Port Potager

Last week I spent some serious time in the herb garden. It could use a renovation: some are now too shaded, others are garden bullies that have spread beyond their borders, etc. Even so, there was plenty to harvest. Here's what I walked away with: That's not everything we grow, but it is a sampling of what's doing well. Things like sage and rosemary will be better in the fall, but these are some of the herbs that are ready to go at the height of summer. Basil. I cut a lot  to avoid having it begin to flower and go to seed. Even with this giant pile, I still only ended up with eight pesto cubes . Luckily, a little bit goes a long way in the flavor department. Horehound. Those globes between the leaves are its flowers, so I may have cut this a bit too late for full potency. Horehound is a bitter relative of mint used to cure respiratory ailments, and I keep meaning to use it to make some homemade cough drops.  Tarragon. It's not worth dryi...

About six weeks I ago I harvested some valerian root from the garden and set it out to dry: I had been warned by many sources that valerian smells terrible and only gets worse as it dries. I also heard that it attracts cats, but neither of these things have turned out to be true. Fletch has never even given it a sniff, despite it being at nose height for a couple of weeks. As for the smell, it does have an odor — I just don't happen to hate it. It's very hard to describe. It reminds everyone of something , but no one can seem to place it. There's definitely a camphor scent to it — kind of turpentine-y or Mentholatum-y — that lingers in the back of your sinuses. There's also an earthy, root-y smell to it, like a medicinal version of sarsaparilla . And, sometimes, there's a whiff of stinky socks involved, but that's not ever foremost in the bouquet for me, though apparently other people find it unbearable. Since I had two trays of roots, I deci...

Oh, did I forget to mention that we planted saffron late last summer?  It appears that I did not.  Well, saffron comes from a certain type of fall-blooming crocus, and you can easily grow them yourself instead of spending big bucks for saffron at the store. In fact, saffron was very commonly grown and used by the Pennsylvania Dutch , so it definitely doesn't have to be as fancy-pants as we tend to think it is.  I ordered our crocus bulbs from White Flower Farm and planted 25 of them in the herb garden at the end of last summer. Though they sent up leaves, they didn't (and weren't expected to) bloom. And then we saw neither hide nor hair of them until today: Honestly, I thought these Zone 6 flowers were killed by our terrible winter and soggy spring, since that patch was bare dirt straight through August. But then today, Kirk cleared out all the dead and dying tomato plants, and we saw that a few of our crocuses did indeed bloom, and many mo...

Today it is officially autumn, and there is so much still to harvest. Yesterday I brought in popcorn cobs as well as our typical round of fruit (tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, strawberries — anything that will spoil if left on the plant too long). I also grabbed a shovel to get at our first valerian harvest. You can see in the photo above that I broke off many of the stems and leaves before digging up the roots. It's a fairly shallow-rooted plant, so it didn't take all that much effort to get it all out of the bed in one block. We have two valerian plants in the cutting garden , and I left one to come back next spring: It's not much to look at right now, but in the springtime it is much fuller and is a darker green. It sends up strong, hollow stalks that are capped with lacy umbrels of white flowers. They smell very sweet — perhaps a bit too cloying, but nice on the breeze. They also look  pretty in a vase , athough they don't last long. But the...

Time flies in the garden! It feels like we barely had time to enjoy my favorite garden herb this spring before the hot weather came and it went to seed: Our lovage is now enormous. Hovering around six feet, it's taller than I am! I am letting the yellow flower heads go to seed this year and hope to gather them to use as a seasoning the way you would with celery or fennel seed.  Once lovage goes to seed, the leaves just don't taste the same way they did in the cool, spring weather. They're kind of bitter, and not as flavorful. That's why this year I thought I'd try freezing some at their best for later use in cooking. Frozen herbs won't ever be crisp again, but they'll still impart their flavor in recipes. It seemed a little strange to try to make pesto cubes out of lovage, although I suppose I could have. It's just that we don't usually use it chopped so finely or blended into a pesto. While poking around the internet, I found a su...

After a very busy week (Did I ever mention that I directed the kids' play this spring? Well, I did.), we enjoyed a lovely springtime dinner. Asparagus is back, people! And in case you didn't know, the best way to eat it is grilled. And that is very easy to do. Step one: brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt: Step two: grill for 2 minutes. Just 1 minute per side will do it: Use real charcoal. It's way better than a gas grill, if you care about things like flavor. Step three: Eat it up, preferably with some grilled steak tips and herbed rice: Such a delicious, springtime treat. Incidentally, Kirk marinated the steak in soy, ginger, and garlic. The rice has butter, thyme, and some scallions for flavor. It is so, so good to have spring herbs and fresh, green vegetables to eat again. Welcome, May!

This year I'm trying to be a little more focused on herb harvesting and preserving. Last season I just mowed a bunch of each kind down before frost and hung them to dry on the porch. And there they stayed for the winter. It's not at all convenient to go out into the freezing cold when you run out of herbs, and being exposed to extreme temperatures hasn't exactly helped to preserve their flavor. I have read that herbs are at their best flavor just before they flower, so I'm keeping an eye on them this year to harvest them at their peak. So far, so good: horehound, comfrey, and sage were all ready to cut this past weekend.  Sage is easy to preserve because it's pretty tough — just hang and let dry. But horehound and comfrey have very thick, hairy leaves that take a long time to dry on their own. I decided to try a new (to me) technique: oven drying. According to the National Center for Food Preservation , the secret weapon in oven drying is a roll of...

Yesterday was another 50 degree January afternoon — we've had several sprinkled among days of snow and days of bitter cold. It was very windy, but we had some melting, and it made me get out to sow the first seeds of 2013: These are the angelica seeds that I got last fall at Strawbery Banke . While planning out the 2013 garden (more on that later), I did some reading on growing angelica, and I found out that the seeds are short-lived and have poor germination rates, so it's best to plant them immediately in the fall. Oops.  The good news is that the alternative is to keep seeds in the fridge or freezer before sowing in the spring. Since we keep all of our seeds in a box in the fridge — they last much, much longer that way! — I inadvertently did this correctly. Still, having read about their tricky germination needs (much like parsnips, which they are related to and look just like), I decided to get them in the ground yesterday, while the getting was good.  ...

Another shower staple I recently ran out of? Shaving gel. It took a little more searching to find a recipe for this that sounded doable (and that I already had most of the ingredients for). I found some crazy suggestions to mix shampoo and lotion and call it good. What I ended up with as a starting point was a page from wellnessmama.com , which had recipes for both a foaming shaving soap and a shaving cream. Since the soap is meant to be used in one of those foaming pump dispensers (and since I just happened to have a newly empty one lying around), that's what I went with. The cream looks awesome, but really thick, and seemed like it would be a pain to deal with digging it out of a jar in the shower.  I had to cut the recipe I found (see the link above) in half, since my foaming bottle only holds 6 ounces. Here's the measurements I used: 1/8 cup aloe vera gel 1/8 cup liquid castile soap (Dr. Bronner's lavender, so no additional essential oil required – it ha...