Enough Herbs to Dry

Monday I noticed that my Black Hungarian peppers in the terracotta pot were getting so heavy with fruit they were starting to lean. 

Fortunately I had one of my Dad’s obelisks on hand and it’s a perfect fit to sit over the pot and keep the peppers propped up. I think there must be at least a hundred fruits between the four plants and they are such a splendid, deep, rich purple/black but no red just yet. 

I tried one that was kind of almost reddish and it has a good amount of heat but from what I've read the fruity flavours really come through best when thoroughly ripe. 

I pruned off a good amount of the lower leaves to allow for more sunshine to get at the fruit and for air flow so that it doesn't get too moist in all this hot, humid weather we’ve been having. I don’t want to have waited all this time just to have the plants fall prey to fungal problems. 

Tuesday I continued work on the Crofting: Garden Designs pages. There are three main categories for concept designs - The Warm Garden, The Cool Garden, and The Glaucous Garden. These give you three very broad brushstrokes to define your garden by - warm colours, cool colours and anything touched by mist or frost to allow for a more interesting than standard ‘white garden’.  

Once you define your main-desire colors then complementary or contrast colours can be added, deliberation as to texture and form can be pondered, seasons of interest can be planned out, and stylistic details can be perused. 

I’m really excited about this project and can’t wait to get started helping people make the garden of their dreams, including native plants that they may never have known existed. 

The project will be for clients only, but if you want a sneak peak, click through the links above while they still work. 

While doing my research I came across the coolest site - Phyto Images. If you ever want to do a deep dive into incredibly detailed images of so many plants this is the place. Remember that cross section of Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius) I showed you? Like that - scientifically detailed aspects of each plant. So awesome!

Wednesday I finally got a chance to pinch back the different basils that took off with the rain and the heat. 

Learning from last time, there is no point trying to dry the Genovese in my Consori food dehydrator. It’s just too thick - which makes sense seeing as they did say that it is THE pesto basil. So I made pesto with it to freeze in ice cubes and then we can pull them out all winter long to have some delicious, fresh summer when the snow flies. 

The Tulsi (Holy) Basil did go into the dehydrator though and it will be in a jar for some blueberry-scented, soothing tea for our cold weather enjoyment. I may also try to make a tincture out of some of it. Being an adaptogen means Tulsi can help the body adapt to stress and boost energy. It has been used to help the body with anxiety, stress, and fatigue, as well as to help soothe the effects of asthma, bronchitis, colds, and the flu. I’ll have to add this plant to the Apothecary section in the Botanicus Janvrin. 

The Dark Opal Basil is also doing really well and will go in the dehydrator after the Tulsi. It adds colour to our ‘Janvrin Spice mix’ and flavour. 

Our Mrs. Burns Lemon Basil and Thai Sweet Basil aren’t doing as well as everybody else. They are in a different bed, but they get as much sunlight as the rest of them so I’m not sure what’s going on. I pinched them all back anyway to promote bushier, healthier plants and hopefully they’ll start to do better. 

I also finally got around to buzzing up the garlic scapes that I had in the fridge. They’ll also be frozen in the ice cube tray in oil for adding to meals throughout the winter. I should have dehydrated some too, but I forgot. Next year. Friends gave us some of they’re dehydrated garlic last year and it was so much better than store bought garlic powder! I’m going to do that with some of our garlic this year. That way any wonky bulbs don’t get wasted. 

I also harvested a tonne of Tarragon, Lemon Basil, Salad Burnet and Borage to make a ‘summer brew’. It will either be flat wine, or if I make it fizzy, an herbal beer of sorts. The tarragon grows like mad so we can never use it fast enough. In a tea, while making the brew, it does smell kind of funky so I couldn't tell if the rhubarb tarragon wine that I made in the spring had that wonk because of the bread yeast or the tarragon. I added the borage to balance out the mix and hopefully take down a bit of the funk. We’ll see how it goes. I love the finish of the rhubarb tarragon wine, even though it’s still fresh, so maybe after ageing the prescribed amount it will be splendid. I just didn’t want to wait to taste it.

Thursday I didn’t get much done. This weather messes with my head and so sometimes laying down very quietly in the dark is what is necessary. I was also able to pull out my watercolors and work on a sheet from the Secret Garden prints that my sister gave me. Meticulous detail is such a brain high sometimes.

Friday we finally had a chance to mow the lawn between thunderstorms. We mowed a section of the tallgrass prairie, hopefully allowing the warm season grasses a chance to grow. 

My cells of little bluestem and big bluestem are growing away but I don’t want to plant them out until they are good sturdy plants. 

I’m not seeing any little plants I recognize but, from what I’ve read, the native plants will only get to be about 6 inches tall the first year and then each year after they will get bigger and bigger. 

I should have been mowing from the very beginning, and then stopped about now for the natives to grow as the cool, European grasses slow down but oh well, another year. I’ll sow more seeds and just keep chipping away at it. 

The chickens thoroughly enjoyed scratching through the clippings and eating any poor bug trapped in the chopped herbage. They are not quite bison, but they’re the best I have. 

I also did some transplanting of daylilies from here to there. All of the ‘ditch lilies’ I’ve been given over the last couple years living here are being replaced by daylilies that don’t spread so raucously into native habitats. 

We were watching Gardener’s World last night and there was a segment about an invasive species taking over British waterways, much like phragmites are ruining watercourses all over the province. 

Funny enough, their invasive species was a native - Western Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) - a larger, showier version of our Eastern Skunk Cabbage. Strange to see a European ornamental becoming invasive here, and then a North American native, introduced as an ornamental, become invasive there. 

It seems especially with water plants, the danger is that the seeds will drop, not immediately beneath them, or where the birds drop them, but in moving water, carried hither and thither and any which way. 

Snowdonia is now being choked by Skunk Cabbage.

More interesting is that when the EU makes the ruling that a plant is invasive it is illegal to plant it, sell it, or trade it, and they can require its removal and destruction. 

Here, I still see vinca (aka Greater Periwinkle) and burning bush (Euonymus alatus) being sold at most every nursery I have visited along with all manner of well-documented invasive species.  

Vinca’s name in Latin is vincire "to bind, fetter", and that’s exactly what it does if you let it loose in your garden. 

Now I always check my phone when I see something new that looks interesting. It’s easy enough to type in ‘plant name’ invasive? into the search bar, and at one local nursery every plant I typed in came back as invasive, or suspected of being so, by the Ontario government or other leading naturalists. 

It’s always better to check ahead of time then have it run rampant in your garden and destroy all of your hard work, along with the native habitats on your property edge. 

Even if you have fencing on all three sides of your backyard, and are in a dead zone for native habitats, often found in suburbia, seeds can blow away on the wind or be carried away by bugs or the stray bird that might, in horror, find itself trapped in plastic hell. Remember Over the Hedge. Much of our local wildlife are waking up each spring to the exact same terrifying reality. Take a walk by the Stayner EcoPark or through much of Wasaga Beach and you’ll see the vinca-like grip that subdivisions have on wild spaces. 

Not that you aren’t working hard to prevent that if you live in one. You’ve planted your pollinator plants, and native grasses and hedges for nesting and hiding. You realize the absolute necessity of co-existence.