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galadhir:
Today I feel as though I’m making some sort of progress on the ‘novice gardener attempts to plant food forest’ front.
This morning I went out and picked myself a pot of tea. I took a few flowering heads of lavender, two peppermint leaves and two lemon-balm leaves, put them in one of those individual tea-pots that comes with a cup and had three cups of tea out of it. Very fragrant and lovely it was too!
It hadn’t occurred to me that I could grow my own tea before reading Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden about a month ago. But I had space for more plants, so as soon as I did, I ordered a chocolate mint and an anise hyssop plant. And on Monday I was in town at the bulk buy shop and discovered a very bedraggled, unhappy lemon balm plant in their ‘please take these away because they’re dying’ bin, so I brought that home in my bike pannier too.
The lavender and the peppermint were already in place.
Having tried for a couple of days now, I discover that there is something very special about being able to start the day by picking your own tea blend from the garden. It’s a revelation almost on a par with how much difference fresh herbs make to the taste of your cooking. They give much more satisfaction and pleasure than it seems like they ought to.
Other successes–there are slugs in the slug trap. The little bastards have been chomping their way through three quarters of the tender baby plants I put in. I fully intend to let thrushes and toads deal with them later on when things are established, but for now I have neither of those things, so drowning in beer it is.
I had a bit of a paradigm shifting moment as regards the lawn this time last month. I had very much been of the ‘lawns are a waste of space’ persuasion previously. But we have one. We may not always have one, but while we have one, it finally occurred to me to treat it as an area of soil covered with a ground covering plant.
Namely–not as a waste of space, but as an area of soil that also needed its soil carbon levels building up via nurturing and encouraging the soil lifeforms.
So, two weeks ago, I raised the cutting height on the lawnmower to 6.5 cm and put on it one of those plug in things that cuts up the grass cuttings and scatters them on the lawn behind you. I’m no longer removing the nutrients from the soil by taking the cuttings away to go in the compost bin–I’m letting them accumulate and feed the soil.
I also scattered some chicken manure over the whole garden, and watered it in with some powdered mycorrhizal fungi in solution. If I’m improving the soil, it doesn’t really matter so much what’s growing on top of it, right? It’s still drawing down carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen like a tree.
And I’ve got to say, two weeks and two cuts later it’s noticeably thicker and lusher. It’s still full of wild flowers and weeds, of course, but that’s a bonus imo–I have a prairie.
I also have clouds, absolute effing hoards of hoverflies, bumblebees and ladybirds. I like to think it’s a sign that the biodiversity is improving. As is the fact that there’s a frog in the pond, and that five of the golden-rod sticks, two of the skirret sticks, and one of the perennial kale sticks seem to have taken and sprouted.
Ah, I make so much iced tea in summer out of the herb garden, I hadn’t thought about that in a while! (I love the rest of the post, I just thought I’d chime in on homemade tisanes!)
My iced tea method, which is geared toward a crowd, is that I get one of those half-gallon canning jars (a bit under 2L), put the kettle on, go outside with some scissors and collect large herb stems until my hand is mostly full, and then come inside, plunk the herbs into the jar, and add about ¼-1/2c of honey, then pour the boiling water over and stir until the honey’s dissolved– usually the jar ends up about half-full of water. I let that steep for 10 minutes or so, then pull the herbs out and compost them, and top the jar off with cold water. Keeps for a few days in the fridge; if you want it iced quicker you can decant the whole thing to a fresh cold jar since the glass is holding heat in it, or put it into a nice pitcher and top it up with water until it’s dilute enough.
This is also good as a hot tea, I’d just scale it way down. My note: I use whole stems instead of individual leaves because then I don’t have to strain it, but I do still often pour the tea through a strainer when going from the jar to a pitcher, just to catch debris.
Herbs I use for iced tisanes:
mint and sage in equal measures (must be sweetened, tastes gross unsweet; better to use a wintergreen or spearmint type mint than a peppermint)
lemon balm– I put a little lemon balm in most mixes, as well
peppermint by itself– we have a “chocolate” mint variety that works well
anise hyssop and a little bronze fennel gives you a wonderful licorice-y drink
lemon or lime basil, also a good ingredient in mixes
regular basil is good in mixes with many herbs, but on its own is uhhh a little strange– perfect with strawberries, especially with a little lemon juice
thyme is good in mixes– I make thyme tisane and mix it with lemon juice and gin to make a “french quarter” that is an excellent cocktail. Bonus, hot thyme tea with a lot of honey is a powerful anti-mucous medicine and I find it works as well as dextromethorphan when I have a chest cold.
bee balm and catnip are also good for tinsanes but my sister hates the flavor of catnip tea so I don’t make it, and I’m not sure what bee balm (monarda) tastes like, I’ve only put it into blends
non-anise, regular hyssop is another good herb that can go with either sweet or savory flavors; I don’t use it on its own but I often combine it with thyme and lemon balm and sometimes a tiny bit of oregano
Any herb that tastes well with sweet flavors works for this, and the sweetener doesn’t have to be honey, I just use it because we have a beekeeper that gives us honey in exchange for hosting some of his hives.
galadhir:
Today I feel as though I’m making some sort of progress on the ‘novice gardener attempts to plant food forest’ front.
This morning I went out and picked myself a pot of tea. I took a few flowering heads of lavender, two peppermint leaves and two lemon-balm leaves, put them in one of those individual tea-pots that comes with a cup and had three cups of tea out of it. Very fragrant and lovely it was too!
It hadn’t occurred to me that I could grow my own tea before reading Martin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden about a month ago. But I had space for more plants, so as soon as I did, I ordered a chocolate mint and an anise hyssop plant. And on Monday I was in town at the bulk buy shop and discovered a very bedraggled, unhappy lemon balm plant in their ‘please take these away because they’re dying’ bin, so I brought that home in my bike pannier too.
The lavender and the peppermint were already in place.
Having tried for a couple of days now, I discover that there is something very special about being able to start the day by picking your own tea blend from the garden. It’s a revelation almost on a par with how much difference fresh herbs make to the taste of your cooking. They give much more satisfaction and pleasure than it seems like they ought to.
Other successes–there are slugs in the slug trap. The little bastards have been chomping their way through three quarters of the tender baby plants I put in. I fully intend to let thrushes and toads deal with them later on when things are established, but for now I have neither of those things, so drowning in beer it is.
I had a bit of a paradigm shifting moment as regards the lawn this time last month. I had very much been of the ‘lawns are a waste of space’ persuasion previously. But we have one. We may not always have one, but while we have one, it finally occurred to me to treat it as an area of soil covered with a ground covering plant.
Namely–not as a waste of space, but as an area of soil that also needed its soil carbon levels building up via nurturing and encouraging the soil lifeforms.
So, two weeks ago, I raised the cutting height on the lawnmower to 6.5 cm and put on it one of those plug in things that cuts up the grass cuttings and scatters them on the lawn behind you. I’m no longer removing the nutrients from the soil by taking the cuttings away to go in the compost bin–I’m letting them accumulate and feed the soil.
I also scattered some chicken manure over the whole garden, and watered it in with some powdered mycorrhizal fungi in solution. If I’m improving the soil, it doesn’t really matter so much what’s growing on top of it, right? It’s still drawing down carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen like a tree.
And I’ve got to say, two weeks and two cuts later it’s noticeably thicker and lusher. It’s still full of wild flowers and weeds, of course, but that’s a bonus imo–I have a prairie.
I also have clouds, absolute effing hoards of hoverflies, bumblebees and ladybirds. I like to think it’s a sign that the biodiversity is improving. As is the fact that there’s a frog in the pond, and that five of the golden-rod sticks, two of the skirret sticks, and one of the perennial kale sticks seem to have taken and sprouted.
Ah, I make so much iced tea in summer out of the herb garden, I hadn’t thought about that in a while! (I love the rest of the post, I just thought I’d chime in on homemade tisanes!)
My iced tea method, which is geared toward a crowd, is that I get one of those half-gallon canning jars (a bit under 2L), put the kettle on, go outside with some scissors and collect large herb stems until my hand is mostly full, and then come inside, plunk the herbs into the jar, and add about ¼-1/2c of honey, then pour the boiling water over and stir until the honey’s dissolved– usually the jar ends up about half-full of water. I let that steep for 10 minutes or so, then pull the herbs out and compost them, and top the jar off with cold water. Keeps for a few days in the fridge; if you want it iced quicker you can decant the whole thing to a fresh cold jar since the glass is holding heat in it, or put it into a nice pitcher and top it up with water until it’s dilute enough.
This is also good as a hot tea, I’d just scale it way down. My note: I use whole stems instead of individual leaves because then I don’t have to strain it, but I do still often pour the tea through a strainer when going from the jar to a pitcher, just to catch debris.
Herbs I use for iced tisanes:
mint and sage in equal measures (must be sweetened, tastes gross unsweet; better to use a wintergreen or spearmint type mint than a peppermint)
lemon balm– I put a little lemon balm in most mixes, as well
peppermint by itself– we have a “chocolate” mint variety that works well
anise hyssop and a little bronze fennel gives you a wonderful licorice-y drink
lemon or lime basil, also a good ingredient in mixes
regular basil is good in mixes with many herbs, but on its own is uhhh a little strange– perfect with strawberries, especially with a little lemon juice
thyme is good in mixes– I make thyme tisane and mix it with lemon juice and gin to make a “french quarter” that is an excellent cocktail. Bonus, hot thyme tea with a lot of honey is a powerful anti-mucous medicine and I find it works as well as dextromethorphan when I have a chest cold.
bee balm and catnip are also good for tinsanes but my sister hates the flavor of catnip tea so I don’t make it, and I’m not sure what bee balm (monarda) tastes like, I’ve only put it into blends
non-anise, regular hyssop is another good herb that can go with either sweet or savory flavors; I don’t use it on its own but I often combine it with thyme and lemon balm and sometimes a tiny bit of oregano
Any herb that tastes well with sweet flavors works for this, and the sweetener doesn’t have to be honey, I just use it because we have a beekeeper that gives us honey in exchange for hosting some of his hives.
