I am passionate about my herbs! I thoroughly enjoy growing them and then using them in my cooking. Generations of my family have made a living on agricultural endeavors of one sort or another. I have nurtured gardens, from large landscape gardens of shrubs and trees, to indoor dish gardens made up of a variety of small plants. I have always had vegetable and flower gardens. But strangely, when I started growing herbs, it offered me an entirely different gardening experience. I would say it was the novelty of it, since herb gardens were not part of my growing up years. But my first herb garden was a long, long time ago and my fondness for these treasured plantings has only grown over the years. I have mentioned in earlier posts, that I moved a couple of years ago and one of the things left behind was a beautiful and mature herb garden bounded by a short fieldstone wall. Gorgeous! And the aroma when I was standing in it harvesting, was a whiff of heaven. During the first summer here, I was in such disarray that the best I could do for growing herbs, was to put some basil plants in a window box I mounted on my back porch.
Basil in a window box on my back porch.
BASIL is my ” MUST GROW MY OWN” herb!
I honestly cannot imagine a growing season without my own fresh basil. Here’s a couple of reasons why Cooking with Herb, names basil as our favorite herb. Let’s start with the beautiful, bright green leaves of the basil plant. I keep fresh basil on my kitchen counter during the growing season, for quick picking when I am cooking with it or adding it to a salad. Sometimes I pick a leaf off the stem and roll it between my fingers, just to get a blast of the sweet, fresh aroma.
The stems stay fresh for several days. When the leaves start to wilt, I take all the leaves off the stem and put them in a basket to dry. Then I go out and cut a few more stems for my mother’s cut glass vase. It’s wide open top makes it perfect for my basil. I would love these beautiful, lush, bright green leaves even if they weren’t the perfect, all around herb.
When I have a leaf or two left over after using a stem for a recipe, or if it looks like my fresh basil leaves in the vase are getting wilted, I put them in a basket to dry. I have lots of little baskets in my kitchen all summer long, with herbs in various stages of drying.
I keep small, loosely woven (for good air flow) baskets, in my kitchen during the growing season to put stray leaves in. This picture shows some basil leaves that have dried and some freshly picked leaves. I usually would not put fresh leaves in with dried ones. I did this so you could see what a difference there is.
Can’t resist giving you a sneak peak at what my small baskets of herbs looks like at harvest time. I have some nice pictures for our post on drying herbs. The plate on the right has dried oregano stems. I keep oregano and thyme on the stem until I use them. I want to retain as much of the natural oil in the leaves as I can. That’s why I let them dry on the stem, undisturbed. I have been adding stray leaves and stems to the baskets all summer long.
We will talk more about drying herbs in our next discussion. I am going to steer back to growing them for now. I left off at year one in my new home, and the window box on the back porch railing serving as my fresh basil garden. Now on to this, just passed, summer. I graduated to using pots to plant my herbs in, and used the deck of the back porch as my, less than formal, herb garden. The back porch gets quite a bit of sun during the day. My intention was to grow a variety of herbs that I commonly use, but I was very late planting. Basil plants are always pretty easy to find, even after the start of the growing season, so I easily found basil plants.
Basil plants, transplanted to a larger pot for the back porch. As you can see, they were pretty mature when they were purchased.
I had procrastinated long enough, so now I needed to hunt for some of the other herbs I usually grow. I wasn’t having a lot of luck. Then Ricky came to my rescue. He went to a store with a gardening department and while he was there, he found one thyme and two oregano plants for me.
This is a good start on my herb crop. Better late than never! A few good sized basil plants in one pot and a couple of newly transplanted oregano plants and a thyme plant that Ricky scored for me, in another. My back porch is facing south and gets straight on morning sun from the east, and a decent amount of afternoon sun.
At this point, I was still missing a couple of other herbs that I need to make my own Italian herb seasoning, but I add them in smaller amounts proportionately. If necessary, I can buy fresh cut, packaged herbs in the produce section of the grocery store, and dry them at home. My homemade seasoning is made with basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary and sage.
Have you seen our TOMATO SALAD recipe? Ricky and I went to a local farmers market to buy some fresh tomatoes for pictures and found some incredible heirloom tomatoes. They really showed their true colors in our pictures! Take a look. I also found a rosemary plant and a large pot of thyme there.
Only weeks have passed and look how much the oregano and thyme has grown! Both oregano and thyme are perennial plants in the New England area, meaning they will be dormant through the winter months outside, and come back in the spring. In this picture, the taller plants, in the back, are the oregano plants and the shorter sprawling plant in front is the thyme.
Now the only herb missing on the back porch, is sage. We are too far into the growing season for me to think I am going to find a sage plant. Looks like I will be buying fresh packaged sage from the grocery store produce section and drying it myself for my Italian seasoning mix.
In the meantime, I raided my son John’s back yard for pot of tarragon I saw sitting at the edge of his garden. He and I love bearnaise sauce on beef, so he knew he would reap the benefit of me adopting it. On to the back porch it went. Welcome home.
This is my beautiful tarragon plant, snuggled up on the back porch with other herbs. Tarragon is another perennial herb, meaning it will die off in the winter and come back in the spring, bigger and better than the year before. I had one in my old herb garden that grew about 3 feet tall. This is a baby plant. When the stems mature a bit, they will grow upright. This one is laden with leaves this year, despite the young age of the plant.
The weeks have flown by and the growing season is nearing the end. My potted herbs have endured a very hot, dry summer. They are so beautiful and aromatic. I scooted all the pots to the corner of the porch to take a picture of of my back porch garden. Maybe you will be able to relate to my full appreciation of what herbs have to offer to those who decide to grow them.
The basil plants are on the right side of the picture. In back of the basil, in the right corner of the porch against the railing, is the rosemary plant. The big pot in the left corner of the porch has the 2 oregano plants and the sprawling Greek thyme. On the bottom left corner, with the tiny lavender flowers is the lemon thyme. And last but not least, in the middle of them all is the tarragon plant I snagged from John.
All good things must come to an end. As the threat of frost is nearing, it’s time to give my herbs a haircut. I am going to take all the basil branches off and ditch the plants. But the other plants are going to get bigger and better next year. The rosemary plant will not take the harsh winter, but will live if I bring it in. My little rosemary plant will be a small shrub one day. I always grow rosemary in a pot so I can take it in. As the years go by I will have to transplant to larger pots. I had a rosemary “plant” so big I had to use a dolly to get it indoors. It literally had bark branches. It really was past it’s best production years, but I didn’t have the heart to let it die. So I wheeled it in every fall and out every spring.
✂ Get ready for a haircut guys ✂
And this is what it is all about. After a summer of fresh herbs, I am going to trim my perennial herbs, leaving a little growth on the bottom of each stem. My only annual herb is basil, which is a one season plant for New England outdoor growing.
It’s haircut day on the back porch. I am not going to cut the stems from the perennial plants all the way back to the soil. I am going to leave growth on. I don’t want to have a bunch of raw stems, with no growth to sustain it, going into winter. Also these plants are incredibly hardy when it comes to fighting off frost. I will be able to cut from them even after there is a chill in the air; just a snip here and there for the little cooking I will do with fresh herbs now that summer has waned.
After a summer of picking stems of basil for my kitchen, I still have a basket full for drying. It was a tough growing year, but I will easily have enough dried basil for my needs this year.
A basket full of basil, freshly cut from my back porch herb garden. The scent is indescribably delicious!
My perennial herbs, as seen below, are less plentiful. But I fully appreciate the harvest as it is. After all, my new perennial herbs are just babies.
The top left basket is full of cuttings from the lemon thyme plant. On the bottom left, in the coffee cup basket, is tarragon. The dark basket on the right has oregano at the front of the basket, a couple of spikes of rosemary sticking up through, and the cuttings in the back of the basket are from the smaller Greek thyme plant. which is the kind I will use in my Italian herb mix.
My array of home grown herbs does not include sage, which I will need if I want to make my usual mix of Italian seasoning. I am going to dry some store bought fresh sage.
BUT WAIT…
Have you read other posts that mention my oldest, best friend Doreen?
Well I was leaving her house one afternoon after stopping for tea, and I happened to glance in her garden as I was leaving… THERE IT WAS!
Peeking out from the the bottom of the pot is a sage plant, stretching out to get some light because it has been overshadowed by flat leaf parsley. And being the oldest best friend that she is, Doreen pulled the plant out and gave it to me.
Here are my few stems of fresh sage from Doreen. I put some dried sage leaves, from last year, in the bottom right corner to show what it looks like when dried. Sage leaves have a fuzzy short knap, almost like felt. I hope I got close enough for you to see that the leaves are rough and very grainy. If you are not sure you know what sage tastes like, think stuffing. Stuffing seasoning mixes, get a lot of their flavor from sage.
Okay, I am ready to start preparing my herbs for drying. That’s what we will be discussing in our next post on herbs.
And now, the growing season has passed. The baskets in the kitchen have been put away. The herbs I have harvested are in jars. The vibrant colors of autumn in New England have come and gone. We have gone from wearing sweaters to jackets. BUT LOOK….
My back porch still has life! My herbs stand steadfast, offering me a few fresh leaves for a soup, stew or stuffing. When I harvested, I left them a “winter coat” of their own leaves, so blunt cut stems were not exposed to winter conditions. Lined up for my picking pleasure, left to right against the railing, tarragon scoffed from my son John, the big pot holding the 2 oregano plants and thyme that Ricky found for me. From the farmer’s market where we found our heirloom tomatoes, rosemary on the right, and lemon thyme in front. The rosemary is coming inside, but the other plants will face winter, just as they are. They don’t need anything from me. They will pop right up to greet me next spring, to get bigger and better, ready to serve.