Splashing out on herbs

It's amazing what a difference a pot can make to a plant's personality. In the case of my traditional 'Mediterranean' herbs such as rosemary, thyme, oregano and bay leaf, they have turned out to be very different plants to care for, compared to how they grow in ordinary garden soil. Yes, of course they need more maintenance in a pot, but I am surprised how thirsty they are. They all love a drink (well, at least in springtime they do).

Let's put this discovery another way. Since I have started watering these potted herbs a lot more often than I ever did in previous years, they are much happier. And yes, I am slow on the uptake sometimes. (Just ask Pam!) 

Much happier now that it is being watered
every morning, the rosemary is lush, deep
green and very fragrant to be around.

As I water the rosemary now, I can smell its 
sharp scent wafting around in the air.

Same goes for my potted bay tree. More water
this season has produced more growth, and
much nicer looking foliage. 

The thyme is flowering its head off at the moment. It needs the
most clipping to stay bushy, plus, you guessed it, water.

I've already done a blog posting recently on this potted oregano
patch, but it needs lots of watering as well.

Though hardly classic Mediterranean herbs,
the two pots of mint (common mint in the
foreground and basil mint behind) lap up the
water like a pair of thirsty hounds. 

When I grew rosemary, oregano and thyme in the ground I never watered them. Sydney's relatively abundant rainfall took care of all their needs for many years. And so I always thought of them as almost drought-proof and definitely not thirsty. I knew that transferring them to a pot would mean I'd have to water them more often, but I have, until now, underestimated how much water they need.

And so, Aussie gardeners, if your potted Mediterranean herbs aren't looking too terrific this spring, think about giving them more water more often. It might be what they desperately need. 

I'm not sure what they want once summer comes around, but my new hunch is that it will be more water than I gave them last summer...

Just the right amount of oregano

If you like growing herbs, as I most definitely do, I'm sure you will have encountered the minor problem of having too much of a good thing on your hands. That's especially true if all your herbs are growing in the ground, rather than in pots.

When I had my oregano, thyme, sage and rosemary plants growing in the ground, I had far too much oregano, thyme, sage and rosemary, up to 100 times more of each herb than I could ever sensibly use in the kitchen. The benefits, however, were that these herbs were lovely garden citizens. They flowered their heads off, they sent up delicious scents as you brushed past them, and they really didn't need much help from me at all. And they flavoured hundreds and hundreds of delicious meals as well.

But they did take up a lot of space, and in my tiny garden I decided a few years ago that I'd grow all these herbs in pots, and it has proved to be a good move. The same herbs are all still happily here and enjoying the spring sunshine. The oregano in particular looks a treat at the moment. It's just the right amount, one pot-full.

What a pleasing mound of green it is in this wide, shallow pot.

The only thing it's not doing this spring is flowering, and that's
because my oregano plant pays a visit to the barber's shop
four or five times a year, and that clumsy barber called Jamie
cuts off all the flower buds in late winter.

This is what its flowers look like, little pink clusters which pop
up on stalks in late winter and early spring. I took this photo
a few years ago when our oregano was growing in the ground,
spreading like mad and flowering its head off. Back then I
had far too much oregano but it was a delight to have around.

This is another "from the archives" shot of the oregano trying
 to take over the succulent patch, back in its in-ground days.

If you read my most recent posting on sage, I recommended it as a garden plant, and I can easily do the same for oregano. It makes a good, easy-care ground cover provided it's in the sunshine most of the day, and the soil doesn't suffer from sogginess. It'll eventually misbehave, like the stuff pictured above, and will take over neighbouring beds if allowed. However cutting it back isn't an especially tough chore, nor is it needed more than once or twice a year at worst.

In fact, one of my early successes as a "learner gardener" many years ago was the way I slowly "marched" a patch of in-ground oregano from one spot in the garden to another spot a metre or two further away. All I did was cut off the left-hand side of the oregano patch regularly, but I let the right-hand side keep on spreading. After about 12 months the whole patch had "moved" to its new spot. I felt like I was getting there as a gardener with that little selective pruning ploy!

So if you're looking for a ground cover, oregano might do the trick. It's easy to find seedlings in garden centres, but you can also buy seed. In fact my potted oregano patch is seed-grown. I think that's part of the reason it's so lush. There's probably half a dozen plants in that one little pot, and that's a lot of youthful, pent-up energy in there.

Spicing up the herb garden

I've been waiting for a chance to do an update on my herb garden, as it has changed a lot in the last year. The big change is that almost everything is growing in pots now, instead of in the ground. Now is the perfect time for the update for two very good reasons. The first is that it's spring, so everything is growing well and looks nice for photos. 

The second reason is that a new book on herbs and spices, by Don Burke, is going on sale next week, and as I worked behind the scenes helping Don to put the book together, I want to tell you all about it. Pictured below is the book cover, but I'll tell you all about it at the end of this blog post. Before my not-very-amateur burst of rampant commercialism, it's onto my potted herb garden show-and tell.

French tarragon is happy as larry in its new, wider pot,
replanted there during midwinter when it was just a bunch
of snoozing bare roots and runners. It has such a nice
mildly aniseedy flavour that is heaven with chicken, or eggs.

Oregano, grown from seed just on a whim, looking lovely
right now. It was looking straggly about six weeks ago, so
I cut it back all over and now it's at its finest. That's the big
secret with herbs in general, but potted herbs in particular:
cut them back often, a light cut once a month works wonders.

Chives in front, lemon thyme left and sage in flower, right.
The sage is from my original in-the-ground mother plant. I dug
up a section with a rootball and potted that up. It took a while to
bounce back, but it's happy now in its terracotta pot.

Another 'sprog of mum' plant, my common thyme is a roots-
and-all chunk of the former large mother plant, replanted and
doing well in a wide, shallow pot. This is one plant that I
cut back very regularly, to keep it low, dense and bushy.

The rosemary is a cutting grown from the monster size parent,
and I am cruelly trimming it to encourage dense, low growth,
as it can grow to silly sizes if you let it go unchecked. Rosemary
has such a strong flavour you never need much in any dish.

Moist mint is happy mint. I have two pots here, one with common
mint, the other with spearmint, and both need major cutbacks
about three or four times a year. I cut the whole plants down
to pot-rim level, back to just stumps, then give it a good feed.
I love the look of the two pots when they're in their pomp.

I still have a few herbs in the ground, including this chervil,
which I didn't plant here. It turns out that chervil is so happy
here it's behaving like a weed and self-seeding all over the
place. It has a lovely, light aniseedy flavour.

Also in the ground and "on the way out" is this patch of
coriander, which is starting to go to seed as the weather
warms up. The patch has been here for a few months now,
as coriander loves our mild winters the best. That's the
time to grow it here in Sydney. If you grow it in summer,
you'll have to sow, grow and harvest three or four crops
each summer season, as it goes from leafy to seedy in
no time at all during steadily hot summer weather.

That's enough for my own personal update on the herb patch. It's time to show you Don's new book, priced at $29.95 in hardcover, which goes on sale on October 1. It's published by New Holland Publishers, is 304 pages long and has entries on virtually every useful herb and spice you can think of, plus lots that you might not have heard of. Here's the cover.

With only a few exceptions, each herb is covered in what's called a 'double-page-spread' of two open, facing pages. Pam did some of the illustrations used in the book, and my wide-ranging contribution to Don's text goes under the heading of "editorial consultant". Don loves to get down to the practical nitty-gritty of gardening, so he offers tips on how to grow each herb, best varieties, how to harvest and dry or prepare it, then how best to use it in the kitchen. He also quite frankly tells you whether it's worthwhile trying to grow each herb or spice in the garden (as some are hopelessly impractical to grow in backyards while others are dead-easy). 

And Don loves a good debunking of myths, too. This is a no-mumbo-jumbo book! Instead of mindlessly repeating all the ancient myths about herbs and spices being good for curing ague, plague or whatever, he's gone straight to modern scientific research to find out whether each herb really is beneficial or not. (The good news is that many are very useful.) However, this is also where Don's book is full of new, fresh info that might contradict some of the very unscientific mumbo-jumbo that has been long attributed to the healing powers of various herbs and spices. Some traditional 'medicinal' herbs are actually unsafe for human consumption, and several are simply useless. While researching this subject area I was struck by how many herb experts writing their books had unquestioningly just repeated the traditional folk myths about the medicinal benefits of herbs and spices. So I say good on you Don for turning to science for your evidence in this area. I learned a lot at this stage of the project.

And did I tell you it's full of delicious recipes and gorgeous colour photos? And if you like to brew interesting cups of tea we've got the tea brewing recipes for you too.

OK, so I am a bit biased, but it's a new kind of herb and spice book, a deliciously practical one. A few enjoyable months of my working life went into helping Don research and prepare the text for this book, and I am very pleased with how it has turned out. Go check it out if you can. 

I've noticed that while it doesn't 'officially' go on sale until October 1, it's already up and available for pre-order on websites such as Amazon, the ABC Shop site here in Australia, and numerous other book sellers' websites. Just search for 'Herbs & Spices' by Don Burke and you'll find it.

Cheap thrills

Call it 'cheap thrills' but I love growing plants from seed. Now I know that a couple of postings ago I was complaining about my capacity for impatience, but I'm not completely bereft of patient waiting genes, and seed-raising is one of the better uses of patience in this plant filled world where I like to spend so much time. Besides, watching seeds come up provides lots of cheap thrills, especially when they come up overnight and you wander outside and there's a new facing smiling up at you from their pot or patch of ground.

OK, on a 'level of difficulty' scale of 1 to 10, where
1 is a weed and 10 wins a Nobel Prize, raising these
'Tiny Tim' cherry tomato seeds are about a 3, but
they're my little toms and as the plants grow only
50cm tall they're exactly what I want for one spot
in the vegie patch. All I need is four plants.

Not so much seeds sprouted as seeds almost ready to
be harvested. These are the 'Microgreens' which came
as free seeds attached to the cover of 'Burke's Backyard'
magazine. I always like to roadtest the free seeds for
myself, just to make sure readers are getting value.
The idea is that you harvest these mini greens for
salads and sandwiches, and hopefully they will also
regrow for you. So far so good, they look delish.

Beetroot coming up amid a sea of mulch. These things
grow best from seed, hating being transplanted as
seedlings. One good tip I've learned is to soak the
corky-looking beetroot seeds in water for a few hours
prior to planting. I did an experiment, and the soaked
seeds came up days earlier than the unsoaked ones.

Still in the teensy-weensy baby stage, this is a sprouted
oregano seedling. The mustardy coloured 'boulders'
also in the pic are slow-release fertiliser grains. To
think this little baby will one day be a far-spreading
beast of a herb is hard to imagine, but then again
lots of footballers looked harmless and cute as babies.

Looking remarkably like oregano babies at this very
first stage of life, this is corn salad.

Chervil seeds come up thin and spindly, only to turn
into lacy, delicate little things a bit like parsley. The
lesson here is don't let plant babies fool you!

Just for fun, I'm going to collect some
seed from some plants I value and have
a go at raising new plants from them.
This is a wonderful plant called perpetual
spinach, which has provided a constant
supply of leaves from early autumn all
the way through winter until now, when
it has finally decided to go to seed. I'm
keeping a lookout for flowers, then I'll
pop a mesh bag over the flower heads
and hopefully will end up with seeds to
sow later on. Expect a blog on this one!

And speaking of future blogs, here's another seed-
collecting effort about to begin. This is the seed head
of the rapidly fading scadoxus which I have featured
here a few times recently. There are four flower heads
forming stacks of seeds now, and I have bagged up
three of them in the hope of collecting the seeds and
germinating them. This unbagged one is my 'Plan B'
option: no bag, just collect the seeds and sow them
in a tray. If it works, brilliant, and if it doesn't, I am
sure I'll still learn something useful (not sure what
that'll be, and I'd rather succeed, thanks!)

Seeds put you so close to the full cycle of life of plants. I couldn't possibly be a gardener without growing at least some plants from seed. 

Some bloggers have a wonderful, inspiring mastery of seed-sowing and growing, and to point you in an interesting direction, if you haven't visited Michelle's blog called From Seed to Table, that would be an inspirational (and very informative) place to start.