This is a bit of a misnomer. I have an herb garden but it’s for both medicinals and culinary herbs. Someday, I’ll probably separate them but for now, one is enough. I made a huge mistake last year and stuck some strawberries in my herb garden. Those little buggers spread like crazy and I spent a week digging them up and giving a way and transplanting hundreds of plants. I still have to pull up the occasional hanger-on but I have, for the most part a clean slate again. I have already gotten a lot of starts in the greenhouse but I need to do a run to the Hadley Garden Center. They have a good herbal section. I plan to go with my trusty guide (I’m bring Rosemary Gladstar’s Family Herbal) as I’m no expert at this stuff. I should probably just bring my friend, Sara, who is. She’s been helping me figure out what I need right along.
The asparagus is doing great. We have been spreading seed on the empty end of this bed for a few years and it’s finally filled in. I’m not harvesting those plants. I’m hoping that leaving these long, skinny stalks alone will send the nourishment to the roots and give me heathy, edible stalks in a couple of years. The rest of the bed is giving me a harvest every day or two. We’ve been eating fresh but I want to preserve some too. I have tried freezing it with so-so results. I steam blanched some and froze it in food saver vacuum bags and got edible results but the bags are not reusable so I have decided to dehydrate all of my excess. I did a batch yesterday. I cut off the heads, then chopped the stalks into rounds, steamed blenched them and dehydrated at 125 degrees. In this wet it took 10 hours to get them crispy. I then powdered the stems and vacuum sealed the the whole thing. A big mess of asparagus dried down to a about 1/4 a cup. I popped this in a jelly jar and vacuum sealed it. I will rehydrate the asparagus in hot chicken broth and simmer with some cream added at the last minute. This will taste mighty good in January.
Nettle is next on the list to dry. I love nettle soup. Bruce just brought me home a new pair of garden gloves. I’m planning to put together a little sack with my snippers and gloves and digging trowel and hanging it by the door so I can do a grab and go when the mood strikes.
I have no illusions that the greens and gathered food will feed me during a time when the supermarkets are closed but I do believe that the healing herbs and the tasty, gathered greens can add variety and nutrition to an otherwise bland diet. You can live on rice and beans and canned peas but why would you when there are such great, free and abundant options out there.
May 20, 2011 at 7:12 am
Photos!
May 20, 2011 at 7:42 am
Kathy, have you tried pickled asparagus? We like it chilled right out of the jar or I will drain it then throw in the grill or sauted in a pan, also great on salads, put up 30 jars last year, we are down to 5.
May 20, 2011 at 7:49 am
I have been busy with the dandelion at our house. We still have flowers here. Last week I made wine, dandelion root tincutre and dried greens but this weekend I hope to make some of your Dandelion jelly.
I have been working on building up my medicinal bed this year too. I started feverfew, horehound, elecampane, hyssop and Catnip. I have had catnip in my garden before. But the garden at our old house had too many cats in the neighborhood and it would usually be pruned beyond redemption.
May 20, 2011 at 8:39 am
Learning more about medicinal herbs is an ongoing project for me, starting this year. I have found the Plants for a Future database online to be extremely helpful for researching all attributes of thousands of different plants. While I wait out the rain I am compiling a document which covers the medicinal uses of most of the herbs I currently have growing on my property (~3 dozen already). I’m also putting in an index showing which of these plants have a given medicinal function. This will be printed out in hard copy and added to my thrivalist binder. There is so much to learn, but it’s great to be able to provide myself with a custom document of what we have. I plan to explore just a few of these in depth each year.
My goal is to be extremely familiar with 10-12 of these herbs within five years. I can choose based partly on what we already use a lot of (garlic, elder), and partly on a subjective sense of attraction to a plant (chamomile, nettles). For me this is a better approach than trying to learn from a book, or trying to harvest all the herbs we grow and storing them without any specific purpose in mind.
May 20, 2011 at 10:16 am
hmmm, cream of asperagus soup over rice! yum
May 20, 2011 at 12:00 pm
We’re north of you, so asparagus is just starting, but I’m looking forward to trying some fermented asparagus pickles this year. I wouldn’t have thought that sounded good, but a friend of mine made some last year and they were still crisp and really tasty in March, she didn’t even refrigerate them, just kept them in the cold room.
May 22, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Laurajane, would you be willing to share the recipe for the fermented asparagus?
So far ours is just coming up. But at the same time less than 10 miles from our house there is still snow on the ground.
This week we will be getting the hoops on the raised beds and planting.
This last week we were busy getting the bees, the lawn tractor came this last week also. Not new but new to us.
And we have been working on a different system to water from the creek.
So it has been kind of busy around here. Plus yesterday we went to an all day farm auction. Got another 250 gallon water tank for rain water. Plus a 5 gallon waterer for the chickens.
May 22, 2011 at 2:22 pm
I don’t know if it’ll be to late by the time you see this but Carharrt is offering 40% off already reduced prices for women’s wear until 11:59pm ET TONIGHT.
http://www.carhartt.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/HomeView?storeId=10051&catalogId=10101&fullsite=
I’ve not tried them, but Country Woman gave a good review on Red Ants Pants (women’s work pants). They’re pricey, but may be a good investment.
http://www.redantspants.com/
Our local ‘Value Village’ thrift is often a treasure trove – I wish I’d kept track of the money I’d saved on items I’d found there! Even better – I wish that I had banked it – oh, what I could have done in the garden with that!?!!
May 22, 2011 at 6:39 pm
I just started an asparagus bed last year, so haven’t really harvested any yet. The seed heads are awesome though, so I’m wondering if this year I could try scattering some like you said. Is there a trick to it?
May 22, 2011 at 7:24 pm
No trick. I just scattered them and waited.
May 22, 2011 at 10:31 pm
Kathy, if you come down to Hadley Garden, and if you still want some comfrey, I’m only about 2 miles from there. Shoot me an email – gardengirlgarden (at) yahoo (dot) com.