Mississippi gulf front, where the water table is too high to bury much of anything.

And these are the water cisterns of El Jadida in Morocco, built by the Portuguese. They collect hundreds of thousands of gallons of water, and date back to the 1500's. The word cistern comes from the Middle English root cisterne, derived from the Latin cisterna, which is descended from cista, box, from the Greek word kistê meaning basket. So we have boxes and baskets for water.

But this one is the one I'd like under my house -the ultimate "rain barrel": the Basilica Cistern, built during Roman times, of Corinthian marble, far below the streets of Istanbul. When the Ottoman Turks captured the city, this beautiful place was forgotten until modern-day Turkish citizens reported catching fish through holes in their basements. Today huge carp still swim here, undisturbed.

Early Water Barrels.... Appalachian Style

Those who were reading my 365 Days in the Moonshine Capitol of the World blog last summer fell victim to my obsession with water barrels.

It will be no different this year - possibly even more engrossing and captivating!

In the next few days I'll run the first couple water barrel posts from Moonshine (to get everyone up to speed before this year's madness begins).

First though, here's an authentic rain barrel system from the Booker T. Washington Monument Park here in Franklin County. The buildings recreated are representative of the mid-1800's.

See the functional wooden gutters? They would have been sealed with pitch or pine resin.

Then angled down towards a wooden barrel, complete with iron bands.

Back then, the wooden barrel wouldn't have had the drain pipe, otherwise, it's pretty much the same.

I love the look - a lot more picturesque than my plastic barrels.

My grandmother had a couple barrels like these. She also had a huge concrete cistern where water from the roof was collected and mixed with spring water. She (or whichever kid she could catch) drew it up into the house by using a handpump in the kitchen.

This was replaced in the 1970s with indoor plumbing (same time they replaced the outhouse with the new-fangled indoor bathroom).