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CHAPTER 1
An Introduction to Growing and Using Herbal Plants
Since the beginning of human history, we have needed plants for our very survival. And from the earliest days, humankind has learned that cultivating plants was often easier and more reliable than harvesting wild plants. Our knowledge and skills have developed through the years, so that we choose plants for our gardens that are not only useful, but also beautiful. Although we still need plants for survival, we also count on them to help us enhance our lifestyles. Indeed, the history of our relationship with the garden is constantly evolving. Its roots are very long — and still growing.
Remembering Our Roots
Through time, we have learned how to use plants for food and medicine, to make them into textiles and structures, and for our personal needs. Through the centuries, gardens have maintained their usefulness, but they have also become places that stimulate our sense of beauty and well-being. Growing a garden brings pleasure, the prospect of improving one's health, and the abundance of harvest. A garden can also contribute to the health of the earth, when it's grown in a sustainable, earthfriendly way. I ask you to explore the richness of herb gardening as a lifestyle and as a way to do your part to improve the well-being of our glorious planet.
The tradition of cultivating plants for a specific need has always been an integral part of human history. Early on we used plants to survive; in our more recent history, we've come to use plants also for the pleasure of improving our lifestyle. As time continues, we begin to understand that we humans are not the only living beings depending on these plants, and we are beginning to develop the wisdom to be good caretakers, in order to ensure that plant populations thrive. This brings to the forefront of our consciousness an important concept: It is not our intended purpose to control the world, but rather to exist in partnership with all other living creatures. My question to you is simply this: Have you thought about the positive impact you can have on the earth by simply growing an herb garden?
Let me share a story, one you will most likely recognize.
In the beginning of humankind, we honored our relationship with the green nation. We used plants for food and medicine, to make clothing and practical utensils, and as an integral part of our spiritual traditions. We carefully gathered and thanked each plant in anticipation of how we would use it. Later, we learned to cultivate some of the plants, primarily those we used for food. Other plants, such as those with medicinal properties, we still gathered from the wild. As time passed, the larger percentage of the plants we used were cultivated.
Now well into the twenty-first century, I look around and see more and more people returning to their roots. That sense of improving one's lifestyle through individual empowerment continues to grow in popularity. People of all ages are holding on to the desire to take more control over the foods they eat, their health care, the clothing and household linens they want to use ... the list goes on and on.
We are all concerned about the quality of the things we use in our daily lives. We want to make sure we have plenty of options that reflect our preferences. Each of us seems to be seeking personalized ways to enrich the day-to-day tasks of living, whether that be cooking, bathing, taking care of our health, or simply making life fun for our family and even our pets.
People everywhere are more conscious of how their lifestyle choices affect the greater reality of life on this earth. We are becoming acutely aware that our decisions as consumers have very serious impacts on the sustainability of our planet, our personal quality of life, and the quality of life of all the other members of the human society in this complicated world we call home.
More and more of us are also thinking about all the ways we can improve how we live. We are taking greater responsibility for the richness of our seniors' lives, the completeness of our adult lives, and the future quality of our children's and grandchildren's lives. As crazy as it may sound, growing and using herbs fits perfectly into a responsible and sustainable way of living healthy lives and protecting the future.
Let's Start in the Garden
Everything begins in the simplest (yet also most complicated) place, one of pure magic and positive energy: the garden.
The decision to plant an herb garden of some kind — be it a formal knot garden, a patio container garden, a few pots of herbs on a windowsill or a countertop, or herbs tucked into an existing garden — is a huge step toward enriching your lifestyle.
Growing herbs is a practical idea. It means you will have on hand the fresh herbs you need for cooking. Perhaps you want to find natural ways to support your health and would like to have a ready supply of medicinal herbs for the medicine chest. If you drink herbal teas, your goal may be to ensure that your teas are of the highest quality. And for those of us who are concerned about our budgets, growing herbs gives us the abundance of harvest at very little expense.
Although practicality is important to me, I also choose to grow herbs for their simple beauty and for the richness they add to my life through their colors and textures and fragrance. I love how they look in my gathering spaces, on the back porch and in my kitchen sitting area. They impart a sense of welcome, comfort, and good energy!
Nourishing Our Bodies and Our Earth
As we plant our gardens, we must cultivate them in a nurturing and honoring way. We must learn to grow these plants organically, without synthetic chemicals. This means using great discrimination in what types of fertilizers we choose, as well as finding the most effective and least harmful ways to control pests, diseases, and weed problems. We must learn how to nurture the soil, use water in a conservative way, and take advantage of companion/complementary planting. It is equally important to honor the wild creatures that give us a helping hand with our gardening: the honeybees and bats pollinating our sage flowers, the wild birds eating caterpillars off our comfrey leaves, the microbes aerating our soil.
As we create garden schemes and designs, we must learn to think a bit more like a plant and a little less like a person. I challenge you to think about where each plant grows in nature, the ideal place of its own choosing. Would a plant choose a shady place near a stream or would it find a sunny, gravelly slope more to its liking? What will a seed need in order to sprout? Maybe it requires a harsh winter, or perhaps it must land in a dark place, like under a fallen leaf, before it finds the right circumstances to germinate. If we learn the personality of each plant, we can then decide how best to incorporate it into our gardens.
Gardening for the Soul
Whether you garden for pure pleasure or for practicality, growing herbs is important and enjoyable. It may be a way for you to improve your health by taking advantage of the medicinal benefits of the plants, or to offer healing remedies to your family and friends. And the act of gardening itself is therapeutic and healing.
Organic gardening most certainly will be an opportunity for you to nurture the piece of the earth where you live. It is a chance for you to make a grassroots statement about how important it is to have organically grown herbs in your foods, teas, and medicines (and anything else you use them for). It is a way for you to immediately affect the earth's environment, simply by growing your own herbs instead of buying herbs imported from distant places that require a huge carbon input to get them from where they grow to your table. This type of social responsibility is easy and painless, and produces positive results on many levels.
Encouraging an Herbal Lifestyle
Growing herbs is only one piece of the pie. As you use herbs to enrich your own lifestyle, you will also be leading by example. Every meal you prepare with herbs and serve to company may inspire someone else to expand his culinary creativity. Every herbal foot soak you give to someone else is a wonderful gift, and because she enjoyed it so much, she may just turn around and gift someone else with a foot soak. Each time you encourage a child to grow an herb and then make it into a necklace for dress-up, you give her life skills as a gardener and nourish her imagination ... both wonderful! As you intentionally bring herbs into your own life, just think how many other people you will be teaching through your own living example.
Picking and Choosing
I'm often asked how I decide which herbs to grow. There are many factors involved. You might want to plant a garden based on personal health issues. You may like to cook a specific type of cuisine and want to have appropriate herbs for those dishes. Always begin with plants for which you have a personal liking, plants you think you will use the most.
In selecting the plants for this book, I wanted to share those for which I have a special fondness, but also plants that are broadly useful and fun to grow. I like a lot of variety in my life and hence I love having lots of herbs to choose from. I'm hoping that my enthusiasm for variety will be contagious. Be prepared: As you read and use this book, you will probably fall in love with many of these plants. Keep in mind, however, that this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of herbs you could consider growing as you travel on your gardening journey.
I also give consideration to plants for which it isn't always easy to find growing information. My experience has often been one of frustration as I struggled to discover how to design an herb garden, and to propagate and organically grow and maintain herbal plants. But I have learned to turn my frustration into an adventure. Now I want to save you some of that frustration and encourage you to become adventurous in your herb gardening experiences.
Enjoy the journey!
CHAPTER 2
Selecting Plants and Designing Your Garden
As every gardener — seasoned and beginner — knows, the next best thing to actually planting the garden is designing and planning it. This is certainly one of my favorite parts of the process. There are many things to ponder, like how big it will be, whether it will be located in the sun or shade, what kinds of colors it will display. So many possibilities! Still, as creative as designing and planning are, there are some guidelines to consider that will make a project come together smoothly. And so you begin ...
Discovering Your Garden Personality
The first question you must answer is a personal one. What type of garden personality are you? Do you like a very formal garden? Maybe you're a practical-garden personality, or perhaps you're a wild-garden type.
It is also possible that the garden space itself has some personality traits that need to be considered. Do you want this garden to be easily accessible from the kitchen? You might want to plant a scented medicinal garden beneath a bathroom or bedroom window. Perhaps you would prefer to grow herbs in containers on a deck or balcony.
Usually the more formal the garden is, the more time will be required to care for it. I always recommend a bit of soul-searching before designing a garden. It will bring you little pleasure if you design a garden for yourself that fits another's garden personality. (If you are asked to design a garden for someone else, keep your own personality to yourself and be sensitive to the other person's preferences.) This is also the most appropriate time to do a reality check with yourself. Ask yourself these crucial but sometimes difficult questions: "How much time do I plan to spend caring for this garden? Is that a reasonable expectation for the type of garden I hope to plant and for the lifestyle I'm currently leading?" The answers to these questions will be different at various times in your life. The garden you plant today may be very different from the one you plant five years from now.
For example, when my daughter was young, I grew many herbs that could be used for children's illnesses, like lemon balm for symptom relief of common viruses and spearmint for tummyaches. I also offered a corner of the garden space to M'lissa, for her to plant her own herbs. She grew chamomile for tea, violas to snack on (they are delicious, you know), and woolly lamb's ears for soothing skinned knees.
Now that I no longer have a small child at home, my garden has taken on a different face. My garden today features red clover for supporting my bone health as I get older and plantain to soothe an angry bee sting. Because I love to cook, I grow lots of culinary herbs. And still there are all colors of violas, because they are delicious and beautiful after all! I am passionate about growing my own food gardens and through the years the gardens have become an intermingled blend of herbs growing alongside strawberries, radicchio, and climbing beans of all sorts. Ten years from now, I'm sure my garden will take on a different character yet again, perhaps with more containers or planter boxes as I become less inclined to crawl around on my knees to weed in my elder years. Gardens are, and should be, flexible to change as our lifestyles shift.
Siting the Garden
In order to design your garden, you must first determine where in your yard it will be. Sit quietly for a moment and observe the potential areas. Consider these questions:
* What existing features are in the area? Are there buildings or fences, trees and shrubs, or maybe a stream?
* What will border the garden space — a patio, lawn, woodland?
* What type of light does each area get? Is it in full shade, in sun, a bit of both?
* Do you plan to plant in beds, in rows, or in containers?
* Is the existing soil decent or will you need to prepare it more extensively?
* Is the location visually pleasing, or is it most important that it just be a practical space?
I find it's always wise to answer these questions as best I can while I'm sitting in the proposed garden space, where I can see and feel the situation. I take detailed notes about all I observe. These are very helpful to me during the design process.
Planning for Easy Access
Whether you are establishing a brand-new garden or integrating herbs into an existing bed, easy access is key. Several factors should be considered at this point. First and foremost, is the garden in a place where you can work in it easily and harvest from it on a whim? Many times I've listened to the same story: that a garden was planted and it turned out to be quite lovely, "but I never seem to use any of the herbs. They're just not handy." Being able to pop into the garden to pick some basil or heartsease flowers enables you to use fresh basil in your spaghetti sauce and to serve a salad dressed with beautiful edible flowers. Ease of harvesting herbs is important. Often in our busy lives we spend only short bits of time working in the garden; if the garden is located conveniently, then all is well. If not, the weeds tend to gain the upper hand and the mint begins to ramble beyond its allocated space.
Considering the logistics of access before the garden is planted will make your life much easier. Discovering after the garden is planted that a key factor doesn't work very well is one of my most frustrating gardening experiences. As an example, imagine that you planted a glorious garden only to discover that there isn't easy access to a hose for watering. Or perhaps you put the garden in your dog's favorite running location and he isn't willing to "give way" to your garden. These are frustrations that usually happen to all gardeners at some time in their gardening career, but taking a bit of time ahead of the actual planting to problem-solve will mean far fewer of these kinds of gardening difficulties.
If you think about these challenges after the garden is in place, you'll find yourself grumbling as you drag heavy hoses around the yard. And you certainly don't want to be pushing a rototiller all over the place, trying to figure out how to access a new garden area without causing damage to trees and fences, for example. Just imagine how entertaining that would be for onlookers, and how disastrous it would be for your garden preparation!
Determining Size
Once you know where the garden will be, measure the space with a tape measure. Be reasonable in determining the size of your garden. All of us have eyes that are bigger than our abilities or our budget when it comes to planning a beautiful garden. It's no great pleasure to prepare a huge garden space and discover that it's too much to care for, or that it will be too expensive to plant the entire area.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Homegrown Herbs"
by .
Copyright © 2011 Tammi Hartung.
Excerpted by permission of Storey Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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