Mint In Bloom!

Pineapple Mint

Spearmint

Variegated Mint

Well, here is three of my favorite mints.  I have some more, but these three are blooming at the moment.  The weather has been so hot that they have bloomed a bit earlier than normal, I think.  I have lost my herbal brain power to figure when these plants are usually in bloom.  I use all of these in tea blends.  Need to make up some new ones!  We had a round of severe weather with a lot of lightning.  So I'm going to post this quick.  Hope you have had a great day.  Talk to you later.

Lunch with My Friends at the Tomato Pie Cafe!

The Tomato Pie Cafe-Just Right for Lunch in the Summer!

Grilled Chicken Salad for me!

Big Barrel of Flat-Leaved Parsley!

Sage, Nasturtiums, Rosemary, Mint, An Herb Garden in Barrels!

Bay, Basil and more Rosemary!

Rose bush and Rain Barrel Collecting Water!

Was a fun afternoon having lunch with two of my longtime friends, Susan and Marilyn.  Susan picked out the Tomato Pie Cafe.  You made a great choice, Susan.  Good fresh food and lots of good conversation and laughs.  If you are thinking about getting together with friends, just do it.  I forget how much fun it is to get together with my friends!  We came back to the house and had a tour of the garden and some lavender lemonade.  Good thing The Herbal Husband left some for us to drink!  It is a beautiful day in the 'Burgh.  Hope you are having a great day as well.  I'll get back to the garden posts next time.  Talk to you later.

Continuing Talking Herbal Containers!

We are always running out of space here in the herb garden.  So again think container.  This is a gray fringed lavender that would not be hardy in southwestern Pennsylvania without being planted in a container.  I would use at least a 12" or 14" diameter container.  If you are going to pair the lavender with other plants I would go to a 16" size.  It is a beautiful day and here I am inside typing this post!  Playing hooky!  Hope to get you my review of the next Timber Press book soon.  The weather has been too nice to be inside typing!  Ha and here I am doing just that!!! Well, I hope you are having a great day wherever you may be.   Also, I'm still looking for two winners of Herb Companion magazines.  If they don't send me mailing information by tomorrow, June 8, 2012 at 10 PM Eastern Daylight Time, I'll draw two names from the remaining people who commented.  Talk to you later.

Always More Room Here and a Milestone!

Always Room for Nasturtiums in Containers!

I Took This Photo Over the Weekend!

This Photo Was From the Garage Just Now!

I guess I'm trying to remind you that you don't have to have a whole herb garden to have herbs.  It just takes one container.  I got carried away with the seed packets of nasturtiums.  Since we have a Peruvian in the house and nasturtiums are native to Peru, it makes sense that we would have a lot of choices.  Nasturtium seeds are great to plant with your kids or grandkids.  They are big and fit right in the hand of a child.  They come up quickly and as long as you water them, they will produce flowers.  Unlike some other herbs in containers, you don't need to fertilize nasturtiums.  You'll end up with more leaves than flowers, but remember both leaves and flowers are edible.  The flowers are my favorite filled with The Herbal Husband's famous guacamole dip.   I will have to get The Herbal Husband to write it down so I can give it to you.  Here is a recipe from Alton Brown of The Food Network for guacamole.  I will say that The Herbal Husband does not use spicy heat in his guacamole because I can't eat anymore.  It is chilly and gray.  Sorta of like late fall or early winter!  It's spring and we go from hot to cool!  Now we're having March weather in June!

The milestone is that Miss C graduates from 8th grade tonight!  Yikes!  Time really has flown by!  She is off to high school now and a public one at that.  What I love about Miss C is that she is fearless.  She will try anything at least once!  I was a painfully shy child and I so admire kids that take the challenge.  Her brother is in the running for a job (maybe one of several jobs).  We are keeping all appendages crossed for his success.  I think I'm going to stay inside and take a break and work on my review for Timber Press and my post for The Herb Companion.  Hope you are having a great day wherever you may be.  Talk to you later.

The First Herbal Move!

The kids went outside yesterday for the first time this year.  The figs have been suffering because of the lack of light.  They start to drop their leaves like they are going dormant.  One of the figs has not produced one single fig.  It was told yesterday that it had better start producing or else it will be planted in the ground and probably won't produce at all!  One plant has about 20 figs on it already and hopefully they will mature.  Sometimes they drop off like a June drop kind of thing that fruit trees do.  There is that sideways lavender.  Sorta of looks like an herbal bonsai from here.  I wanted to show you a full length photo of the peppermint scented geranium.  It's an herbal monster and smells so good and has many flowers.

Well, I finally got most of the lawn mowed.  We have been having enough rain that it has made it tricky to get out and mow.  Going to Chagrin Falls tomorrow for tea.   Going to finish mowing on Sunday and getting back to getting the garlic chives out of my garden.  Hopefully I will have some new herbs to plant tomorrow.  Hope you had a great day.  Talk to you later.

Wait Until You See This, Herbally Speaking

 I was going to complain about the "New" Blogger, but what's the use!  They are just going to keep changing so I'll just go with it.  No, the photo you see isn't on its side.  The plant (a sweet lavender) is growing towards the light in the garage so it is on its side and from experience, it will stay pretty much like this even when it goes back outside.  I thought it might straighten up.  After so many days in the 70's and 80's including yesterday and today, you would think we are on our way to summer, but we will be back in the 50's and 30's at night by tomorrow.  March wasn't March and April is sort of like April but not quite.  Got to go water the seedlings and plants.  It may reach 80 degrees later today.  Hope you had a great day wherever you may be.  Talk to you later.

The Herbal Laundry is Back and Your Opinion!

Haven't done the laundry in a while.  We always find something else that needs to be done more.  Now the herbal trees are back in the basement and I need to make the best of the fragrance when I'm trying to get to the dryer!  Always something!  Hope you are having a great day.  BTW, what do you think of the new templates for Blogger?  They seem a little too messy.  Talk to you later.

The Only Way to Plant Mint!

Fortunately, this silver mint (Mentha longifolia) has come back from the dead.  It wasn't watered enough while we were gone.  Mints are survivors usually, but you never know.  You need to plant mints in containers.  I don't heed my own words, but you should!  Plant them in a 12" or bigger pot about three inches down from the lip of the pot.  Also you can line the bottom with landscape fabric so the roots don't creep out and plant themselves in the ground or patio!  I have several plants that are planted in the patio and need to come out before they take over the garden!  I think that's my new mantra!   Congratulations to Sam Stosur on winning the U.S. Open tennis tournament!  She played very well!  Looking forward to Nadal and Djokovic in a little while.  Hope you had a great day.  Talk to you later.

We Do Have Figs!

The brown fig is usually the last one to give in a season.  This season our green figs lost their leaves when they spent July in the garage.  Do you blame them?  The brown fig held on to its figs and it has started to produce.  You can tell they are ready when the ants are rummaging the fruit.  We have been having them in our morning fruit salad.  Delish!  Got another day of weeding in the garden today.  Tomorrow looks like the laundry may get down because the rain is going to move in.  Hope you have had a great day wherever you may be.  Had to get more storage for my photos for this blog.  Changing my banner photo tomorrow.  Have a changing of the guard to talk about.  Stay tuned.  Talk to you later.

It Has Survived, Herbally Speaking!

Just wanted you to know that my 'linear leaf' thyme has survived.  It needs some trimming, but it looks like it survived the ice and snow!  Another yippee moment, herbally speaking!  Very warm here!  60's.  Going back downhill over the weekend!  Took a walk outdoors for the first time in a very long time.  Hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you may be.  A quote from Don't Throw in the Trowel by Texas Bix Bender:

In comparison sometimes a garden can make the one you love seem almost easy to please.

Talk to you later.

I Don't Think This is Too Good-Herbally Speaking!

If you remember at the end of last year, we got this new container for my 'Linear Leaf' thyme.  Now I'm not so sure this is a good thing.  In fact once I get this posted, I'm going outside and remove the snow and try to siphon off the water and ice that has collected!

Well, I got the block of snow off, but there is a frozen layer of ice that I couldn't chip through.  I started to, but the plant was getting damaged!   Yikes!  Just hoping that it gets warm enough to thaw the container!

Been playing with the Herb Garden Planner feature at The Herb Companion magazine website.  I'm recreating the overabundance of garlic chives and angelica and thinking about how to make it more herby!  More over the top herby if that can possibly happen!  Hope you are out from under your snow and cold!  It is a bright sunny day again here.  Will post a photo of my herbal rescue later on!  From Mrs. Reppert's TwelveMonth Herbal: 

Alone in distant woods or fields, on a cheerless day like this,

I come to myself...I wish to know something; I wish to be

made better.

- Thoreau   1857

An Herbal Garage!

This is a big deal in our house.  We have a one car garage and at the moment not even The Herbal Husband's car is in the garage!  Trust me his car is usually in the garage the whole year round.  We have so many herbs in containers that need protection that The Herbal Husband has moved his cherished Honda out of the garage and its buried in snow!  There are scented geraniums, mints, a curry plant, silver thyme and compact sage.  There are even dwarf evergreens in the container at the bottom.

Hope you have noticed that I have pumped up My Favorite Blogs listings with some very informative and funny blogs of fans and bloggers who comment.  Hope you take a few minutes to take a trip around the world while you are visiting this blog.  Hope you are staying warm or cool wherever you are.  Here is the quote from China Bayles' Book of Days:
 

Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.

--Marsha Norman

GO STEELERS!!!
Whew, we won, but did it have to be so close!  It was heart attack time!  On to the AFC Championship!

Watering Herbs in Containers 101

I promised some of you that I would do a post on watering your herbs and or plants in containers this time of year.  This is one of the eclectic collections of The Herbal Husband.  We tend to have benign neglect for the aloe veras and Christmas cacti in our house  The aloe looks good, the cacti needs some fertilizer.  This is a paragraph or two about watering your herbs in containers inside and out.  It would apply to most plants in containers with the possible exception of African violets.  When you water African violets, you need to move the leaves apart and try not to get water on the leaves.  That can lead to disease.  Water violets from the bottom if possible.  Always use that index finger in several places to make sure that the plant needs to be watered at all.

Watering is a very essential part of growing herbs in containers.  During the summer season,  if you use terracotta pots, they will dry out a lot faster than other kinds of pots.  Make sure you are getting one of your index fingers down to the second knuckle to make sure your container needs to be watered.  Place it in several places around the pot.  That is the best and cheapest way to tell when you need to water.  If at all possible, site your containers near a source of water.  I would like to place my containers throughout the garden.  Somehow they are lined up on the patio at the end of the day.  There are all kinds of aids now to help in watering your containers.  Polymers, mats with polymers in them, self-watering containers and irrigation systems can give you help.  At home, we use an old-fashioned method--the watering can.  I think it is beneficial for you to see whether your plants thriving, whether outdoor or indoors, or stressed and maybe because of being stressed are being attacked by diseases or insects.  When you water, you want to water the entire pot until water comes out of the bottom of the pot.  The Herbal Husband waters a little bit over the top and then in the bottom of the pot.  That can create a dry middle.  We repotted a plant one season and the middle was totally dry.  You must make sure that water runs out of the bottom especially on very hot days.  If you are on city water, you want to let your water sit at least overnight or use distilled water.

If you are away from home a lot, you may need to get a system which will help you water.  Pat from Thoughts from Taylorsoutback uses the Claber 8053 Oasis 4-Program/20 Plant Automatic Drip Watering System and it works very well for her while they were traveling in Alaska.  You can find it for sale on amazon.com.  The Herbal Husband and I are going to use these when we are away this season.  In the heat and drought times, we water twice a day consistently.  It is also important to combine your plants so that their water needs are met.  Dropping or wilted plants may be a sign of water need; but may also need a bit of shade in the afternoon.  Once the sun goes down, they may perk back up.  Do not automatically water them.  If you use a lot of plastic containers, you might try grouping them together.  Shading the posts that heat up with others that remain cooler like terracotta or concrete may help.  You should also try to use larger containers because they will not dry out as quickly or heat up.

Inside you must be sure you either have a great southern exposure and clean windows or an artificial light source of some kind.  Also if you place tender herbs on windowsills in the north, make sure that on very cold nights, you move them off those windowsills to a warmer place.  Rosemarys are easily under or overwatered.  Either way they are dead.  Mist the leaves and then water the roots when needed and keep them in a cooler spot.  A garage with a southern exposure has worked very well.  Our 'Spice Islands' rosemary is going through trauma at the moment.  It has some black leaves and that is either over or under watering.  The Herbal Husband has admitted that he may be losing his touch in the watering department.  Lemon Verbena Lady to the rescue!  I'll just make sure that I'm monitoring from afar and make sure plants are OK.  As I said earlier, the two of us watering is difficult when we have different watering styles.  If you have questions on this subject, as always I am always here to answer them.  This quote thing is getting to me, but I will marshal on!  One of the herb books that I should read again is Henry Beston's Herbs and the Earth in it he talks about herbs.

"In its essential spirit, in its proper garden meaning, an herb is a garden plant

which has been cherished for itself and for a use

  and has not come down to us as a purely decorative thing.. . .

It is not use which has kept the great herbs alive, but beauty and use together."

Just keeps snowing.  Talk to you later.

The Herbal Jungle!

This was the scene last night as we scrambled to get the herbal containers moved into the house.  We had our first frost advisory.  Officially I think we were 35 degrees last night so some plants in the back of our property where there is a low area might have gotten it.  I just looked out the bathroom window and it still looks pretty good!

The Herbal Husband's report says everything is good outside!  If we hadn't moved them inside though, something would have been frosted and then the Spanish starts!  Fortunately I know when the bad words start, I leave the premises!

Well, all of the kids (herbs) in the herbal containers this season grew like weeds!  Ha!  So now we have to take everything out and trim things back and place them semi-permanently for winter.  The herbal work never ends which is a good herbal thing.  Hope you are having a great day wherever you may be.  Got to go walk!  Talk to you later!

Getting Ready for Some of the Kids to Come In!

The Rosemary is Still Blooming!

Lavenders are Looking Good Even the 'Coconut Ice' on the Left!

The Pineapple Sage in Flower is the Best!

The prostrate rosemary is doing very well in the container and will find a place in our garage this winter.

The lavenders will go on the western facing windowsill, including the little guy, 'Coconut Ice'.  We had this one in the trough that we had to replant and it languished through the summer.  I found this information from Van Bloem Gardens in Meridian, Mississippi:  'Coconut Ice' lavender is 16-18",  has dense, silvery-green foliage with spreading, uright habit. Flowers are clear pink before turning white. On the same spike more mature flowers show white, creating a stunning bi-color effect. Fragrant.

What can I say about the last photo, but what a fabulous show in the fall.  It is too bad that hummingbirds missed it!  They were gone early it seems.  It was a beautiful day in the 'Burgh.  I was inside making a batch of hot pepper jelly!  We are going down to the wire.  The temperatures are getting colder at night.  I have to work on the pineapple sage and lemon verbena jellies this week.  Rose geranium and rosemary garlic jellies will be made after that.  Our local ice cream place closes today!  We had to go and get one final ice cream cone!  Hope you had a great day wherever you may be!  Talk to you later!

Herbal Moving Day!

I don't usually move plants around this late in the year.  OK, OK, you know me too well!  When the frost warnings come, we are running around trying to dig up plants to bring in!  So we moved this linear leaf thyme out of its old container.  It was falling apart literally!

Here is the new container and the thyme took up every nook and cranny of it!  I forgot to get a new photo!  I will post it tomorrow!  Hope you had a good day wherever you may be.   I've added a whole bunch of stuff to my blog.  Hope you enjoy it!  Here is the container newly planted!  It is getting a good drink right now from remnants of Nicole!

Wild Herbal Trough!

The faeries are getting buried under the weight of the silver thyme!  This is a silver thyme on the left,. a dwarf curry plant on the back left and then a compact sage on the back right.  I don't have a whole lot of luck growing silver thyme in the ground, but in this trough, it's gone crazy!  I guess the secret is extremely great drainage!  Today is lemon basil jelly day.  The apple pie is still in the back of my mind!  Lots going on!  Hope you are having a great day wherever you may be.  I'm going to be participating in The Herbal Bouquet's blog from time to time.  I have a little introductory post there today!   

Don't Forget Herbs in Containers!

I know we all have herbs in the ground in our gardens.  Don't forget to put some herbs in containers that you can move around your garden and fill in those empty spots during the summer months.  I have tried to do that over the years and they somehow return to the main patio every single time!  I wonder WHO could be messing up my design plans!  Never a dull moment gardening with The Herbal Husband.

This is one of my favorite lavenders, 'Goodwin Creek' lavender Lavendula x 'ginginsii' from Goodwin Creek Gardens in Oregon.  I would use the flowers for potpourri not for food consumption.  It is a beautiful plant and makes it through our winters indoors just fine.

I have written about this particular lavender more than a few times!  Here are my previous posts:

Lavender Survives the Winter Indoors!

What's that Blocking My View?

A Happy Indoor Lavender!

One More Lavender to Bring Inside!

Hope you are having a great day wherever you may be!  Talk to you later!

A Fairy Trough Makeover and Sharon Lovejoy Visit!

I thought my fairy trough needed a makeover.  The new plants are a silver thyme, a dwarf curry plant and a compact sage from last year's trough.  The plant signs were The Herbal Husband's idea!  The Victorian rosemary got planted into the garden and if I remember I will show you a photo in a few days.  It is doing very well.  It will not make it through the winter so we may be frantically digging it up later this season!  Never can give up on a blooming indoor plant!

It's less than two weeks until Sharon Lovejoy's visit to Chagrin Falls!  If you are going to be in the Chagrin Falls area, Sharon will be speaking at the Chagrin Falls Town Hall on Thursday evening, June 17, 2010 at 6:30 PM sponsored by The Village Herb Shop.  Tickets are $15 and includes a fairy thyme tea as well as meeting Sharon and having her sign her new book, Toad Cottages & Shooting Stars or any of her other books.  I'm really looking forward to meeting her!  The Village Herb Shop will be open for special shopping 10 AM to 9 PM on June 17th.  You need to call (440) 247-5029 if you are in Ohio or out of state (like me) 1-800-836-9120 to reserve your ticket or tickets.  Hope if you are in the area, you will think about spending an evening with Sharon Lovejoy. 

Time for the Faeries to Appear!

My trough from several years ago did well in the garage over the winter.  The Victorian rosemary will be in its third year and the compact sage is blooming happily  It's in year two.  The only plant that did not do too well is a 'Lemon Frost' thyme.  I am trying to decide whether it needs a change of soil or whether I will keep things as they are and trim back the rosemary after it is finished blooming.  Will keep you updated!  I just want to thank everyone who has confirmed my blog on Facebook.  I need just one more person.  I think it will add to my "wall".  Whatever that means!  Talk to you later.