go herban.

I often feel this tug to live far out from all the chaos of the city. A few acres of land, peace and quiet, and infinite possibilities for horticultural freedom in my yard! Then I think about the great connectivity we have in the city. Friends stop by because they're in the area. My daughter & I can take spontaneous walks with neighbors. We have great jobs that aren't over an hour away. We interact with ethnic & socio-economic diversity. We can grab legitimately good Mediterranean, or Vietnamese, or Indian, or farm-to-table food with friends any time we want to. And the city is ALIVE. I love that.

So once I snap back to reality, my goal is to find ways to integrate those dreamy aspects I love about that wide open space into the more limited space I have at home. One great way to do this is through planting a variety of herbs in my urban yard. They are versatile, useful, and add to the biodiversity in my area. In addition, many herbs are easy to grow, perennial, cold-hardy, or a combination of these traits. Beneficial AND easy? That's a win-win for my urban lifestyle.

Sometimes I think I only benefit from herbs that I use to add or enhance the flavor in my food. But in addition to delicious flavor, herbs are handy for the following reasons too:

* Food for bees
* Attracting beneficial insects to your garden or landscape
* Deter unwanted insects (ex. lemongrass for mosquitos)
* Medicinal use (teas, tinctures, poultices, infused oils)
* Used as cut flowers or as greenery in arrangements
* Beautify your landscape
* Aromatic (perfumes, cover odors)
* For coloring as a dye
* Grown indoors as plant therapy (Read here about the physical and mental benefits of indoor plants.)

{chives can have beautiful flowers like these}

Now that you're completely convinced that growing herbs in an urban setting is absolutely a grand idea, here are some great herbs to get started with...

borage
Borage refills with nectar every 2 minutes, so it is great for attracting and feeding honey bees and other beneficial pollinators. It's easy to grow from seed and has small but beautiful blue flowers. Borage can be applied externally as a poultice for inflammatory swellings, or taken internally as a diuretic, for fever or pulmonary issues, and to promote activity in the kidneys (Mrs. M. Grieve, A Modern Herbal: https://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/b/borage66.html).

downside: Borage is an annual, so it will only stick around for one growing season.

 {image from http://honeylove.org/tag/borage/}

rosemary
Rosemary is great for culinary use. I love to use it on roasted root vegetables (sweet potatoes, carrots) or even in a cocktail. Its sprigs can be used in flower arrangements as aromatic greenery. This herb also helps relieve indigestion, muscle pain and arthritis, and even sweetens the breath. It is a cold-hardy perennial, which makes it easy to grow and keep alive for multiple years of enjoyment.

downside: It's best to grow this one from cuttings. Seeds are slow to germinate.

lavender
Lavender flowers and leaves can be used for cooking. This Provencal-inspired recipe is delicious (I can personally attest!): http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Roasted-Potato-With-Lavender. While that potato recipe uses the leaves, this beautiful hot toddy utilizes the lavender flowers: http://www.decotartelette.com/lavender-orange-hot-toddy/.

The U.S. Lavender Growers Association states that bees love lavender in bloom, so if you keep bees or just want to bring these beneficial pollinators into your garden, lavender is a great way to do it! Lavender also calms & relaxes and is used in aromatherapy (by your masseuse & on your cold towel after hot yoga <so amazing>). It eases pain, and is an antiseptic and anti-inflammatory.

downside: Lavender can be tricky to grow in the Southeast because it does not tolerate excessive soil moisture of humidity.

{image from decotartelette.com of the hot toddy recipe linked above}

There are so many more herbs that may be the perfect fit for your region of the country, your lifestyle (indoor, in containers, in the ground), and your desires (medicinal, culinary, aromatic). The Herb Society of America, founded in 1933, has an online Beginner's Guide that may help you get started: http://www.herbsociety.org/herbs/beginners-guide.html.

On your own...
Herbal tinctures have been used for generations to help with issues like digestion. They're very easy to make and half a long shelf life. I love this tutorial on how to make them by Wellness Mama: http://wellnessmama.com/8168/herbal-tinctures/



Links / Sources:
Dr. Julia Kornegay, North Carolina State University Department of Horticulture - lectures from HS 205 (Home Food Production)

http://www.healthline.com/health/importance-plants-home
http://honeylove.org
http://www.herbsociety.org
http://www.decotartelette.com
http://uslavender.org
http://wellnessmama.com/
http://botanical.com/

little by little: a practical gardening post

I have to admit... our house is a wreck.

But, I'm finally starting to feel pretty good about our garden.

This year, I followed the 6 P's that my father-in-law George taught my husband Caleb when he was younger: Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. And so far, it's working out. I hope that this post will inspire you and give you some practical ways to boost your harvest this year.

The most important thing I've learned in gardening is to not wait until the last minute. As a major procrastinator, this is tough for me to do, but it pays dividends in the gardening world (& in life) to prepare ahead of time. {See my last post on preparation & anticipation.}

If you don't have a place designated for your garden already, start there. Create a plan for your space, sketch your vision, and take some measurements. Then hit the hardware store to get what you need to build and purchase for your space.

This year, we moved into a new house & decided to do three raised beds in the sunniest spot in our backyard. If you're managing a larger space, look into a local landscape supply company for mediums like gravel (for good drainage in your beds), soil, compost, and mulch. You'll pay a much lower price, and if you don't have a truck of your own, many places will deliver it to you. Even with a delivery fee, you'll still make out well ahead of where you'd be purchasing bag after bag from the store.

Add hardscapes to your landscape as needed, using the plan that you create (more details below) as a guideline for what you need. Caleb helped me build a great trellis for my pole beans & squash, shown here:

Once your space is created, draft up a plan. This year, I created my own {self-titled} Planting Matrix. I relied heavily on my local co-op extension as a resource to create this personalized matrix. For the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, this guide by NC State is excellent: Central North Carolina Planting Calendarfor Annual Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs. Using the data found here, I created an Excel spreadsheet with 2 tabs: Layout & Schedule.

LAYOUT: This is where your mind can dream & your creativity can flow. Pick a mix of vegetables, fruits, flowers, and herbs that sound delicious or beautiful to you and include these in your space. Arrange the plants within the space how you want them, taking into account things like amount of sunlight, where you'll add hardscape elements like trellises, and what time of year and how long each plant will remain in that space. Go ahead and make a plan for what you'll put into place after a plant is spent for the season.

{I added these dahlias for a pop of bright color & to attract beneficial insects. Marigolds are also useful for attracting friendly bugs, & their petals can be added to give salads a little citrus zing!}

I encourage you to use a digital method for drawing up your master plan. It's easy to change and move things around, print out a page for reference while planting, and a great way to share your ideas with others via Google docs or social media outlets.

{my personal garden bible - the layout matrix}

SCHEDULE: Pay attention to the days to maturity for the plants you've selected, and try to space out when you'll be reaping the harvest of different veggies & fruits. Not only will this cut down on having a surplus & waste from everything in your garden being ready at once, but it will allow you to keep grocery bills down and maintain a steady flow of produce out of your garden and into your home & mouth! Create a schedule ahead of time and stick to it as best you can, using guidelines for your region regarding the last frost and best conditions for seed germination for the variety of plants you choose. You may want to start some seeds indoors and transplant them outside when temperatures warm.

{Kale is very hardy & seeds can be planted directly into the ground. It will germinate even in cooler temps.}

{These poblano peppers were started indoors & transplanted to my raised beds once the weather warmed.}

Once your space is created (hardscapes in place), your soil is prepared (make sure you have good organic matter in your soil and go ahead & top it off with mulch), and you decide on your layout & schedule for planting, you've set yourself up for some major success and hopefully a bountiful harvest. Now get to planting!

let's talk asexual.

Sorry, this post is not about my stance on 50 Shades of Grey. In fact, it's about bypassing reproductive organs and re-creating in other ways. If you're hoping for something juicy, read no further, but if you want some tips on how to boost the number of plants in your garden without having to buy more or wait for seeds to mature, read on.

Asexual propagation in plants is when you create {genetically identical} daughter plants using the vegetative parts of the plant (stems, leaves, roots) instead of the reproductive parts. It's growing a plant without a little seed. And one of the most popular (& successful) ways to do this is through stem cuttings.

Some benefits of stem cuttings are:
- Utilize plants you already have & love to create more.
- Get genetically identical plants to the parent plant you choose, so you know what to expect & can avoid disease or unfavorable traits.
- Skip the juvenile stages of plant growth & get a more mature daughter plant from the start.

Winter can be an especially good time to take stem cuttings, but you'll have to make sure they're protected from the weather. I built a miniature hoop house using a plastic tray, wire, and plastic to house my plants. You can build something even simpler, like putting a plastic bag over a flower pot or re-using soda bottles. The important thing is to create a warm, humid environment for the stem cuttings to take root. Make sure you make it easy to open up your closed, warm system every so often to allow ventilation & prevent your plants from getting any fungal diseases. You can see below that I'm using clothes pins to hold the plastic on the sides, so that I can undo them and let the flaps open for an hour or two a day to prevent poor ventilation.

Another essential to stem cuttings is using rooting hormone. Auxin is the hormone that enables plants to form adventitious roots. You can find rooting hormone at your local hardware store, usually in a powder form. Be sure to dip your cutting into the rooting hormone before placing it into your medium.

It's important that you choose a sterile medium that has good drainage. I recommend a 1:1 ratio of peat moss & perlite, based on what I've learned so far in my classes at NC State. Don't just go grabbing soil from the backyard, as this increases the chance for disease and, depending on the type of soil in your yard, may not give you optimal drainage that is determined by particle size.

Take cuttings 3-6" in length and minimize the amount of leaf area by removing the lower leaves and cutting some of the larger leaves in half. You want the plant to be photosynthesizing / respirating, but you don't want all the plant's energy being used up in the shoots of the plant. The important thing for these cuttings is that they use their energy to form roots. For this same reason, remove any flowers from the cutting, as these will suck up lots of energy.

Reference your local co-op resources for choosing the type of plant and timing for taking the stem cutting. And, of course, utilize literature from NC State's & Clemson's horticulture departments if you're a Carolina native. They are simply the best resources in our region.

Below you can see that I took stem cuttings of a Knock Out Rose and Jade plant. The jade plant I have is a cutting from my great-grandmother's original plant. I'm hoping to have a few successful cuttings that I can give to my mom, sister, aunt & cousin as a small, living family heirloom.

I'll keep you posted on how they turn out. Let me know any questions & reference this link below if you're interested in taking some stem cuttings at home. It's a great winter project to bring a little life indoors, and especially a fun activity for kids.

NC State Co-op Extension: Stem Cuttings

Plants are sexy.