Peppermint (Menta piperita)
This favorite of the over 400 varieties of mint is grown and used both commercially and by gardeners.  It is easily grown in zones 3 to 11 in sun or partial shade.  Its fragrance is as pungent as its flavor and both are readily recognized.  No wonder it is a favorite flavor for candies and desserts.  Since many dessert recipes call for an extract - try making your own peppermint extract to keep and use in your baking or to give as a gift. While fresh works best for the extract, dried can be used.  These grain free chocolate peppermint cookies will be a tasty addition to your holiday baking.  Peppermint also helps stimulate digestion and alleviate headaches, so makes a terrific tea!  It is not only good inside our bodies but can be used in home remedies and body care. As a key ingredient in this amazing whipped body butter, it makes for a tingly soothing foot rub.  It has been given as a gift from Erin many times and it's been very well received.

These are a few of our favorite things!
As herb lovers, we often get questions at classes and events regarding what are some of our favorite tools, our favorite herbs, and great books.  So for fun, we thought we’d use this month’s blog to create a list of a few of our favorite herbal things.  Maybe it will help you find something for the upcoming holidays for the herbal lover in your life.
 
Books and Magazines

• Medicinal Herbs – A Beginner’s Guide by Rosemary Gladstar – this is an amazing book for both beginner and advanced herbalists featuring some of our very favorite herbs and easy to make recipes and remedies.  A must have for any herb shelf.
• Alchemy of Herbs by Rosalee de la Floret – an herbalist located in our own home state of Washington, and one Erin has taken quite a few classes from.  This is book uses regular ingredients to help you create simple and effective remedies.  Love the recipes and info on herbs!
• The Complete Herb Book by Maggie Stuckey – an easy to read and use book that includes an encyclopedia of a great many familiar herbs with black and white illustrations. Also has sections on gardening, cooking crafts and household products and healing. This was one of the first herb books we bought on a mother-daughter weekend at the beach many, many moons ago.  Our copy is faded and almost falling apart - a testament to its many tears of use.
• The Herb Bible by Peter McHoy and Pamela Westland – a directory of the most popular and easy to grow herbs with colorful illustrations. A complete section on growing herbs from the planning to the caring for them.  Also has sections on using herbs in cooking, crafts and home remedies.
• The Essential Herbal Magazine - filled with information, recipes, lore, and crafting ideas and instructions for using herbs and making them a part of your life every day.  We eagerly await our copy in the mail every other month.  Get your own or a gift subscription here

Looks like it’s really cooling down, just in time for Autumn Equinox.  And just in time to move that peppermint we’ve been eyeing all summer to its new spot in a raised bed.  We started the move last spring, but summer overtook us and we weren’t able to completely get all the plants to their new home.  Because summer is not typically a good time to re-position plants,  we had peppermint in two spots.  Early fall is a good time to  move and propagate plants. With cooler temperatures, rain and some sunny days, plants have a good chance to get a good root base started before they need to hibernate for the winter.

Maybe you’ve been wanting an extra thyme or some other valued herb.  Rather than looking for an actual plant, it is fairly easy to propagate from your mother plants. Here are some methods for propagating perennial herb plants that we have used and found successful.

Herbal iced teas can be refreshing on a hot summer day while providing us some great benefits from the herbs included.  Peppermint, chamomile, catnip and much more can create tasty, beneficial and cooling herbal iced tea.  Its easy to make a larger batch to store in the fridge for the week. 
 
Our method is simple (as we always prefer!) – walk the garden with some clippers or scissors and snip handfuls of what calls to you.  Follow your nose, blending the fresh herbs that say “Pick me, pick me!” as you walk around.  You can start out with slightly smaller batches, as you get to know what you like.   Cut stems about 6 inches long, as if you were gathering a bouquet – well, actually you are gathering a bouquet – a tea bouquet!  We recommend a good handful of fresh herbs – where you can barely close your fingers together.

As summer approaches and becomes official on June 21st, the first of the summer vegetables begin to appear.  Thank goodness for the May rains which kept our gardens watered and the few days of heat that helped those seeds we so diligently planted, pop open and spring forth from the warm earth.  The garden at the farm has a few peas ready to cling to the fence, reach for the sky and set forth their tasty pods.  Green beans are popping up as well as lettuce and spinach.  The tiny feathery carrot leaves can barely be seen but we know they’ll grow tall and by fall we’ll have the orange carrots that we love and store through the winter.  The potatoes are planted and summer squashes are going in the ground this week, as well as corn and parsnips.

Since June is Eat Your Veggies month and June 10th is celebrated as National Herb Day, let’s consider the herbs (although you may be missing basil, you should have lots of other herbs to enjoy) that will bring out the flavor of those first vegetables of summer such as spinach and greens of all kinds, sugar pod peas and shelling peas, zucchini, green beans, broccoli and radishes.  Here are a few recipes to try for serving those first veggies of summer.

With truly warm (dare we say “hot”?!) weather arriving soon, we are reminded that it is almost time to plant basil.  Basil has been a favorite herb of cooks for centuries.  It is a window sill herb in many Mediterranean households.  Basil (Ocimum basilicum) is an annual from the Mediterranean region that grows 1 to 2 feet tall.  It is genus name is the ancient Greek word for “king”.  This small bush, deep green plant prefers full sun and warm temperatures to grow well.  It is commonly associated with Italian cooking, especially pesto, but there are many more uses beyond the kitchen. 

Many herbs get added to our herb beds by serendipity.  While perusing the farmers market or a plant sale, there is often an herb that jumps out at us – one that we haven’t seen before, and are intrigued by.  We may not know anything about it, but our plant senses tell us it needs to be ours.  So we take it home, find a spot for it and then watch it grow, all while learning as much as we can by observing it and also doing research.  This is how anise hyssop came to join the farm and her herb sisters.

Anise Hyssop is the herb of the year as selected by The International Herb Association for 2019 and then be recognized by the Herb Society of America as the Herb of the Month last year in anticipation of its big year in 2019. 

Spring for the herb gals at Garden Delights means we are getting ready not just to begin harvesting and finalize some cleanup but to set and get started on our yearly class series.  Our classes are a time to share information and to answer burning questions about all things herbal, secretly one of things we like to do best. We sometimes make presentations to local groups and at once such recent event we were asked about fertilizing herb plants.  Most of us think of our perennial herbs plants as sturdy hardy souls who require little attention.  That’s part of the beauty of growing them.  We did answer the question presented to us and would like to share that information with you.

Herb plants are kind of stuck in one place, unless we move them, so consequently over time they use all the nutrients in their soil.  To keep plants healthy and maintain growth for continued harvests, we have to help them have a good source of nutrients which means a shot of fertilizer.  ­­A great time for this nutrient shot is in spring which will officially occur this month, so read on to get all the info on how to renew our hardy herb friends with some nutrients. 

Ah, the aromas of the holiday seasons.  Those earthy savory smells of turkey and stuffing or ham and the sweet spiciness of pies. Herbs of every kind flavor holiday meals from sage and thyme in the turkey rub to nutmeg in the pies.  Wait a minute, that nutmeg is not really an herb. 

Herbs and spices are quite different.  Herbs are plants used for flavoring, texture, fragrance or dyeing that grow in a temperate zone.  They are plants that have a culinary, medicinal or practical use that you would expect to find in a traditional herb garden.  That temperate zone is one reason we all have so many wonderful herbs in our gardens. Spices on the other hand, tend to come from woody plants in tropical zones, a reason why the majority of spices are imported. The Mediterranean region brought us herbs as the Romans conquered the world and the south Asian area brought spices along Marco Polo’s spice trail.

Often we associate herbs with savory flavors found in daily cooking while spices go with sweet delectable desserts.  We are of course big advocates for the culinary use of herbs.  However, we do also use spices and think there is no reason herbs and spices can’t go together.  The holiday stuffing could have shredded or chopped apples and/or cranberries added and along with the sage-y Poultry Blend seasoning sprinkle in a little cinnamon and/or ginger.  Winter squashes of all kinds pair well with the traditional French Herbes de Provence Blend and a little nutmeg and cinnamon.

The kids will be heading back to school this month ready and eager to get back into the academic groove.  In honor of National Kid Month – September- we present some herbal ideas that will get the young ones involved with herbs, maybe the outdoors and putting those academic skills to use in practical fun ways.
The young one in our family is well aware of herbs and even has several of his own favorites.  He has been stung several times this summer by the abundance of yellow jackets. Although his first response is a lot of loud hollering, through all the noise he yells “Get Mom!”  He knows that mom will get a poultice of plantain (once chewed and slapped on the sting while in the garden) which will pull out the poison and relieve the pain.  So this summer he may say that plantain is a favorite herb.  He knows about the herbs we grow and use in our food everyday something we talk about all the time.  He has learned about herbs from his very beginning.  Something we encourage everyone to do.

Begin with food.  If you grow herbs, take your children into the garden and let them feel, taste and harvest herbs.  Name the herbs and tell them what you do with them.  Take some pictures or press some leaves and let them start a scrapbook.  Then let them help use those herbs in some cooking. This is a simple and good place to start kids out with herbs easily.  Our kiddo enjoys making dill pickles every year, and the umbrel flowers of the dill make for fun and easy harvesting.  We have also made pesto from a wide variety of herbs - what fun to chop the herbs roughly so they fit into the food processor (scissors work great for this) and then whirring them up into a lovely green paste with some oil and then mixed with pasta!

Since basil is enjoying all the sunshine, no doubt more than we are, and growing in leaps and bounds, for many cooks thoughts turn to pesto.  Traditional pesto is a colorful sauce that originated in Genoa, Italy where it is known as pesto alla genovese.  Typically it is made from crushed basil leaves, pine nuts and garlic with added olive oil and parmesan and/or Romano cheese.  The ingredients were ground with a mortar and pestle hence the name pesto.  It has a distinctive green hue and a light texture.  The Italians used pesto on pasta, of course, but it can have many other uses.

Any herb may be substituted for basil and even kale and spinach have been known to turn up in a pesto.  Be creative and use your pesto with more than pasta.  Making pesto with different herbs uses the typical basil recipe but sometimes with a few changes for the nuts or cheese or change things up your own way.  Here are some other herbs to use in pesto and ideas on how to use them.

Basic Fresh Herb Pesto
Prep and Cook time:  20 min      Yield:  about 1 C
2 C fresh basil leaves or any other herb or combo of herbs, packed (can sub half the herb leaves with baby spinach)
1/2 C freshly grated Romano or Parmesan cheese (about ¼ C)
1/2 C extra virgin olive oil
1/3 c pine nuts (can sub other chopped nuts or leave out)
3 garlic cloves, minced (about 3 tsp)
1/4 tsp salt and pepper
Place the basil leaves and pine nuts in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times. Add the garlic and cheese and pulse several more times. Scrape down the sides of the food processor with a rubber spatula. While the food processor is running, slowly add the olive oil in a small steady stream. Adding the olive oil slowly while the processor is running, will help it emulsify and help keep the olive oil from separating. Occasionally stop to scrape down the sides of the food processor. Stir in salt and black pepper.  Store in a glass container in the refrigerator for up to a week.  Put a thin layer of oil on the top to keep it from turning brown.

The youngest member of our farm family has a favorite restaurant and it serves Mexican food.  His dad likes his Mexican food a little on the hot spicy side.  Their whole family enjoys their “taco” Saturday nights. This opportunity to enjoy Mexican food comes to them in part from a group of immigrants who played a vital role in our region.  As they came here they brought many elements of their culture including culinary styles and ingredients

Spring equinox is just around the corner and with every sun break we’re out in the herb beds.  We’ve noticed tiny shoots pushing up through the soil and soon bees will be out doing their work as buds break out on trees and bushes.  So as you are cleaning herb beds and looking at possible new areas for planting, keep in mind the pollinators (bees of many varieties and butterflies of all sorts and hummingbirds) that we depend on.    Most herbs develop flowers which could certainly be beneficial to pollinators.  This month we offer some herbs which are great for pollinators for consideration as you visit spring plant sales.  M­­­­ost of them will be available in our booth at the Home and Garden Idea Fair on April 28th or the Camas Plant Sale on May12th.

These herbs are all perennials with the exception of borage which is a prolific self-seedin biennial.  Because the low lying areas of Clark County are in hardiness zone 8, these plants shouldn’t require any special winterization.  For those of you who live in the outlying hills, rosemary especially could use some mulching to get through the hard periods of winter we’ve had the past few years.  This group of herbs will also supply flowers in a variety of colors beginning in late spring and continuing through early fall. The cool thing about not only these herbs but herbs generally is they have so many uses and these in particular will be well liked by pollinators.