Herb Garden 2010

HELLO! I'm Back!
Well, I haven't really been away.
Just not able to be online long enough to keep things updated here.
I have been busy as usual, but hope to be able to get back to posting recipes & things about our garden.
We've been gardening for years, but this is only my third year to have an herb garden. I love having an herb garden. Love it!
So here's the first garden update of 2010, specifically an herb garden update.

Today I havested my first load of Chamomile this year. I enjoy drying the flowers & having nice chamomile tea with honey in the cold weather.

You can see that our chives have flowered. Some folks like to add these flowers to a salad. Our 7 year old son likes to eat them right off the plant. Wow, it gives him BAD BREATH! LOL

You'll be able to see that I haven't weeded yet.
Actually, I haven't done anything in the herb garden yet, except pick chamomile flowers today.
You can see, it is quite a mess. But the chamomile are flurishing & flowering. The cilantro (to the left of the chamomile) seems to grow so quickly that it goes right to flowering & then to seed. I'll probably just pull them up, because I still have tons of corriander seed. Tons! You can't see the thyme, it's right behind the camomile, & I have plenty of it. Ha Ha, yes, I have plenty of thyme, but not plenty of time. It is flowering & looks beautiful with all its little pink flowers, & smells divine. There's a sage plant back there too, & the fennel is back also. I hope it flowers & goes to seed because I use a lot of fennel seeds. I also have weeds flurishing & I hope to get those out of there soon. :) The dill is coming back, and the basil has not arrived yet. I thought it was annual so I bought new seed last year, but the basil ended up returning. So we'll see if it comes back this year.

We have also planted most of our regular garden. We have planted our rows of corn & green beans, our hills of zucchini, 24 tomato plants plus 1 yellow tomato plant & 1 cherry tomato plant. We also planted our green pepper plants, broccoli, & cabbage. I planted half a row of radishes, & will finish the row in a week or so. That way we don't get all our radishes at once. We still have some planting to do. We've just been doing a little here & a little there, & we are almost done. We need to plant our beet seeds, & find a new place to plant cucumbers. We also still need to plant our onions.

Sorry I've not been able to keep up here. I have taken lots of food pictures & hope to post some recipes soon.
Tomorrow we're going to grill chicken, & I'm make KFC cole slaw this evening to go with it.

Our Garden is In!

Thankfully! We have planted our garden! There has been so much rain here that we are behind on the planting. We could have planted earlier in the weekend, but we had something kind of big going on here.

Our daughter graduated from high school!

They had a big homeschool graduation on Saturday afternoon, & then the ladies at our church gave her a wonderful reception afterwords. It was really something special.

We started working on our garden on Memorial Day.

Here is the row of green peppers. We planted this row over by our 'not doing so well strawberries' & where we plant our cucumbers (they vine up that trellis).

Next to that we planted two rows of spinach. We have never planted spinach before. I love to try growing new things.

Here is the west end of our garden. Last year the corn was here, this year it's the tomatoes! It is three rows across the garden. And then we do have another row running longways. Boy, these tomato plants look so tiny.

Here's that big sage plant in my herb garden. I did read that you can let this thing bloom & it won't hurt anything. The blooms are very pretty & the bees love them. So once it's done blooming I'll trim it back.

Here's a picture of the herb garden. In this picture I still haven't done a thing to it
(but I did a lot to it this evening, just no pictures yet).

The thyme is also blooming. I'll do just like the sage, I'll let it bloom then trim it back.

The cilatnro is coming up all over the place! There was a lot of cilantro growing up in the middle of the regular garden....about 20 feet away from its little plot! I have already picked a bunch & have it hanging to dry. The cilantro plot is in the lower right hand corner. And in the dill. And in the camamile. And in the parsley. And in the chives. LOL

The bottom left is the parsley. I have already been picking it & using it in recipes.

The dill is on the far side & is coming up all over the place too. I love dill.

Here's another shot of just the cilantro.
Hello cilantro! I'll not let you go to seed this year before picking a bunch of you for drying. I have so much corriander seed & I don't know what to do with it. LOL

Tonight I did quite a bit of work in the herb garden.
I added a new little patch & planted oregano. This is new for me this year. I love oregano & cook with it a lot so I wanted to be sure and plant it this year.
I also added 1 fennel plant. I'll let it go to seed & harvest those. I love to add fennel seeds to pizza & to meatball sandwiches. YUM.

I also cleared all of the dill growing up in the basil spot. Basil is annual & so I have to re-plant.
Here is the dill weed-weeds that I pulled out of the basil patch.

That's a lot of dill already! I'll be using some of this fresh in the next few days & then drying the rest. I love dill in cucumber sauce. It's one of my favorite things.

I forgot to mention what we planted in the regular garden.

24 tomato plants
8 green pepper plants
4 broccoil plants
4 cabbage plants
4 cauliflower plants
1 jalapeno plant
4 chili plants (new for us)
3 rows of sweet corn
2 rows of green beans
1 row of radishes
2 small rows of spinach (new for us)
2 small rows of cucumbers
5 hills of zucchini
1/2 row onions
4 ice berg lettuce plants (new for us)

Oh, another thing, I found 8 broccoli plants coming up vonunteer! So I replanted them in the corner of the garden before my husband disced & tilled. A few got trampled by accident, but I do have 4 plants left. So I need to find a place to add those. It will be fun to see if they produce. I let one of the plants go to seed last fall & I meant to harvest the seed (I've never done that before & I'd like to learn).
I forgot & they froze, but I reckon some still fell to the ground & did what they are supposed to do!

I'll try not to stay away so long. We've just been so busy with graduation stuff, & other things that this site has suffered. I'll try to get online more! I have tons of food pictures that I have taken. I hope to get on here in the next few days & post my new hamburger buns that I've been making. Oh, they are SO GOOD!

It's Garden Time!

We haven't planted yet, but that will be coming soon! I'm looking so forward to the garden of 2009.
Here's our main garden, just brimming with potential...and our 6 year old son's construction spot. He calls it his "soft dirt" & he plans construction stuff with it all summer. As you can see, he has already started on this year's work.The spearmint that I planted last year under the propane tank is already growing. I dried some of it last fall & I've really enjoyed having some in my tea. I had heard that peppermint was harder to go, & sure enough, the peppermint that I planted last year in a pot didn't return. That's ok, I really do like the spearmint too.

And here is my herb garden. Now keep in mind that I haven't done anything to it yet. No weeding, no nothin'. Last year was my first year having an herb garden. I really enjoyed it, & I really enjoyed cooking with some of my own dried herbs over the winter. Everything is coming back up on it's own, except the basil, & I'm pretty sure that's the only annual I planted.

Here's the flat leaf parsley. Wow, it's really coming up in thick bunches. I wonder if I can seperate it at all, so I can spread it out better. I don't know if it would handle that or not. Well, I might try it.

And my oh my look at the cilantro! Not only is it coming up well in it's little square plot, it is also in the walkway, I spotted one in the parsley, & some where the camomile goes! Cilantro is the only one that I didn't dry last fall & I hated it that I missed my window of opportunity to do that. It went to seed (corriander) before I realized it was time to do it. I still have a large jar of corriander seed. I need to find some kind of recipe to use it. This year I will dry some cilantro so we can enjoy it all year.

Here's my big sage plant. Because I'm new at this, I didn't know what to do with it over the winter. I bet I was supposed to cut it back. I thought it dried out over the winter. But now that it is warmer weather, the leaves are green again & appear to be normal.

You can see in this next picture that the stems are pretty "woody". Inside new leaves & stems are growing. I bet I'm supposed to cut this back so the new growth can grow. What do you think? My hand smelled like sage after taking this picture.
Here is the thyme & it has the same story as the sage. I didn't cut it back at the end of the year. I dried a ton of it, but still left so much to just stay in the garden over the winter. It seemed like the leaves all dried out in the winter, but like the sage, all the thyme is green again. This is the thyme left over from last year. Like the sage, there is new growth coming up under it, so I may need to trim these back too.

Just look at all the thyme I have! ( I wish I had as much TIME as I have thyme. LOL)

Here is the camomile coming back too. I have enjoyed my camomile tea over the winter. I just had some the other night. I like it with some sugar & a bit of honey....it's soooo good. There's also some cilantro coming up in camomile. I hate to say this, but there will be quite a bit of cilantro that will be pulled like weeds! LOL
Of course the chives are up & growing too! I've already been snipping some & adding it to salads & to sour cream on baked potatoes.

You can't tell what this is yet, but it is the dill. One of my favorite things to use dill is the cucumber sauce. Love that. I also made a dill bread that had cottage cheese in it. I never got around to posting that recipe, maybe I'll do that soon. About the only thing recognizable in this picture is the dandilion, LOL, but I can vouch that there really is a lot of dill there.

Here is the cucumber fence my husband made last year. We are really looking forwad to seeing cucumbers vine their way up this fence!
I really liked everything I planted in the herb garden last year. The only thing that didn't come up was the lavender. I think this year I would like to add oregano, & maybe fennel. I've never used fresh fennel, but I do use fennel seeds on pizza & in meatballs. I'll have to see about that though.

Well, there is my first garden post of the year.

Hopefully I can get back to the computer more often than I have lately.

Questions:

Do any of you know about the sage & thyme? Do you think I should cut it back so the fresh leaves can grow?

Kitchen Tip Tuesdays

My Kitchen tip this week is drying herbs.
First, I have to say, that I took this picture just so I could say....
"If I could save Thyme in a bottle".....Sorry. LOL I could not help myself!

In that picture you can also see the dill seed that I have saved. And the tomatoes are still comin'. You can see that they are not as high quality, but after 4 or 5 really HUGE pickins', it's a big blessing that they are even still producing!

I have to admit that I am brand new to herb drying. So if anyone sees any glaring mistakes, please correct me.
To dry herbs, tie them up in small bundles like this picture.
I have here 3 bundles of parsley, 3 bundles of thyme, & 2 bundles of basil.


Next, take small brown paper bags & 3-hole punch them for air holes. Be sure to write on the bag which bundle you will put in it. Place one bundle in each bag & tie it closed. Now you can hang them up to dry.
Some other herbs I did not put in bags because the bundles were BIG.
That would be for the dill & the corriander. I did tie them in bundles & let them dry on a sheet on a table. I have already picked all of the dill seed, & it filled a half pint jar (1st picture next to the thyme in the bottle *snicker*). Hey, a half pint of dill seed is a bunch! It took me what seemed like forever to pick them all!
And here are the corriander seeds, mostly still in the bundles.


Those seeds are tiny. I really hope to get them done by the end of this week. I have a pint jar already more than half full.

The herbs I bagged above are still not dry, as I only bagged them a couple weeks ago.
I did some sage, peppermint, & spearmint more than a month ago so I checked them a few minutes ago to see if they're ready. You really can't tell by this picture, but they seem to be completely dry.
Here is one bundle of sage & one bundle of peppermint:


I picked the sage leaves off the stem & put them in a jar. I read somewhere that you should leave the leaves intact instead of crumbling them to put in the jar. They retain their flavor longer if you put them in your jar as whole leaves. Then you can crumble them when you are ready to put them into your cooking.
I will probably leave the lid off this jar for a while, just to make sure they really are completely dry. If you put a lid on & there is still moisture, they will mold.
I bet some of the sage from this jar of dried sage leaves will be used in dressing on Thanksgiving!


I put the peppermint back into its bag, because I have to find some more jars.
I think I may have a half pint jar in the dishwasher, because we finished off another jar of green pepper jelly today. LOL But frankly, we've never been this low on jars! I think I've canned more this year than ever.
I think half pints might be best for the seeds we've harvested, but the dried herbs may be better housed in pint jars. That jar with the sage is a half pint, & one bundle filled it. I think I have 4 more bundles of sage drying in bags, so I'm gonna need a bigger jar. ("We're gonna need a bigger boat.")

Also, a note on the basil. I'm not sure how well it dries, because when I see it mentioned online, mostly people put it in the food processor with olive oil, & then freeze it in ice cube trays to store in the freezer. I may try that, but I was assuming that is to use to make pesto. I've only had pesto once in my life. It was the nastiest stuff I think I've ever tasted! It was years ago at a restaurant, on a mushroom sandwich. I do love basil on my tomatoes, so I'm wondering if maybe that day their pesto happened to be bad? Maybe I do like it but don't know it because of that experience? Maybe I'll try it again sometime. But for now, I'm drying mine.

To see more Kitchen Tips Tuesdays please visit Tammy's site.
And now, I'm off to find a certain song to put on my playlist. It's just perfect for this post!
ROTFLOL! Turn your volume up so you can hear it!
(P.S. I have since removed the Time in a bottle song..lol )

Camomile

I am loving camomile!

It smells so wonderful. It smells kind of like apples. I pick the flowers off every couple days & put them on this saucer to dry. This is about how much I get when I pick. The size of this plate is pretty small, it's a saucer for my tea cups.
In a few days when they have dried, I put them in this little half pint jar. I leave the lid off for continued drying.

I keep both of these on top of my microwave. And every few days I pick & dry some more.

I've only had 1 cup of plain camomile tea, that was back when they first started blooming. The directions for camomile tea are:

Use 1 T. fresh camomile flowers

or 1 t. dried flowers

Steep in boiling water for 5-7 minutes. Add sugar or honey to taste.

I drink regular hot tea in the mornings, & sometimes I will add just 1 dried flower to my cup, & it really flavors it so nicely. It's wonderful! This is probably how I will usually drink it. Although, a cup of nice camomile tea in the evening during the fall & winter is sure relaxing! I'm looking forward to using my own, instead of the Celestial Seasonings.

:)

Italian Herb Bread

This is probably one of my favorite breads. I used fresh herbs out of our herb garden, but if you'd like, you could use 1 T. dried basil & 1 T.oregano instead.

The first time I made it with fresh herbs, I did go a little overboard. I wanted to use everything I could! LOL In this picture you can see what I used:

parsley, basil, chives, sage, thyme, & even some cilantro. I probably should call this loaf "many herb loaf". LOL Now when I make it I don't use chives & cilantro. Those are good in bread, I just don't use them in this Ialian Herb Bread anymore.

I love how bread looks & smells when it's rising.

Italian Herb Bread

2 packages yeast (each package is 2 1/2 t. )

2 C. warm water

2 T. white sugar

1/4 C. olive oil

1 T. salt

1 T. dried basil

1 T. dried oregano

OR fresh herbs of your choice like basil, oregano, thyme, sage, etc...

1 t. garlic powder

1 t. onion powder

1/2 C. grated Romano or Parmesan cheese

6 C. bread flour.

Mix yeast, water, & sugar in bowl & set aside until foamy.

In a large bowl add all of the ingredients except a couple cups of flour. Add in the yeast mixture & stir well. Continue adding the rest of the flour. When it's too stiff to stir, turn out onto table & knead it. Knead for 5-10 minutes or until smooth & silky. Place in a bowl oiled with more olive oil, & turn dough to coat. Cover with towel & set in warm place to rise until double, about 60-90 minutes. Punch down dough to release air. Divide into thirds. Shape into 3 loaves & place into greased 9X5 bread pans. Cover with towel & allow to rise again, for 30-60 minutes until doubled.

Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Remove loaves from pans and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes before slicing.

I can NEVER wait, so I slice off the heal, butter it, & eat it while I'm waiting for that 15 minutes. LOL

My family really likes Texas Toast, so sometimes I slice this into thick slices, butter each side, & bake in the oven for 7-14 minutes (depending how dark you want it toasted, we like it toasted, but still soft in the middle), you can flip them half way if you like. Here it is as Texas Toast:

On this day, we had it with Johnny Marzetti & cottage cheese. Oh yum...

And a few days later, it really kicked up a bologna sandwich!

Sliced Baked Potatoes & Herb Garden Update

I have had this recipe for a while, & just got around to making it a few days ago. I got it in a mailer with recipes on pretty cards, & they want you to buy the complete set to either put in their special recipe box or special binder. I never purchase these things, but I like to go through the recipes that they send you for free.

This Sliced Baked Potatoes recipe really caught my eye. It's pretty & tasty too.

Sliced Baked Potatoes

4 medium even potatoes (I used 6)

1 t. salt

olive oil

2-3 T. melter butter

2-3 T. chopped fresh herbs such as parsley, chives, thyme, or sage.

OR...2-3 t. dried herbs of your choice

4 T. grated Cheddar cheese

1 1/2 T. Parmesan cheese

1. Peel potatoes if the skin is tough, otherwise just scrub & rinse them.

2. Cut potatoes into thin slices but not all the way through. Use a handle of a spoon (I used a wooden spoon) to prevent the knife from cutting all the way through.

3. Put potatoes in a baking dish. Fan them slightly.

4. Rub each potato with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt & the herb you desire. Drizzle with melted butter.

5. Bake at 425 for about 50 minutes.

6. Remove from oven & sprinkle with the cheeses.

7. Bake potatoes for another 10-15 minutes until lightly browned, cheese are melted and potatoes are soft inside (check for doneness with fork).

We all really liked these potatoes. I had 2 left over & we ate them cold for lunch the next day. Really good!

When I re-discovered this recipe card while cleaning out a kitchen cabinet, I was thrilled to see it & happy to have another chance to use the herbs in my new herb garden. I used everything the recipe called for. It called for herbs such as parsley, chives, thyme or sage. I missed the OR in there, & I used them ALL. LOL

I do have parsley, chives, thyme, & sage in my garden, so I used them. LOL

I love going out to the herb garden & snipping a handfull of different herbs to use in my cooking, and it smells WONDERFUL. Actually, it smells pretty good when I'm sitting in it weeding it. I have really enjoyed having an herb garden & I will put one out every year, God willing. I have been making an herb bread that we all like that I need to post sometime soon. I need to figure out exactly how & when to harvest & start drying them. I've been picking the camomile flowers daily & setting them on a saucer to dry. When they get pretty dried, I put them into a small 1/2 pint jar that I am keeping the lid off for continued drying. I popped one dried flower into my hot tea this morning & it really flavored it nicely! Also, the dill & cilantro are past drying, I think, because they have flowered & are starting to produce their seeds. I'd like to harvest the dill seed & the corriander seeds, so I'll need to figure out how to do that.

The sage plant is huge, & the basil & parsley have really grown thick too. I got some small brown paper bags, & I'm planning on tying some sprigs together & hanging in these bags to dry. I think that's how you're supposed to do it anyway. LOL

I have a spice rack that I have within reach on the wall for when I'm cooking, but I think I'll store my garden herbs in pint or half pint jars.

Here's a current picture of the herb garden. The most current one I had was over a month old, so I ran out & snapped this picture. It's the only shot I got because the batteries went dead. You can see the dill has a few sprigs that are almost as tall as the corn. And the cilantro (corriander) is so full & heavy that it is falling over. Also, the lemon balm was not doing well at all in the hanging basket, so my dh planted it in the ground up by the house, & we hung a planter of impatients in it's place. You can't really see the thyme, but it's doing very well too.

I'd like to add garlic, & in this area I believe I'm to start plants in the fall, about 6 weeks before the first frost so we can harvest in the spring.

I have been so pleased with this new herb garden! It was really easy, & MOST of it was planted from seeds.

Garden Update- Tomato plants & Corn

Everything is now growing by leaps and bounds, Praise the LORD!
Here's some pictures to compare.
Here's the tomato plants at the very end of May.

I'm standing behind this tomato plant to show it's size. I'm short, 5'2 when standing my tallest, LOL, & in this picture you can barely see the top of my head.


Here's the corn at the end of May.

And here I am hiding in it yesterday. LOL

And here's the most recent picture of the herb garden. I am so pleased with it! I haven't really used any cilantro, although I want to! I've used the dill, basil, thyme, & parsley quite a bit.

The sage plant is huge! It was one little measly plant, but now it's practially a bush.

I know I'm going to have to figure out a drying system soon, so I can use these through the winter. Oh, I've also made Italian Bread a few times using quite a few of these herbs. We really like that bread! I'll post the recipe soon.

Camomile

My Camomile is starting to bloom!
These are the flowers I picked last evening. I was suprised that they really do have an apple scent. I was going to dry them & start a jar of dried camomile for tea. But I read online that you use 1 teaspoon of dried camomile or 1 Tablespoon of fresh flowers for a cup of tea. You can't tell from the picture because it's such a close up, but it was about a tablespoon of flowers. Well, my throat has been hurting & I'm starting a cold, so instead of drying them, I put on the teakettle & had a cup of tea! It was really pretty good! I added a little sugar & even a bit of honey. It was very good.

Garden Update

The Herb garden has been weeded!
Here it is from the front.

And here it is from the back. You can see that our 5 year old son has been helping me collect rocks (right out of the garden!) to put boarders around the different areas.
Here's the basil after it got weeded. I'm pleased with how many of the seeds came up!

Herb Garden

Here it is. My new herb garden. You won't be able to see much yet, since we just planted. But, I did water each area so you can 'see' where everything is. I am standing in the last row of strawberries looking north toward the herb garden, & then the corn is planted on past the herb garden. It won't be long & you won't be able to miss the corn!




I'll start at the shepherd's hook in the middle & go around clockwise.
Around the shepherd's hook I have planted chamomile seeds. Next to that in a square area I planted cilantro/coriander seeds. There in the bottom right hand corner Italian flat leaf parsley seeds are planted. Next is 1 sage plant, then 1 rosemary plant in a pot (thanks Lori!), & then 2 chive plants. Next to the 2 chive plants I have a thin row of chive seeds planted. That row goes to the western most part of the herb garden. Then on the west edge I have a funny shaped area where I planted some lavender seeds. Next to that is a square patch where I planted dill seeds.
And then the last square area, on the left of the shepherd's hook, I planted 1 basil plant, & then some basil seeds. Oh, I almost forgot the thyme. The thyme seeds are planted right in that middle square.

Now I need to buy some lemon balm & plant it in a basket to hang on that hook, & then I'm ready to see what comes up! Hopefully, everything will come up.


I'm really looking forward to this!



Here's another view from the east looking west:
Hopefully where I've watered gives you an idea of where everything is. And, (lol) I did press in little sticks to mark my sections. I'll pull them up as soon as the plants start growing.
Here's the sage, rosemary, & chive plants:





And here's my little lone basil plant, waiting for all the little fellow basil seeds to come up.
And some rocks. We always have rocks in our garden. A barn used to sit in this spot over 50 years ago, so you wouldn't believe some of this things that we find. Once we found an Indianapolis license plate from the 40's.