plantlings

Three Umbelliferae (what is the plural?) in a row. Big: Angelica archangelica, a self-sowing biennial great-big herb. Needs an adequately watered spot.


Smaller: Sweet cicely, Myrrhis odorata, one of my favorite spring herbs for its tasty leaves and seeds. I'd call it a short lived perennial in the situation where I have it planted, so I watch for seedlings to coddle.


... and little Chervil, Anthriscus cerefolium. A biennial that sets seeds early. The plant dies off in the summer so you must leave some ripening seed. A lesson in not being too tidy. The seedlings appear later in the summer or early fall, staying green all winter.


Some kind of a yellow and green variegated Artemisia that I picked up last year at a yard sale, family Compositae.


Ginkgo biloba, a whip when I planted it, now it's as tall as me, a small tree. Patience.

Monday in the Backyard Herb Garden

Recap of our volunteer work day at the county extension demonstration herb garden:
Sharron and Gloria met me in garden to work, we worked from 9-1:30 with a small learning break. Mike brought 12 pails of compost. We spread it and dug some of it in.

We planted:
1 very small ginkgo tree (a bare rooted whip I purchased at Genesee Conservation District last year and grew in a pot)
1 white common yarrow (Flint Yard and Garden plant sale)
3 Achillea 'Terra Cotta' yarrow (Bluestone Perennials)
3 Dianthus 'Bath's Pink' (Bluestone Perennials)
onions in 'compost bed' (donated by Pat Whetham)
several seed packets in "compost bed": arugula, swiss chard, kale, dill (seed from Meijers), french sorrel(seed from JLHudson Seedsman).
10 calendula seedlings in culinary circle (seed from Michigan Herb Associates) .

We paused for some herb learning time:
I brought herb butter to sample on a sliced baguette.
(Recipe: whipped butter, lemon zest and fresh lemon juice, and minced chervil, chives, and a little winter savory. We discussed using and freezing herb butter wrapped in waxed paper and shaped in a log as shown in the photo.
This butter we sampled would be great served with poached salmon or chicken, eggs, or on steamed Michigan asparagus.)



I brought bottles of my dried chervil, parsley, chives, and french tarragon to compare with fresh herbs. All these herbs are ready to use fresh from the garden right now. In each case, the fresh samples I picked would be miles better to use right now than last summer's dried herbs.
We also talked about lovage and ginkgo.

I brought some useful books:
For identifying plants: The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers- Eastern by Neiring and Olmstead (Knopf)
For i.d. plus information on medicinal uses of plants: Peterson Field Guides Eastern/Central Medicinal Plants, by Foster and Duke, (Houghton Mifflin)
A great little book on using herbs: The Herbal Pantry by Tolley and Mead, (Potter)

I'd like to say a special thanks to Kathy who the painted Herb Garden sign. The color is what I'd call a sort of French lavender blue - it looks great! I'll have to take a photo of it next time I stop by the garden.
Special thanks also goes to Mike for hauling more buckets of compost, and for working on the drainage tile quest. These additions to the garden will be a big improvement.
And loads of appreciation goes to Gloria who led the way double digging that compost into the bed where we planted the yarrow.
Thanks goes in advance to Karen for offering to be our 'watering angel' for the seeds we just planted.
Finally, big thanks to Sharron as well for the hard work on Monday - we always comment the garden looks better after a work session. Sharron offered to map the garden when she can get there on her own because we are always tired out after working on our gardening projects.
The working volunteers are what makes the project good.

More views of the Extension Backyard Herb Garden...

In these shots you can see the pamphlet box that holds folded-page handouts that explain the compost area, and some of the remaining compost bins. The site was originally meant to showcase various methods for backyard gardeners to compost. The herb garden was just planned for a pretty backdrop for the compost demo area. Little did they know...
It's hard to get people around here interested in compost (what a shame!) and the individual on the paid staff who was gung-ho about teaching composting has moved on. But the herbs are still here, and some of us hardy old volunteers.
Most of the finicky, short lived perennial or borderline hardy plants have disappeared over the years. The list of remaining plants is about a third of the original list. Some amount of signage from disappeared plants is or are sitting on a shelf. And the plants that were hardy, agressive or 'happy to be here' have grown with very little encouragement into each other and will need to be divided as we go. Lots to do!

Hope we have a gardening-friendly year. I understand it's an El Nino cycle. I'm not a hothouse violet, but I appreciate enjoyable weather for my gardening time. After all, gardening is my avocation, not my vocation.

Still a blanket of snow covers the ground. I've always grown snowdrops and winter aconite, and in the past few years planted some Cyclamen coum (the zone 5 hardy cyclamen that blooms when the snowdrifts melt) and Hellebores (believe it or not, before I heard Barry Glick speaking at a trade show in Lansing.) I have flowers blooming outdoors when many Michiganders are whining about their lack of garden flowers. But this year the snow has not had a chance to melt off the beds where my little gems are waiting. Patience!

There IS a little chervil still green and alive up near the house in the gravel under the overhang on the south-east side. I saw a big jack rabbit sitting there when it was even too cold for the cats to run out and back indoors on below zero morning a few weeks back. The world is never without some kind of life waiting to be discovered.
Weather this weekend, after all the awful cold we've had in the past two months, is expected to be in the 40's... I believe we'll be thawing, hoo-ray!