Category Archives: Herbs

Garden, Pre-Trimming, August 10, 2014

Garden, Herbs, Light, Needs (Human), Plantains, Soil, Time of planting, , , , ,

The garden is producing some herbs, a few tomatoes, parsnips, and carrots.    Herbs include basil from the late winter planting, self seeded dill, parsley, oregano, marjoram, one sorrel plant, and a few sage plants.    They can hold on alive, until conditions become right for their growth, when they begin to flourish.

DSC03816 A couple of major setbacks  this year have been snails, big time, and tent caterpillars,  both of which eat a lot.

 

DSC03815 The tent caterpillars demolished the foliage on the mulberry tree which had graced the tree on the other side of the fence.  You can see how the elephant ears are returning after I  cut them back last fall.  These are  very prolific here, and grow by themselves, needing only control from time to time to keep them in bounds when their spot suits them.DSC03814 These plantains have come back to the point that one hardly sees any of the portions which died in the frosts last winter.   There is at least one small bunch of plantains.  The die back did not affect the very centers of some of the plants, and the corms are always producing new plants.  It is supposed to take one quarter to one and one half years for a plant to produce plantains

.  We’ll see what happens this year.

Lettuce grew well at times and one fourth of the green cabbages grew well at some point.  Red cabbages never grew fast enough, and neither did radishes or beets.  Nasturtiums did well for awhile, and then dried out.  Plants from seeds generally did not do very well.  Plants which I have bought already started seem to generally do better than plants from the seeds which I have bought, and may be a more cost effective way to keep the garden planted.

I learned that citrus plants are considered high maintenance.  It was recommended that they be sprayed weekly.  I will have to investigate organic ways to control their problems.  It seems that snails had eaten any initial fruits that I had from the flowers which appeared on the lime tree and the lemon tree, so we will not get any harvest from these this year.   I ordered copper foil, which may be effective in keeping snails off of certain plants.

One thing is sure.  It takes a lot of special knowledge to produce maximum crops, organically in particular patches of soil.  I need to learn a lot about the soil, timing of planting, and light.   So far, plantains are our most successful crop, needing little attention, and growing like weeds.   Vegetable have not grown very well for us.  Noo peppers came upat all.  Neither did eggplant, cucumbers, nor okra.    Lettuce, cabbage, radishes, and broccoli did not do very well.

Cilantro Seeds Part 1

Garden, Herbs, Seeds, , ,

DSC02770 This cilantro seed bouquet is from our garden.  I took out all of the remaining plants around early June, and let them continue to dry in the house for about three weeks.

DSC03038 I placed t hem into a kitchen garbage bag and hung them for another week and a half or so.   Then I shook them in their bag and crushed them a little to get off easy to remove seeds and left them in t he bag.

DSC03174  After getting off the easy-to-remove seeds, I hand threshed the rest and kept them separate.  I put the stem above into my wood chipping pile outside in order to make mulch from them.

DSC03175 I could separate more seeds from such a mix by swirling, as if panning for gold.

DSC03186 The seeds on the left, which fell off of the stems, and had been cleaned up, appeared to be larger than the seeds on the right, which I had picked off the stems, at least to the naked eye.

DSC03188 I stored them separately, and the seeds on the left, we reasoned, were theoretically better for planting because they were larger, and the seeds on the right, which I pulled off of the stems could be use for coriander seeds.  (We actually do not use coriander seeds very much.)

Young coriander plants are the same as cilantro plants.   All of the plants died after they went to seed, and any cilantro was unavailable.   It looks as if I can keep a bit of coriander growing in the garden at all times, if my saved seeds grow, about which we will see.    I am not sure about  the breeding of the original seeds from which I got the plants from which I got the seeds.  I am not sure about the exact timing and the environmental limits within which the cilantro seeds might grow in our location ranges.

If they do grow, then we might become self-sustaining on cilantro.

 

 

A Useless Spice Collection

Herbs

DSC02286 The spice rack is full of same colored duplicates of seasonings which we already have in bottles from the grocery store.    Many smell like hay.   There are no expensive spices in there such as Whole cloves and Nutmeg, Saffron.

DSC02289   When I look in the spice collection for the seasonings which I do not have elsewhere, Dried onion flakes, and Garlic powder,  as called for in this recipe, they are missing from the spice rack.