Jim Long's Garden

Food is Why We Garden

2012-01-31T13:10:00.000-06:00

Sure, it's fine to grow all sorts of things in the garden, but what good are they unless you eat them? Several readers asked what interesting foods we found along the trail to Florida, so here's the wrap-up.
The next blog entries will be about the Missouri Organic Growers Conference in St. Louis. If you'd like to see who the other speakers are (there are about 70, I'm told) go here for the details. And if you can come to the conference, stop by my booth and say hi. My program is Edible Landscaping (or as I call it, "Dig up the yard and plant something useful."

Tomato gravy on grits.

The most unusual, or at least unfamiliar food I found on the trip South, was tomato gravy. It's common in southern Mississippi and Alabama. The recipe calls for flour browned in bacon grease to make a roux, to which you add canned tomatoes, tomato paste and water. Sadly, no herbs, which might give it flavor. My reaction upon eating the first bite (in spite of the waitress saying, "You'll just love it, I do!") was.....blech. It won't ever be on my list of favorite things. I don't even like canned tomato soup and this was worse.

Half rack of ribs at Central BBQ, Memphis

By far the best barbecue I found was at Central Barbecue in Memphis. Their barbecue sauce and baked beans are a much better use for tomatoes than tomato gravy! Memphis style ribs are a dry rub, the sauce is on the side.

Vietnamese soup, known as pho.

One of the best meals of the trip was Pho, a complex blend of spices, broth and flavors, served with lots of noodles and either round of beef, chicken or meatballs. Plus the Sides:

Traditional side for Pho.

Pho is always served with a plate of fresh bean sprouts, lime, jalapeno peppers, Thai or Vietnamese basil and topped off with culantro. If you don't know culantro, it is an Asian kind of cilantro (or coriander, depending on the reference you use). It's not an easy plant to grow as it requires a lot of moisture and shade. I brought several pots of culantro with me from Florida and I grow it for about 9 months of the year, although not always successfully.

Catfish near Truman, Arkansas

One of the best meals was the catfish plate at a little roadside barbecue place near Truman, Arkansas. Beans, cornbread, homemade coleslaw and perfectly fried catfish. That's the way catfish is done in the South.

Tamales and homemade salsa.

Equally as good were the tamales we found at a little roadside produce stand. They were, without a doubt, the best tamales I've ever eaten and the sauce was so hot I sweat. The corn for the tamales was local, the peppers in the sauce, was, as well. $4 worth of tamales and it was almost more than I could eat.

The famous Chatterbox Cafe chocolate pie.

But the prize was this, the famous chocolate pie from the Chatterbox Cafe just off highway 78, near Byhalia, Mississippi. Sherri and Barry McCallah got me hooked on this pie some years ago. It's not your ordinary chocolate pie, not pudding, it's more of a baked fudge pie, a real Southern thing. I've tried to concoct the recipe without success many times. I detoured well out of my way just to buy a pie to bring home. I'm doling it out in tiny pieces (it's too rich to eat more than a sliver). You can't find the Chatterbox on any Google searches so I'll post the details below. They also have lots of other homemade pies and desserts, plus exceptionally good catfish and coleslaw. But that pie....!!

I'm off to the Missouri Organic Conference, stop by and see us if you attend.

Rare Plants, Seaside Characters

2012-01-26T23:30:00.000-06:00

It looks like a cold day with a bit of snow, doesn't it? Actually it's the sand dunes in Pensacola. Miles and miles of pure white beaches and on a rainy day, looking for all the world like new snow. I had to wonder, just what grows there? Unfortunately so much of the seashore is condominiums that finding public beaches is a bit of a challenge.

Key West, 85 degrees.

Austin and I drove to Key West. He'd not been that far south before and I hadn't visited in many years. We had several friends who used to winter in Key West and work there, returning to the Ozarks for the summer tourist season. It didn't take many steps to meet a few local characters.

Coconut Larry, a true Key West beach bum.

Meet Coconut Larry. Everyone knows him and you can't walk far on the beach without finding him. He sets up shop under the coconut trees with an ice chest full of ripe coconuts. For donations, he'll show you the art of drinking coconut juice.

Larry saws the stem end off the coconut.

After the coconut top is sawed off, Larry cuts a hole in the top, to reach the coconut juice inside.

And there is your finished coconut, already chilled with an instant holder - the sand.

Beach life isn't too shabby. Coconut Larry has made another visitor from the great cold north, happy.
Northward bound, Austin and I stopped at one of my favorite places to shop for unusual plants, the Mustang Flea Market in Tampa. Lots of plants and produce you won't find in your local grocery store.

You can see most of the market in about 3 hours if you hurry, it's huge.

Ginger, lotus flowers, gourds, yams, tiny oranges, garlic, starfruit.

The disappointing thing is that I can't get home with the fresh produce. Sometime I want to rent a place for a couple of weeks just so I can cook up some of what I find at the Mustang Market.


Banana flowers, lotus stems, gourd and more.

What I did find to bring home are some additions to my tropical plant collection. I found Thai pandanus (Pandanus amaryllifolius). There are several varieties of pandanus, but only one used for cooking as far as I know and it's a hard plant to find. I learned to appreciate the flavor when I was in cooking classes in Thailand. I also bought a jaboticaba, one of my favorite fruits. It's 3 ft. tall and 2 years old, it should start bearing fruit at 3 or 4 years, hopefully. (To see what it looks like, view this video): http://youtu.be/lCpG5ZkLp5Y I also brought some other cooking herbs, equally difficult to find which I'll be describing later as I start cooking up dishes with them. Now, heading north and sadly leaving behind the 70s and 80s weather we've been soaking up. I dropped Austin off in Gainsville where he's headed back to catching oysters and fishing for a few days before heading northward himself. Thank you for checking on our progress!

Tropical Plant Conference, Ft. Lauderdale

2012-01-22T20:10:00.000-06:00

We took in the TPIE (Tropical Plant Conference) in Ft. Lauderdale this week. It's where lots of new plants are introduced to the retail nurseries. New products, hot new plants and what's for sale this year. For example, last year when I attended this conference, the exciting new plant was the introduction of the blue orchids.

This time, the same company introduced two new colors, lavender and maroon along with a deeper blue. You can see these, below. At the beginning of the year no one knew much about these, but by fall of 2011, you could find blue orchids in Home Depot and lots of other stores. I assume these new colors will be available in the same places. They are, however, not naturally colored. They are white orchids that have had color injected into the base, so when the re-bloom, they will be white or near white.

New orchid colors for this year.


Rachael Hopkins, from Hopkins Nursery won best of 10 x 10 nursery displays.

Hopkins Nursery, a wholesale nursery, is a place I've written about before as I try to visit just about every time I get to Florida. They're growers of things like allspice, cinnamon, bay rum and similar rare and hard to find plants. To see what they grow, here's their website.

Notice, it's a plant watering container, but also a sprayer at the top.

I thought this was a good new product this year. It's a container for watering plants and also has a mister on top for plants that need more humidity.

Medillina Magnifica

One of the winners of the cool new plant category was this Medillina Magnifica - sorry, there's no common name. It stays in bloom form 4-6 months, is tough with long clusters of bright flowers and large buds (which are about the size of an orange, the flowers hang down about 15 inches or more).

I liked the garden feet planters - they're almost 30 inches long and come in 6 colors. And this little planter, below of a bromeliad and a cat in a basket.

Bromeliad in bloom with "cat."

While this looks like a real cat in a basket, it's not. The basket is about 1 1/2 inches across, the bromeliad that's in bloom is only about the size of 2 postage stamps and the cat is made of rabbit fur. Still, it's one of those too-cute items there will probably be a market for.

That's the news from South Florida. Wish you could all be here and smell the flowers!

Florida Sunshine

2012-01-18T20:57:00.002-06:00


Flower of the sausage tree. Flowers hang on long "ropes" then become "sausages."

It's hard to leave home when the daytime temperatures get up in the 40s and 50s, but it's easier when nights are still in the 20s. I hopped down to Florida over the weekend. Thailand had flooding problems, so I didn't go there and south India just wasn't working out, so to gather up some warmth and inspiration, I'm back to Florida for a week or so. The pull - besides days in the middle 70s and nights as low as 55, is the Tropical Plant Conference in Ft. Lauderdale.

Austin, telling his parents about the banyan tree. Yes, that's just one tree behind him.

I met up with a friend, Austin Jones (see his blog), in Central Florida a couple of days ago. He's a farm worker from Bear Creek Farm near Osceola, MO (you'll find stories about Bear Creek Farm in my older blog posts). So we met up and are heading to the plant conference tomorrow.

Oranges of all kinds are ripening right now, sweet and juicy from the trees.

Today we visited friends, Tom and Roxana Collins who winter in Bradenton. They took us to a fun little citrus orchard to check out the hundreds of varieties of citrus trees grown there. Austin is intensely interested in fruit, especially apples, but found lots of things to see and ask about in the orange trees.

Austin quizzing the orange guy about citrus varieties.

We also visited the Barnum Bailey Mansion and Gardens, and checked out the variety of trees there.

You may recall I came this way south last year and nearly froze. I'm enjoying the warm breezes and palm trees - this is what Florida should feel like. And food? Check out this - soft shell crabs are in season and here's what you get when you order a crab sandwich.

Yes, you get the whole crab, deep-fried and you eat it all.

More news soon about the tropical plant conference tomorrow.

2012-01-13T16:35:00.000-06:00

Barbara Young enjoying the sunshine on the Sun porch with tropical plants.

The sun porch is a great place on sunny afternoons in winter. Barbara reads on her Kindle or sits and plays solitaire amidst the keiffir lime, curry tree, cinnamon, bay rum, allspice and other plants we over-winter here. Just behind her, here's the view, below.

The garden today. Most of the light snow is gone, still lots of green things growing.

Hope for spring, these jonquils are already this tall.

The exciting event this week was a friend of Josh's niece who lives in upstate NY, came to photograph us. She, Lois Bieliefeld, is working on what she calls, The Bedroom Project. She's traveling around the country, photographing people in their bedrooms. (Yes, she calls and asks first and makes an appointment). She's a professional photographer - you can see some of her work on her website, and the bedroom project is for both a gallery show and for an upcoming book. It's something she's been thinking about for many years, the idea of photographing people where they are most comfortable, and where they spend half their lives. No, it's not risque or erotic, just simple photos of people in their most comfortable room. She asked us, it sounded fun so she came. From here she headed into Arkansas, then Mississippi, over to Texas, through Oklahoma and north through Kansas City, photographing people in their bedrooms all the way. Here she is, standing in our bedroom.

Lois Bieliefeld in our bedroom.

Molly, who's always included in everything that goes on simply because she's so curious, laid in her bed, observing the photo process. Eventually she got in the photos, too.

Molly isn't quite sure about all those lights and cameras.

Lois photographed Barbara first, in her bedroom. You may notice the very large, fan-shaped lights. They run off of enormous (car battery size) photo batteries she carries with her.

Lois visiting with Barbara while she photographs.

More photos in Barbara's room.

Mexican oregano on the left, Sicilian oregano on the right.

In spite of 18 degrees and a dusting of snow, the Mexican oregano and the Sicilian oregano all came through fine. The flavor is different in winter, more dense and "darker" but still quite tasty. Most years they remain green throughout the year, just like thyme and rosemary.

Winter Jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) gets mistaken for forsythia, which blooms later.

The winter jasmine is in bloom this week, and will continue sporadically for the next couple of months. The second part of the Latin name, nudiflorum, refers to its lack of leaves when it blooms. It's always a cheery sight in January.

Romantic Kit for 10 makes 10 nice Dream Pillows.

So that's the news from the garden this week. If you're looking for a unique plant-related gift for Valentine's Day, we've got a special Romantic Kit for 10 on our website. Great for all ages and you create 10 little Dream Pillows to give. Check it out here. And if you want more information about Dream Pillows, visit my Dream Pillows blog. I've been writing about and creating formulas for Dream Pillows for over 20 years and have written 2 books on the subject.

Garden Visitors

2012-01-06T16:42:00.001-06:00

Today as I write this, it's 71 degrees outside. That probably means we're in for a blizzard in a few days, but for now, it's most welcome. I moved the black pepper plants outdoors to soak up the warm air, and hopefully some little flying pollinators will find the flowers and we'll have some peppercorns setting on.

We had visitors to the garden this week. First let me introduce you to Chad Wilt, from Creation Gardens in Compton, Arkansas.

Chad Wilt, Creation Gardens, Compton, AR

Chad called a few days ago saying he and his family had been away over the Holidays. They'd left their greenhouse in the care of neighbors. The greenhouse contained all of their stock plants that Chad takes cuttings from, to grow on for their spring plant sales. They sell at the Baker Creek Spring Festival and at the Herbal Affair in Sand Springs, OK, places we also always attend. His greenhouse is heated with a wood stove and the neighbors had filled the stove too full of wood. The stove overheated, setting a wood pile just a few feet away, on fire, too. Well, actually the greenhouse is so tight that air didn't get in, so the hot stove and the lack of air flow, turned the wood pile into charcoal! That was a lot of heat and a wonder the greenhouse didn't burn, too. All of their stock plants were just baked to death.

Chad called to ask if he could come up and take some cuttings from my plants. He got several kinds of sage plants, a couple of varieties of rosemary, some Mountain Mint (Pycanthium), both Mexican and Sicilian oregano, a honey eucalyptus (which hadn't been hurt by the cold) and a few others. Then we went over to our friend, Brent's, who had a African blue basil for Chad. Then on up to Ozark, MO where our friend, Olee at Spring Fever Greenhouse had a small stock plant of Vietnamese cilantro, which is always a good seller for Chad. Olee had special empathy for Chad even though they'd never met. Olee's greenhouse burned down a few years back from a similar issue.
In case you want to email Chad to see if there are other herb plant starts he's missing, his email is chadwilt2@gmail.com. I'm sure he'd appreciate any unusual herb cuttings you might have to share. You can mail them to him at Creation Gardens, HC 33, Box 75, Compton, AR 72624.

Austin Jones, heading to Florida to capture oysters.

Our second visitor this week was Austin Jones, a young man who has a passion for antique fruit tree varieties. He's been running a trial of about 100 heirloom fruit varieties at Bear Creek Farm (which I've written about before here - they're the ones doing the experiments with acres and acres of grafted tomatoes). He works there on their 11 acre produce garden. They sell to Whole Foods in Kansas City and at area farmers markets.

Austin stopped by for a visit and tour of the garden, on his way south. He's not been here before and we enjoyed getting to visit. He's off on an adventure, hoping to learn about oyster and shrimp harvesting off the coast of Florida for the next month or two. He doesn't have any contacts there, just plans to head to the coast and offer his labor in exchange for learning how oysters are harvested. We told him we expect good stories when he comes back.

Lamium amplexicaule

The henbit is blooming in the garden. It's not bothered by the cold and blooms at any opportunity. By spring it will be big clumps where it will burst into bloom and you'll see lots of it. For now it gives the bees something to graze on. Some people hate it in their lawns, I prefer it to boring green grass, plus the chickens are always happy when we weed the garden and throw bunches of it over the fence to them.

Bluet (Houstonia caerulea)

The bluets, too, are in bloom. You can see they're pretty small but it's almost my favorite color of blue and they're scattered all over the lawn and garden. They're another plant that isn't bothered by the cold weather ahead.

For today at least, we have fabulous weather and the garden thinks spring is on the way!

Growing Black Pepper

2012-01-01T16:39:00.001-06:00

Still eating this past summer's tomatoes. Today, Jan 1, these are all we have left.

Eating Locally has become more than a fad, more than a movement, it is a major cultural shift for an increasing segment of our population. And it's not just something that's happening on the West and East Coasts, it's happening world wide. I saw how enormous this cultural shift had grown when I attended the International Slow Foods conference in Turin, Italy in 2005. People from 130 countries, 5,000 of us, were all there for the same purpose, to help make local food a priority in our own countries.

Carrie and Ron in Halloween attire.

Long time friends of ours, Ron Zimmerman and Carrie Van Dyck, in their internationally acclaimed restaurant, The Herbfarm, in Woodinville, Washington, serve only food that comes from 30 miles or less from their location. Even the salt on the tables is evaporated from sea water, nearby. Their extensive herb and vegetable gardens (and truffle pigs - truffles can be found in the Pacific Northwest and pigs are the best hunters) furnish their kitchen the year around. I admire that process, and to eat in their restaurant is the kind of indescribable dining experience you remember for the rest of your life. (If you can) imagine 9 courses, 7 wines and 6 hours of dining and one of the best times in your life.

The Herbfarm Restaurant, a remarkable place where everything you eat is from the local area.

Just one course out of the 9 I had that night, every bite so good you want it to last forever.

While I do my best to eat locally, some things simply aren't possible here. Oranges, for example, to grow my own would require expensive greenhouses and more energy than could be justified. Avocados, too, bananas, Cheerios, chocolate, beef, the list is long, of things that either aren't available locally, or impractical. But I like to try to keep things as local as possible, and our fall garden continues to feed us pretty well. Shown at the top of this post are the last of our summer-fall tomato crop, harvested from the garden as green tomatoes after Halloween and left on the kitchen counter to ripen slowly. We've eaten them all except for these (and the 16 pints of Fish House Green Tomato Pickles I made - and included the recipe here on the blog; thanks for all your good comments from the pickles you made from the recipe).

I'm currently working on my Heirloom Herbalist column for The Heirloom Gardener magazine, and for the spring issue, I'm writing about growing black pepper. I got the idea recently while taking a shower - good ideas come while my mind is idle and soapy! I keep my black pepper plants in the bathroom because it has a heated tile floor and the temperature stays above 65 degrees. Black pepper requires that much heat in order to thrive and mine has burst into bloom in the past 2 weeks. I brought the plants back from a Florida trip 2 years ago and once I figured out what the plants need, they have done pretty well.

Black pepper (Piper nigrum)

Black pepper is native to the southwestern coast of India, and the spice traders of the world, beginning in pre-Roman times, found their way to the pepper growers. It's a vine, grown clinging to tree trunks where it can reach 30-40 feet high. The plant requires filtered light, not direct sunlight, lots of heat and reliable moisture. If the soil temperature dips below 65 degrees F., the plant will drop its leaves. Over all, it's not a difficult plant to grow indoors and does great when it's moved outdoors in the shade in summer. Here's what the blooms look like at present on one of my plants.

The flowers grow along the stem, which is about 2 inches long.

Black pepper vine on a wall with flowers.

To give an idea of how tiny the flowers actually are (each one will become one peppercorn), here is the flower stalk with flowers, next to the head of a straight pin, like you get when you buy a new shirt or garment.

The head of a pin, next to the pepper flowers.

Normally the plant flowers in summer but the heated bathroom floor has hurried the process. I tried pollinating the flowers with a tiny watercolor brush but it is many times too large. Bees can't pollinate the flowers, so I'm guessing it must be pollinated by tiny moths or gnats. I doubt any of these will set fruit during the winter.

This is what the pepper berries should look like once the plant is pollinated. These, from last year, are ready for picking. Once picked, you drop them into boiling water for 5 minutes to split the skin of the berry, then they are placed in the food dehydrator for 3 or 4 days or until completely dry. Then the peppercorns are then ready for putting in the pepper mill and you're ready to season your food.

Malabar pepper comes from the region of Malabar in India and is the most common variety, and the least expensive. Tellicherry pepper is a larger, more robust flavored peppercorn and a bit more expensive. Green peppercorns are those that are picked before the pepper berries are completely ripe (like the green ones in the photo to the left). White pepper is from the Malabar pepper and the berries have been boiled and the dark, outer skin removed. White pepper is the mildest of all of the peppercorns. Red peppercorns aren't pepper at all but are from a small tree in China.

Pepper is grown in Brazil, Vietnam and other areas but all of the pepper varieties were originally from India. Pepper is grown within 15 degrees of either side of the equator, areas with 100 inches of rainfall per year, high humidity and temperatures, and where the plants can be grown on the trunks of trees. However, the plant makes a fairly good houseplant, with the benefit of providing you with black pepper for the table. Happy new year ahead of each of you from us here at Long Creek Herbs!

YouTube Photoshoot

2011-12-20T20:04:00.003-06:00

The focus of the video is my Homemade Crackers and Easy Dips with Herbs books.

You've probably heard me mention before that we have a YouTube/longcreekherbs channel where we post videos of my recipes and books. Check it out if you haven't. Yesterday we filmed 2 more videos. That's the easy part, the editing and pasting it all together is the harder, and more creative part. Thankfully, my job is to stand in front of the camera and let David Selby and his associates do all the work. Here are some views of the photo shoot from yesterday, with his helper, Ben Manlove. The end product will be 2 videos, one that will be about 3-4 minutes long, where I'm showing my friend, Makala, how I make cheddar crackers. The other is a 2 minute video telling what roses are good to eat and which ones to avoid. (There's more about the Herb of the Year and the Rose, official Herb of the Year for 2012, on my Herb of the Year blog, here). In a few weeks the videos will be up on our YouTube channel, but for not they're "in the can" awaiting the editing process.

Makala is the daughter of one of our employees, Neva Milke. Neva is one of the 2 ladies who answers phones when you call us to place an order. Makala first came to visit Long Creek Herb Farm when she was 4 years old, with 19 other vacation Bible schoolers. She was interested in herbs and gardening then, and her interests continue to grow. I invited her to be a part of Homemade Crackers with Herbs video taping and she was fun to work with. Here are some scenes from the kitchen and the crew yesterday.

I took this photo, looking down into the kitchen from my upstairs office. You can see the kitchen counter all set with our working tools, David and Ben are getting the cameras and lights set up.

Everyone just discovered I was taking their pictures, too.

David does lots of film projects. He intends to make movies but for now, does a great job doing videos. Ben Manlove, to the left, grew up with David in Reeds Spring, MO. Ben is in the Army Reserves and is currently attending Drury University School of Nursing. Makala, standing on set at the ready, is a second year student at College of the Ozarks.

It takes a lot of tinkering with lights, sound, cameras to get everything working right.
I could have slept another hour!

Out of camera view, on the sunporch, I had backups of the crackers, the baked crackers, the unbaked ones and the roses for the what roses to eat video that came next.

And here we are in front of the lights, almost ready for the rose video. Makala was patient and fun to work with. David and Ben were loads of fun and very professional. David's production company does an outstanding job. All the recipes for the crackers and dips came from my books.

I hope each and everyone a pleasant and peaceful holiday season.

Tonight's Supper from the Garden

2011-12-15T16:38:00.002-06:00

Purple, red and white turnips.

I went to the grocery store today, rather, to the garden for some produce. We have 3 small beds of turnips, planted in mid-August. Turnips are best after a bit of cold weather and these are the first we've pulled. On the left is the old-fashioned purple top, this one weighs about 2 lbs. In the middle is an heirloom variety called Red Round, a sweet, mild turnip. On the right is a white Japanese turnip, incredibly mild and tasty.

On the left, some Russian kale, some lettuce, turnips, tomatoes.

I picked some Russian kale, on the left. That's just one head of lettuce from the lettuce bed. Next are the turnips I just pulled. Behind those are the last of the green tomatoes that have been ripening on the kitchen counter. I think we may still have 3 or 4 for salad on Christmas day. And in the background are jars of the applesauce Josh canned yesterday.

The red turnips are white inside.

The old fashioned purple top turnips are best with the peelings taken off but I didn't peel the red ones as the outside is tender and not bitter. All 3 colors of turnips were sliced up into a pot with a little bacon and buter and simmered slowly for several hours for supper.

Russian kale.

My friend, Olee runs Spring Fever Greenhouses.

My friend, Olee Jobe, at Spring Fever Greenhouse, told me the other day he'd made kale flakes. I've eaten them before but don't remember if I've made them myself. So today I picked several leaves and made a batch.

Olee's method, which is better than what I did, was to cut the leaves up into bite sized pieces in a bowl and sprinkle a little oil and toss. I thought this would be a short cut, I sprayed the leaves with cooking oil on both sides. The next step is to put the leaves into the oven at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for about 1 1/2 hours.

They may look odd here in the photo, but the leaves are crisp and tasty. I sprinkled salt over and they make a nice snack. Next time I will spray a lot less oil. I think they'd work in the food dehydrator, as well. Oddly enough, kale flakes are good with sweet, red grapes! Or cheese. They'll keep crisp in an airtight container but I doubt these will last past suppertime.

Molly and her packrat.

You may not want to know this - but it is part of farm life. Packrats get into chicken feed, tunnel into the garage, carry off shiny objects and store them in their nests. They're a pest and between Squeak, the cat, and Molly, our Jack Russel, the two harvest a pack rat a week. If they didn't, we'd be over run with the varmints. Molly got one last week and this week, another one. When she offs a pack rat, she carries it around to show everyone - not unlike the guys who strap their just-killed deer across the hood of their truck and drive around the neighborhood. Molly is standing in the driveway, waiting to show me her trophy.

The next part of the trophy demonstration is, you are supposed to go see the rat and attempt to pick it up. Molly, of course, is ready since it's her game and she grabs it and runs off a few steps, drops the rat and looks back to make sure you're still playing the game.

Steve, June, Barbara, Sarah and Josh.

This is part of our Friday night dinner group, getting ready to eat, recently. Certainly not everything came from the garden, but we're grateful to have food right outside our door. I can smell the turnips cooking right now, they'll be ready for supper.

Winter Garden

2011-12-10T17:12:00.000-06:00

Today I planted bulbs I'd ordered a couple of weeks ago. It was sunny and in the low 40s. Following here are some views of what our garden at Long Creek Herb Farm looks like today, December 10. You'll notice there's still quite a bit of green in the garden. Even though we've had nights and days in the 20s this past week, lots of winter vegetables and greens will take being frozen. But first, I discovered this little guy under the leaves as I was planting the last of the bulbs. He's shy, and cold and hardly moving at all. We don't see salamanders often here. This one is a ringed salamander, to read more about Missouri Ozarks Salamaders, check here. After taking his picture, I put him back under the leaves to go about his business of salamandering.

Ringed Salamander. No, it's not a lizard.

Rose geraniums will take quite a bit of cold. This one's been frozen all week yet has enough life left that I could, if I wanted, pot it and bring it indoors.

Above is lemon eucalyptus, which I grow as an annual. It, too, will take quite a bit of cold. Probably I could winter it over in a cold frame but instead I just replant each year.

Cardoon, a vegetable lots of people don't know much about.

Cardoon, too, withstands cold temperatures until it gets down below 20 degrees and stays, then it dies down to the roots to reemerge next spring. Cardoon is a biennial so this one will bloom next summer. Cardoon is a first cousin to artichokes.

Curly leaf lettuce.

Lettuce looks like a fragile plant, doesn't it? We picked several heads today for salad for tonight's supper and some for the refrigerator. This isn't mulched nor is it in the cold frame, this is just growing out in the open bed. Several varieties are all doing just fine.

Japanese red mustard.

The Japanese red mustard has a snappy, zippy flavor that mixes well in salads. It's still surviving in the winter garden.


The chickens get to eat some salad from the garden, too.

One of the herb beds.

You can see we're still fairly green here. This is the bed that contains oregano, marjoram, parsley, thyme, Mexican oregano, sorrel and rosemary. It's all still nice and green, even after the brief snow we had last week.

Billy and his ladies.

Allium and her 2 twins.

So that's about it, late afternoon photos of our winter garden. We're having cabbage and salad greens from the garden with egg rolls and steamed Chinese dumplings. They may not go together, but hey, most of it's from the garden! Hope you enjoyed the short tour of what's still growing in the Ozarks.

Don't forget, if you want to take advantage of our Frankincense and Myrrh Special, visit my website to check it out. For a story of what frankincense and myrrh is, click here, it will take you to another of my blogs. Stay warm everyone.

Passion Vine

2011-12-05T10:47:00.001-06:00

Passion flower in summer.

I don't leave my farm every day, but when I do, I pass the passion vine that grows across the road from my house. We're 20 miles from a grocery store, 6 miles from the nearest Post Office, so trips out are for accumulated errands. But each day that I do drive out, I can't help but notice this plant. I've decided to write about it here, not because it's in bloom, but because the fruits are ripe, now.

You may not know this plant even though native varieties grow in many parts of the world. You would probably recognize the flavor, even though you don't realize it - you've likely tasted it in "tropical punch" mixes, either canned or bottled. Tropicana tropical punch, for instance, has passion fruit as one of the flavors.

The fence across the road from my house is the perfect spot for passion vine.

If you look up passion vine on Google, you'll find the phrase "passion vines are mostly tropical." It's true, there are lots in the tropics, some with larger fruit, some with smaller, with varying colors of flowers. However, the native passion vine (Passiflora incarnata) grows from Pennsylvania to Florida, Texas to southern Missouri, where I live. It grows in full sun so if you were to go on a walk in Ozarks woods, you'd find it growing in meadows and open areas. The plant climbs to about 30 feet and will climb a trellis but seems happiest climbing over waist-high plants or up onto fences. It spreads from the roots, so if you think about planting it in your garden, you might reconsider where it goes, or plant it in a large planter. Years ago I mistakenly planted some seed (from some I'd cooked and thrown away after straining) along my garden fence and by the second year, had sprouts coming up in my pathways and other planting beds. It took several years of weeding to finally get it out of the garden. If you're interested in where the plant got its name - invented by Spanish Catholic missionaries in order to convert the Natives to Christianity, you can read the history here.You may recall the missionaries gave the Natives a choice: convert or be killed. I'm not a fan of the story.

The fruit, not yet ripe, on November 30.

What's so special about passion vine, you may be wondering? It's attractive in summer with lush, green foliage that quickly covers an arbor or trellis, and the lavender to purple flowers. But there's much more than just a green vine, to this plant. The fruit has a tart, tropical flavor. When you see the seed, surrounded by a small amount of flesh, you don't instantly think, "gotta eat that." But think about pomegranates, similar in that you eat the flesh surrounding the seed.

Ripe passion fruit.

The fruit doesn't get ripe and develop its flavor until it has shriveled and turned from green (see the one at the top of the plate, above) to light tan. To use the fruit, scrape out the seeds and flesh, discarding the peeling. Put the seeds into a saucepan with a cup or two of water and simmer for about 10 minutes. Run the pulp and liquid through a colander (or a potato ricer works even better), collecting the juice and pulp. You can mix it with sugar and more water, or cook it down to a sauce. Several years ago my partner, Josh, made pie filling like you would make for a cream pie, combining passion fruit pulp, then made cream puffs and stuffed the cream puffs with the passion fruit custard. They were outstanding!

But passion vine's real claim to fame is its use as a sedative. If you buy sedative or relaxing herb capsules in the health food store, often labeled as, "Valerian Combo" you'll find in the list of ingredients: valerian (a relaxing herb used for back aches), wood betony (another relaxing herb) and passion vine herb. Passion vine herb (the leaves and growing tips, dried) is a good sedative by itself and can be found in the supplements aisle of many stores by itself. When I have back aches, I often turn to the Valerian Combination capsules. Or you can make a tea of passion vine herb, although it's not very tasty. It's good in relaxing herb blends for people who have difficulty sleeping - which is also why I put it into my Restful Sleep Dream Pillow blend.

Bulk passion vine herb.

Passion vine is an herb we carry in our shop. It's an ingredient in some of my relaxing dream pillow blends and we sell it in pound and half pound amounts for folks who are making dream pillows. (To learn more about dream pillows, visit my website, or my Dream Pillows blog). You might also enjoy my book, Making Herbal Dream Pillows which has been in print since 1998 and available on my website. I started writing about dream pillows in the early 1990s and have published 3 books on the subject. Back then, most people had no idea what a dream pillow was. Now I find my words and formulas copied or imitated on lots of other websites. I have to take it as a compliment, even if I don't get credit.

My book of herb formulas and history of Dream Pillows.

So you see, passion vine is a pretty interesting plant. Native Americans used the roots, fruit and herb for a variety of ailments. Current research (as quoted in the Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants, Eastern and Northern edition, "shows extracts are mildly sedative, slightly reduce high blood pressure and increase respiration rate.")

Every time I pass the plant I remember those cream puffs, filled with passion fruit custard. The fruit is ripening still, even this late in the year so maybe I'll gather up a batch and cook up something.

Visit our website where Frankincense and Myrrh Kits are on sale.

Frankincense and Myrrh Incense Kit $12.95 plus shipping; 2 for $25.

The Life of a Bee

2011-11-29T10:05:00.001-06:00

Honey bee, testing the last of the basil flowers.

Two days after Thanksgiving, we finally had a killing freeze. We've been fortunate to have only light frosts all the month of November. Even lettuce and arugula that wasn't in the cold frame has escaped until now. We still had flowers blooming, the last of the roses, still a couple of clematis blooms and a few of the last of the season insects. I posted a few weeks "what a bee sees" (you can find it in the index of blog posts to the right of the current posts). Here are a few more, all taken from a bee's perspective.

Ants thriving on a ripe fig.

In spite of a harsh summer of heat and drought, we have had the best fig crop ever. I love figs and am always happy to have 3 or 4 to eat. We're not in "fig growing" areas but I still manage to grow 3 varieties. This fall we had more figs than we could eat, some going to waste. The trick with figs is to get them as soon as they're ripe. Wait a day too long and ants, as in the photo above, go into the little hole in the bottom of the fig and start eating. Figs are extremely sweet, ants love them as much as I do. Bees would go after the fig sweetness if they could figure out how to get inside the fruit.

Dandelion seed.

While a dandelion seed head may look flower-like to our eyes, a bee knows there's nothing to eat there.

Butterfly on radish flower.

Radishes left in the ground bloom and go to seed. This little butterfly has a longer "snout" than a bee does, so she goes after teh nectar deep in the radish flower.

Wasp on fava been stem.

If you were a bee and saw something as big in proportion to you as a box car is to a human, you'd move on, too. The red wasp is finding something tasty on the stem of the fava bean as it was ignoring the flowers completely.

Fava bean flower.

Fly on mustard flower.

While this may look like a house fly to you, it's not. I don't know my flies, but this one is a different kind and size and is a good pollinator for a lot of flowers like this mustard flower.

Cicada eating the pollen of an okra flower.

We had okra still blooming last week. I caught this cicada happily munching away on the pollen of the okra blossom. I haven't seen bees on okra although lots of other insects pollinate the plant. This is the first time I've seen a cicada on okra, but then, cicadas are like goats - they'll eat just about anything. This one watched me as I watched him but kept eating anyway.

Honeybee on the last of the allium flowers.

Our little honeybees make use of every day when they can be out of the hive. Matthew, the owner of the 5 hives here at the farm, looks after his bees throughout the year and left us with some of the best tasting honey I've ever tasted. I thought you might enjoy seeing more of what a bee sees every day, up close and personal from the bee's point of view.

The Herbs of Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T09:37:00.003-06:00

Garden sage on the left, Biergarten sage on the right, both have the traditional flavor.

Ever wonder why we have a taste for certain flavors at different times of the year? For example, why do we look for foods like pot roast, baked turkey or boiled ham in winter? Why do foods like spicy chili, corned beef and cabbage, beef stew or chicken pot pie not appeal to us in the summer? The answer has a lot to do with our body’s metabolism. In warm weather we crave foods and flavors that help cool us. In winter, our cravings turn to foods that warm us and give us more fat - a bit like a bear before hibernating.

Or have you wondered why lots of us get a hankering for pumpkin pie, only in winter? Of course there is the issue that pumpkins aren't ready to eat until cool weather. But, the spices we traditionally use for pie making - cinnamon, ginger, allspice - are all warming herbs. In summer, those spices would make us feel hot and clammy. They're not spices that cause sweating (and thus cooling) like hot peppers do. So in winter, spice cake, pumpkin pie, spicy Indian chai tea (made with lots of warming spices) is what our bodies crave. It's the way our bodies adjust to the changing seasons.

(By the way, our late friend, Anne, left us with the best pumpkin pie recipe ever. Wayyyy better than what's on the pumpkin can. Our Anne's Pumpkin Pie Seasoning includes her recipe and it's on sale on our website. Pumpkin pie will be popular all through December. You'll love her seasoning and recipe).

The herbs considered by many to be, traditional holidays seasonings include rosemary, thyme, savory and sage. Not surprisingly, those are all warming herbs, seasonings that not only give our body a warm feeling, but actually add a warming effect. Those seasonings were traditionally used with the heavy, fatty winter meats. Roast goose, a seriously greasy food, was traditionally seasoned with hyssop, winter savory, onion and thyme. Those herbs helped cut the greasy taste while still warming the meal.

The same holds true for pork. Back in the days when most people raised their own pigs and butchered, putting up pork loin, pork roast and bacon, all had more fat left on than you will find today. If you buy a pork roast now and it will be trimmed of most of the fat, but back in earlier days, people believed fat made flavor and left it on. Rosemary, thyme, savory, sage and hot peppers went into sausage, seasoned roasts and was used in mixes for curing the meat.

Our tradition and tastes for the traditional holiday dressing or stuffing, the seasoning in the gravy and in roast turkey, all come down to us from those olden days. Poultry seasoning, a must-have in the traditional dishes is a mixture of sage, thyme, rosemary and savory. Even though today the modern turkey isn’t fatty, our yearnings for seasoning are still there. What would a pan of baked turkey dressing be without sage? What a bland dish the turkey and gravy would be without the herb flavors.

Bed with several varieties of thyme.

Several years ago I chose to go to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. The meal was advertised as a, “traditional” family-style dinner. I love dressing, maybe as much as turkey, so imagine my surprise at my first taste of the dish. I almost spit. I don’t know where the restaurant chef was trained, but it isn’t traditional to have cilantro instead of sage in turkey dressing! I looked around the restaurant and saw that everyone else was leaving a pile of cilantro-seasoned dressing on their plate, too. No, the flavors we Ozarkers crave for the holidays is traditional sage, rosemary and thyme, just like our ancestors used.

Rosemary has a warming, robust flavor, perfect for winter dishes.

Crustless Quiche

2011-11-19T13:26:00.002-06:00

Fresh spinach, greens and green onions from the cold frame.

Last night I looked in the cold frame for some ideas for supper. What I really wanted was turkey and dressing. That's about my favorite meal of the year, a turkey big enough to have lots and lots of leftovers. Turkey pot pie. Turkey sandwiches. Turkey hash. And finally, turkey soup from the bones.

But... it's not Thanksgiving yet and I wasn't going to cook a turkey just for supper for the 3 of us. So, back to the cold frame search. I chose a colander full of spinach, I had some ham in the refrigerator, I'd make a quiche. Barbara and Josh both like quiche.

One of my medicines (Cyclosporine), which is one of the anti-rejection drugs I have to take in order to keep my kidney, has pushed me to the border of type 2 diabetes. What that means, if you don't know about such things, is to get extra exercise and eat little or no white foods. Why white, you may wonder? White foods include bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, sugar, pastries, and yes, pie crust. I can eat a small amount, but the less I eat, the better for my health and quitting the anti-rejection drugs isn't an option. So I decided to make a no-crust quiche. I've done it before but I never write the recipe down. Maybe if I put it here, I'll remember for next time.

I started with 6 cups of fresh spinach leaves and put them in a glass bowl in the microwave. I pushed the "vegetables" button and let the microwave wilt the greens. While the microwave was doing its work I chopped a heaping tablespoon of onions and about half that amount of chives. Green onions work just as well. When the spinach was wilted, I drained the liquid and set it aside.

In a bowl I beat 4 eggs and added 1 large can of evaporated milk. I added a tablespoon of cooking sherry and about 1/4 teaspoon of hot sauce. Next I grated 1/2 cup cheddar cheese and mixed it in.

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees F. I have a favorite clay, deep dish pie pan from Hess Pottery (you may remember my earlier postings about them at the Reeds Spring Farmers Market; they've had national publicity for their perfect-baking pie pans) and sprayed it heavily with olive oi. I put a layer of already cooked and coarsely chopped bacon - 3 slices in all. On top of that I spread the wilted spinach leaves. I poured in the egg/milk and cheddar mixture and added 1 cup of diced ham and stirred in around slightly.

Tom Hess' pie plates bake perfectly on the bottom of the plate better than any others I've found.

The quiche baked for about 40 minutes then I checked to see if it was done by inserting a knife blade in the center. It needed to cook another 5 minutes, then I let it set for about 10 minutes while I got a salad ready - also from the cold frame.

And there it is, no crust quiche, easy and out of the garden. Here's the list of ingredients in case you missed them in the text:

See, it really doesn't need a crust.

No-Crust Ham and Spinach Quiche

6 cups fresh spinach, wilted and drained (or you can substitute 1 1/2 cups frozen, thawed and drained)
4 eggs
1 can evaporated milk
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
3 slices cooked and cut up bacon
1 cup diced ham
1 tablespoon cooking sherry or brandy
1/4 teaspoon any brand hot sauce
1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons green onions
Salt and pepper to taste

A pretty healthy dish. Spinach, onions and eggs, all came from right here on the farm.

Winter Cold Frames

2011-11-10T14:31:00.001-06:00

Swiss Chard grows well in a cold frame.

I grew up reading Organic Gardening and Mother Earth News magazines. As early as the late 1950s, my mother was composting kitchen scraps and garden debris, turning it into rich soil from the directions in Organic Gardening. I remember stories in both magazines about Helen and Scott Nearing, a couple who retired and moved to the Green Mountains of Vermont in 1932 to establish their self-sufficient farmstead. In the articles they wrote, they explained how they were able to grow vegetables the year around, even in the harsh Vermont's winters by using cold frames. In 1952 they moved to Maine where they continued their back to the land experiments in gardening and self-sufficiency.

This is over a raised bed, 3 1/2 ft x 30 ft. long.

Eliot Coleman was another pioneer in the use of cold frames and wrote for the magazines I've listed. In 1968 he moved to moved to a farm in Maine, on land purchased from the Nearings. He used a simple hoop house made of bent pvc pipes, covered with 2 layers of plastic. You can see more of what Eliot promoted and his simple but effective methods here.

Over the years I have used the Nearing’s and Coleman's methods for growing winter produce by constructing simple cold frames in my own gardens. Our Ozarks climate is definitely milder than the mountains of Maine, and the methods are simple and even more productive.

The simplest cold frame I’ve used many times over the years is a rectangle built of bales of straw. One bale laid on its side makes up one end and 3 bales laid the same way make up each side, 8 bales in all. I wind up with a very basic cold frame with about 24-30 square feet of growing space. I till up the area inside with a hoe, smooth the soil and plant rows of lettuce, spinach, even onion and radish seed. (Mustard greens, kale, lots of other greens grow well, too). Then I lay down a little loose straw for mulch over the seed bed and cover the cold frame bed with an old window. Some years I use a couple of layers of clear roll plastic and hold it down with scraps of wood.

With only the sun for warmth, and ground temperatures, the hoop house produces all winter.

On sunny, warm days I open up the cold frame any time it’s above freezing. At night I pull the plastic or window cover over the top. Even in the dead of winter, when the ground is frozen and snow is piled up, I can go out to the cold frame, open it up and harvest greens and vegetables for the table. And the nice thing is, there are no bug pests in winter!

This year I’m using a somewhat different cold frame, more like Eliot Coleman's method. I used 8 ft. sections of 1 inch plastic p.v.c. pipe, bent into hoops over an existing raised bed. The bed is 3 1/2 feet across and about 30 feet long. I braced the hoops with a single pipe at the top of the peak, held in place with duct tape, then covered the whole frame with 6 mil. clear plastic. Currently I have spinach, cilantro, 3 kinds of lettuce, carrots, onions and radishes growing. Using this method you can replant and grow vegetables all winter long, like the Nearings did on their farmstead in Maine.

This simple cold frame hoop house produces food all winter.

This is a bit like Eliot Coleman's method except that I'm using a single layer of plastic rather than the double layer he used. Since I'm in the Ozarks and not in Maine, the extra insulation isn't needed. Rolled plastic has become somewhat expensive, too. I paid $68 for a roll of 100 x 16 ft plastic and about $2.50 each for the 8 ft lengths of 1 inch p.v.c. pipe.

The bent hoop in the foreground is an intentional brace for the smaller end of the tunnel.

Here's a read-made cold frame, below, that I bought last year and have used it for 2 seasons. It's too small for our use, but the nice thing is it easily comes apart and stores flat for the summer season. I can grow small amounts of greens without much work.

It just doesn't get any fresher or local than this!

What a Bee Sees

2011-11-04T17:20:00.000-05:00

Ever wonder what a bee sees close up? Following here are a bees-eye view of what they see on their daily rounds through the garden. At the bottom of this blog post, you'll find a very brief survey. I hope you'll take my survey and let me know what you like reading here, and what you don't.

Bee on bean blossom.

Nectar from purple salvia tastes different from nectar from basil or bean flowers.

We, luckily, haven't had a killing frost yet (as of November 4) so the bees are still quite active every day. They're making up for time lost in the drought and heat of this summer when few flowers were blooming.

Up close and personal in a clematis flower.

Ever wonder if crepe myrtle flowers have a center? Just ask a bee!

If you click on this photo to enlarge it, you'll see it's almost sticky with nectar.

Obedient plant. Click it to see it up close like a bee.

I'm sure the bee moved on. This is a four-o-clock, inhabited by a spider munching on a fly. Yum.

You may not even realize that in the center of a zinna flower, are lots of little flowers.

The tiny interior flowers of the green zinnia are less obvious and harder to see.

Tomato flowers, wonder what their nectar tastes like?

Still, this late in the season, a cucumber beetle hides in the center of a rose.

Dew on a kale leaf. Bees see it as a drink of water.

Now for that survey I mentioned. It's quick, easy, doesn't hurt and I would greatly appreciate your answering my very simple, 5 questions about what you like to see and read here. Just click on the link and answer the quick questions. And thank you! I appreciate the feed back.
http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22DPLE5TSDW

Ozarks Leaves

2011-10-29T15:48:00.000-05:00

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I once ruined someone's dream. Not intentionally, but when the leaves start changing in our woods, I am reminded of the incident. I'd traveled to the jungles of West Papua, New Guinea to go trekking with a friend. We'd flown into the Belim Valley, a remote town with an airport so tiny all of the daily passengers could fit into one twin-engine Cessna.

The only accomomdations in the tiny town was a little guest house run by Ebu Hinkie, an elderly Javanese woman. The rooms were rustic, spartan, with a bathroom that consisted of a hole in the floor, and a concrete tank filled with water. To bathe, you dipped a bucket into the tank and poured it over yourself like a shower.

Ebu Hinkie (Ebu, or maybe it was Eboo, is a respectful term like Mrs. or mother) was large, always wearing big caftan-type dresses when she served our morning breakfast of fruit, eggs and toast. The dining room was a little room with a table and chairs, a big tea pot much like a restaurant coffee pot, always filled with boiling tea, and a little window. The wall behind the table and chairs, about 8 x 8 ft. held a mural of colored leaves in Vermont in October. It was a surprise to see a mural of Vermont, deep in the jungle of New Guinea, and one morning I inquired about it. "With this beautiful landscape all around you, why did you choose a photograph of trees in the United States?" I asked. Ebu Hinkie understood only so much English, and spoke less, but she replied, "It's my dream to some day, maybe see the place where trees are always like this."

She understood when I explained the leaves in Vermont are green, they only change to orange, yellow and red for about 3 weeks once a year. Ebu Hinkie's face fell. "Oh," she said and turned and walked away. Why couldn't I have kept quiet. I regretted crushing a simple dream but hopefully she had others that weren't so fragile. Here are the leaves in the yard this week. I wish Ebu Hinkie could see and enjoy them.

Sumac leaves. It's correctly pronounced shoo-mack.

Virginia creeper on persimmon bark.

Persimmons are ripe on our trees this week.

Hickory leaves.

Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) an herb, has yellow leaves and red berries now.

View of our Herb Shop with the hillside in the background.

I think the woods in the Ozarks looks every bit as good as Vermont in the fall of the year.

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Happy Halloween. Don't eat too much candy!

Fish House Green Tomato Pickles

2011-10-23T18:13:00.003-05:00

This week I've been picking as much of the garden produce as I can before a killing frost comes. We've had 2 light frosts but even the basil plants haven't been hurt much. Yet. After a summer of drought and heat and low tomato and pepper production, those plants have gone into high gear, trying to catch up on production.

Adam, who I have written about here many times, left us with a fabulous fall garden. Too bad he didn't get to enjoy such lushness during the summer when he was farming the garden and selling at local farmers markets. (Adam left in mid September to work on a farm in Maryland for the winter; that farm sells at the DuPont Circle farmers market the year around).

Ten pints of fish house green tomato pickles.

I've spent the day today, putting up some of the excess produce. With all the green tomatoes, I wanted to use the smaller ones for fish house green tomato pickles. They're a favorite in the catfish restaurants in the South and it's a great way to use up some of the tomatoes. Josh plans on making green tomato mincemeat, too, for pies this winter.

Tomatoes ripening in the window.

The larger green tomatoes will simply stay on the kitchen windowsill where they will slowly ripen over the next couple of months. (I've used the wrap-in-newspaper method, which is a hassle, also the put-in-the-basement method, also a hassle to check every couple of days; on the windowsill, where I see the tomatoes every day, is the easiest and simplest and works just fine. Some years we have the last of our summer's ripe tomatoes on Christmas Day).

You can use green tomatoes in any recipe that calls for ripe tomatoes, too.

Here's the recipe in case you want to use up your green tomatoes:

Catfish-House Green Tomato Pickles

2 quarts quartered green tomatoes
2 cups chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped hot peppers
1/3 cup chopped sweet red bell peppers
2 cups sugar
3 Tablespoons salt
3 cups apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon yellow mustard seed

Combine ingredients in a large cooking pan and bring to a slow boil. Let simmer for about 5 minutes. Ladle into hot, sterile jars, wipe lip edge of jars, screw on hot, new jar rings and flats and lightly tighten. Place into a boiling water bath, with at least 1/2 inch of water above the jar lids. Bring to a boil and keep slowly boiling for 15 minutes (for pints). Remove and cool on a towel. Don't tinker with the lids, they will seal in a few minutes. Let cool overnight then label and store in the pantry. These are best after the flavors have matured, about 2 weeks or more.

Hot sauce with a kick, and green tomato salsa are from a single recipe.

I also made a batch each of green tomato salsa and one of green tomato hot sauce. If you'd like the recipe for those, visit my recipes blog. Both are a combination of varieties of hot peppers and it's a tasty hot sauce with a real kick.

Freezing Pesto

2011-10-16T11:28:00.002-05:00

Rows of sweet basil in our garden.

With predictions of frost in our area in the next week or so, friends have been thinking about ways to preserve basil. It doesn't have to actually frost, for basil to drop its leaves, just a very chilly night and the leaves start falling. I know my friends have been thinking, "pesto" because I've gotten 2 phone calls and an email, asking for a good pesto recipe. Here's my favorite and it can be frozen and kept for the winter months. Just fill ice cube trays with the fresh pesto, freeze, then pop out the pesto cubes into plastic bags and keep frozen until ready to use. And there's a simple trick to keeping frozen pesto tasting fresh (below).

Freezer Pesto

4 cups basil leaves, loosely packed
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons almonds or walnuts (you could use pine nuts, they're more expensive, but I like almonds better)
6 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt

Put everything into the food processor and blend ingredients until smooth. Scrape the edges to make sure everything has been processed.
Pour the mixture into ice cube trays, filling each section. Freeze for 24 hours, then pop out the cubes into Zip-Lock bags and keep frozen.

Now the trick. When you are ready to use pesto, combine it with half Romano, half Parmesan cheese, freshly grated if possible. Since those cheeses don't freeze well, the flavor of your pesto will stay much fresher if you don't put the cheese in the pesto before freezing.

Rose and Basil Pesto
Roses and basil taste great together!

2 cups fresh basil
1 cup fragrant *rose petals
3 cloves garlic
1/2 cup pine nuts (I prefer walnuts)
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon food grade rose water
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice (don't substitute bottled juice)
1 cup Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
1/4 cup Romano cheese, freshly grated
Salt, optional

Peel and coarsely chop garlic, then add rose petals, basil, nuts and olive oil in food processor. Pulse blend until everything is well pulverized.
Add remaining ingredients and mix well. This can be stored for up to 4 days in the refrigerator.

*If you aren't sure what roses you can use, visit my YouTube video for tips on using roses in food.

You'll find more of my videos at http://youtube/longcreekherbs/ as well.

You might also enjoy my book, How to Eat a Rose, available from my website.

Another suggestion about pesto. Collect the leaves from plants that aren't blooming, the flavor will be better. Lemon basil is tasty mixed with sweet basil or any of the varieties. Thai basil is the least interesting basil for pesto, but even that works if you've kept the flowers clipped off.

Sweet basil is one of the best flavored basils for pesto. Clip off and discard the flower stalks.

Lemon basil gives a fresh flavor to pesto, so use it in combination with other basils if you have it.

Rosalind Creasy, The Edible Landscape

2011-10-09T15:44:00.002-05:00

I'm excited to share with you a garden I was privileged to visit a couple of weeks ago. Rosalind Creasy has been gardening and writing about gardening for decades. Back when no one had heard about local foods and heirloom vegetables, much less edible landscaping, Ros was plowing her garden and planting the seeds that are now part of a nationwide movement. Her first book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, was published by the Sierra Club in 1982. To get an idea of what she started with in the late 1970s, here's a view of her front yard:

Just an ordinary house on a small lot. The book, and the garden, had not yet been created.

Roalind Creasy is a landscape architect with a great eye for design, so it is no wonder the simple lot went from that, to what you see below. Instead of filling the newly cleared spaces with more green bushy things (the kind of plants I claim don't pay their rent, meaning, don't justify the space they take up in the landscape because they give nothing back) she planted edible plants everywhere. Here's almost the same view just 2 weeks ago:

Rosalind Creasy meets ust curbside in her edible landscape paradise.

Here (above) is that pesky dividing strip between houses, neighbors driveway on the left, Ros' driveway on the right. What's there besides the little hedge that acts as a curb? A few flowers, but if you look close, there are 3 very large eggplants and a planter filled with sweet peppers of several varieties. Just think, most people make this spot lawn that has to be mowed.

Still curbside, the bed is filled with herbs, vegetables and flowers.

I took 2 steps to the right after taking the curbside photo, still at Ros' driveway. Remember that photo in the beginning of the blank looking front yard? The street shows in the lower right corner, the driveway in the lower left of the photo, and everything else, between, is edibles. Great, arching rosemaries, potted figs, tomatoes, oregano, nasturtiums. Keep in mind, I'm still in the street, I haven't even stepped into the garden yet!

Standing at the front door, looking toward the street.

If you could look to the left, near the blue-green lattice fence in the left of the photo, you would discover the chicken pens. School children make a bee-line through the front of the garden almost every day to check on and see the chickens.

One of two chicken pens in the back of the photo. This is still curbside, too.

We're still in Ros' front yard. Several kinds of peppers and squash are in this bed, plus some herbs.

I didn't count how many raised beds and planters there were in the front garden, but many. Ros has blackberries, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, herbs, roses (remember my How to Eat a Rose book? Roses are edibles, too) and so many more vegetables and fruit I don't even remember them all. You could feed a family from the front garden and that doesn't even begin to describe the back garden!

Rosalind Creasy's first book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping can still be found on Amazon. Her second book, Edible Landscaping, newly released is also available on Amazon as well as through your local bookstore. It includes the basics for how turn your front (and back) yard into something other than grass and bushes. Learn about growing vegetables and herbs in containers, learn about organic pest controls, composting and a whole lot more. This is a large, hefty book, and it's overflowing with information from someone who knows gardening.

When I asked Ros if I could see her compost area, it didn't surprise me one bit to find a wonderful, working, well tended compost system, landscaped, of course! The chicken litter, garden debris, kitchen vegetable scraps and other organic compostables, all go into the compost and get recycled as new, rich soil into the garden beds.

Garden waste in, organic soil out and no fertilizer required to grow a garden.

And one more growing area, in the photo below, still in the front garden between the street and the house. The chicken pens are in the upper right of the photo, near the street.

Click to enlarge.

Follow the blog

2011-10-03T16:40:00.001-05:00

Come on, you are welcome to Follow this blog; even Paul Bunyan (or is that Harley Davidson) does!

Two or three times a week I receive emails from people who say they'd really like to follow my blog but can't figure out how. It's really quite simple and there are several options. I can see by the Visitor Counter on this page that lots of people stop by every day or two, but aren't followers. I like knowing who's reading my posts, like to know that it's not just ghosts but real people. So here are the Follow This Blog basics.

In the upper left corner, you'll see one of the several Follow buttons.

At the top of the blog page on your computer, you'll see the words, "Follow," Share," "Report Abuse," and "Next Blog." Click on the "Follow" button. It will open the pop-up window, below:

The pop-up window gives you options. You can follow publicly, meaning your name or a nickname which you choose, or, you can follow anonymously. If you look through the list of people who already follow my blog, you'll see some folks who choose to remain anonymous. Either way is fine. If you have a blog or website, you might want to follow publicly, because more people can find you that way.
Another way (there are actually 4, count them FOUR, different ways to choose to follow this blog) shows up in the next photo:

Simply click on the Join this site button. You'll get the same pop-up bottom as the other options.

By clicking on the Join this site button, you'll need a Google account, which takes about 2 minutes to start. Or you can follow anonymously, same as the above options.

Or, you can click on the "Posts" button under the "Subscribe to this blog" on the right side of my blog:

You can choose to receive an email when I post a new story, or with the options in 1, 2 and 3, you can put a little blurb on your Yahoo or Google page that keeps updated every time I post something and you simply click on that little button on your Yahoo or Google page to read the blog post.

So many options, all there to make it easy to follow the blog. The more people who follow my blog(s) the more my blogs are taken seriously by people curious about my books and website. You can follow with a photo of yourself, or if you're a shy person, you can let the blog site generate a ghost-like image. Or, if there really are ghosts who follow my blogs, then they will all be invisible but they can still Follow.

Like I've mentioned before, no one can contact you by looking through my followers unless you list your blog or website. Anonymous people remain anonymous, even to me. Being a follower does not expose you to spammers, I can't contact you, nor can other followers. And if you do choose to get a Google account, you don't have to use G-Mail or anything else Google (I have a Google account because my previous smartphone required it, but I don't use it any longer, it's just an account I don't use, but it does make it easy for me to subscribe to other blogs that I follow). Nothing bad happens if you follow my blog, I promise. And, since I post once a week and sometimes the stories are about marginally interesting things, you'll simply receive a notification that I posted something, making it convenient for you.

If you are interested in checking out some of my other blogs, here's the partial list:
My columns from magazines I write for: http://jimlongscolumns.blogspot.com/
Bi-weekly newspaper columns: http://ozarksgardening.blogspot.com/
Herb of the Year (Roses 2012): http://herboftheyear.blogspot.com/
My recipes blog: http://jimlongsrecipes.blogspot.com/
My Dream Pillows stories: http://jimsdreampillows.blogspot.com/
I post to those more sporadically, but there are different photos and stories there that you might be interested in. And with even those, you can choose to hit the Follow button, just like this site.

Even this cornstalk horse follows this blog!

Thanks for stopping by. I'll try to write about something fun in the next post.

Making Herb Jelly

2011-09-26T10:57:00.001-05:00

Herb jellies can be made from any combination of your favorite herbs.

At the end of the summer season most people who grow herbs have lots of extra herbs. There are all kinds of ways to preserve them for winter. Most herbs dry well. Many, like basil, parsley and cilantro, freeze well (chop up in a food processor with a little bit of cooking oil and freeze in ice cube trays; or, just put sprigs of the herbs in plastic bags, push out the excess air and freeze). But herb jellies are also a great way to preserve summer flavors for those cold winter mornings ahead. Here's a basic jelly recipe that can be used for most any herb.

Basic Herb Jelly recipe

2 cups of your favorite fresh herb leaves or flowers (if using dry herbs, use 1 cup)
2 cups water, apple juice or white wine
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice or white wine vinegar
4 cups sugar (white or brown)
3 ounces liquid fruit pectin
pinch of salt
1-2 drops food color, optional

Wash half-pint jelly jars in the dishwasher, or sterilize in boiling water. Keep jars hot until ready to fill with jelly. Use new Ball or Kerr canning lids, and keep them in hot water.

Method:
Coarsely chop your chosen herbs and put in a medium saucepan. Add 2 cups of water or juice and bring to a constant boil for about 10 seconds. Remove from heat and let stand until completely cooled. Strain, discarding herbs, so that you have 1 1/2 cups of the liquid.

Pour the herbal infusion (liquid) into a large cooking pot and add lemon juice or vinegar and the sugar. Bring to a hard boil, then add the liquid pectin and continue to boil for exactly one minute. Remove from heat and skim off any foam and discard it.

Pour the hot jelly immediately into hot, half-pint jelly jars, filling them to within 1/2 inch of the top. Wipe the rims of the jars with a damp cloth and screw on the hot lids, just lightly tightening. Tip the covered jars upside down for about a minute to coat the inside and create a seal. Place right side up on a towel and let cool. Label and store in a cool, dark place. Your jelly will keep for 1-2 years.

You can use fresh or dried herbs for jelly making. If using dry, use twice as much as when using fresh.

Herbs that work well in the above jelly recipe include: basils, such as cinnamon, Thai, spicy, etc.; chives, chamomile, beebalm, ginger, lavender, fennel, lemon thyme, lemon verbena, marjoram, mint, parsley, scented geraniums, tarragon and rose. Combine herbs you would use in cooking, such as thyme, rosemary and sage, to use for Thanksgiving. Use orange juice instead of fresh lemon juice with orange thyme or scented geranium. Try white baslamic vinegar with tarragon to use on holiday rolls or breads. Use dried rose petals and scented geraniums together. Try basil and blackberry juice with a bit of lemon juice for a jelly. The combinations are endless.

Here's a good lavender jelly recipe that's quick and easy. If you make thumbprint cookies, use lavender jelly in the middle for a surprising burst of flavor.

Lavender Jelly
Use this between layers of cake. Spread on toast, use it in frosting mix for cupcakes. Try a teaspoon or two in your afternoon tea.

4 tablespoons dried lavender flowers
4 tablespoons powdered pectin
3 cups apple juice
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 cups brown sugar

Tie up lavender flowers in double thickness of cheesecloth, securing with string.
Combine pectin and apple juice in a saucepan and stir to dissolve the pectin. Bring to a boil stirring constantly. Add lemon juice and sugar, stir, then add the lavender cheesecloth bag. Boil for 2 minutes. Remove bag of lavender and discard. Strain hot jelly through cheesecloth into sterilized jars and seal (I use 2-piece jelly lids, kept hot in boiling water but some people prefer the old method of sealing with paraffin).

Cinnamon Basil makes an excellent jelly for all sorts of winter uses.

Lemon Verbena Jelly

3 cups apple juice
1 cup fresh lemon verbena leaves
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or white wine vinegar
1 package powdered pectin
4 cups sugar
1/2 teaspon butter
1 fresh herb leaf for each jar
2 - 3 drops green food coloring (optional)

In saucepan, make herb infusion with juice and herb by bringing juice to a boil and adding the verbena leaves. Boil for about 10 seconds, then let cool completely. Strain and discard leaves. You'll need 1 1/2 cups of herb infusion liquid.

Combine the herb infusion with lemon juice (or vinegar), food coloring and pectin. Bring to a rolling boil. Mix in sugar and bring to a full rolling boil again. Boil hard for one minute. Add butter, stir. If any foam remains, skim off and discard. Pour into hot sterilized jars with optional leaf in each jar. Wipe jar edges with damp cloth, then screw on hot jar lids, tightening moderately but don't over-tighten. Turn jars upside down to seal, for about 30 seconds. Turn upright and let cool on dishtowel. Store in a dark, cool place.

National Heirloom Exposition

2011-09-20T17:29:00.001-05:00

Every imaginable kind of squash, pumpkin and melon.

Mountains of squash and pumpkins in the demonstration hall.

The last time I felt like I was in a large group of like-minded gardeners was at the Terra Madre Slow Foods Conference in Turin, Italy, back in 2005. That is, until the National Heirloom Exposition this past week. The event brought together seed companies, chefs, foodies, serious gardeners, old hippies, new hippies, WWOOFers and anyone interested in locally grown, organic and sustainable foods. Baker Creek Seed, in Mansfield, MO combined efforts with several local and national organizations to put this conference together. Whole Foods, Inc., Seed Savers, Southern Seed Exchange, several organic farming and organic certification organizations. What I kept hearing as people walked around was, "Everyone here gets it! We're all here for the same reasons!"

There was tomato tastings, rare fruit displays, contests, workshops and demonstrations.

Giant pumpkins were on hand for judging. In fact, I can safely say that between the giant pumpkins, the enormous mountains of pumpkins and squash in the display hall, and the children's pumpkin mazes outdoors, there were literally tons and tons of pumpkins at the Expo!

If you can't read it, it says 1051 pounds!

Each of the 3 days had 3 tracts of speakers every hour from 11:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. I was nervous about being the first speaker on the very first day, 11:30 a.m. on Tuesday. I expected maybe 20 people to show up, considering people were still finding their way around. I'm honored to report, the room was filled, standing room only! The estimate was 250 people, and oddly enough, many were fans of mine from magazine writing, some even said they had all of my books! But, there were about 70 outstanding speakers in all, with enthusiastic audiences and great exchanges of information.

This chef was demonstrating the Thai art of vegetable and fruit carving.

Click on this photo and look at the incredible carved melons.

Besides buildings filled with heirloom vegetables and fruit, other buildings held rare heirloom breeds of sheep, chickens, cattle and goats. You may recall I'm a big fan of State Fairs. This Expo was bigger and better than our own Missouri State Fair (if you remove the Midway-carnival part). The produce displays and the demonstrations were both way better than any State Fair I have attended anywhere!

There were dozens of kinds of heirloom and rare varieties of corn. Enlarge the photo to see 'Bloody Butcher' the red corn on the right, to see how beautiful it is.


This fellow made this bread and pizza oven the first day and it was ready to fire on the third day	.

There were ongoing demonstrations every hour. The fellow above made this oven the first day of the Expo, out of a mixture of ground corncobs, concrete and straw. He put the finish on it on the second day and by day three, it was ready for a fire inside to cook a pizza. Demonstrations on soapmaking, weaving, seed saving, and many, many more happened on the hour.

There were lots of activities for kids and the oven guy helped kids of all ages mix the concrete mix and make tiny ovens.

There were 3 pumpkin mazes for kids, and lots of activities for kids.

There was bluegrass and local music going on all day, outside and inside, too. A wide variety of food vendors served really good foods. Mushroom-stuffed crepes, pulled pork, grilled local beef burgers, veggie sandwiches, grilled heirloom tomatoes with local cheese, organic ice cream, the list is much longer but that's all I can remember. Fair goers ate well!

Produce vendors sold local vegetables and fruits, too.

The setting for the Expo was beautiful and surrounded by trees and picnic tables for relaxing and eating meals.

These mushroom kits grow on used coffee grounds!

Inside the vendor building where we were, there was a wide variety of really interesting products. The folks, above, sell a mushroom kit that's so simple to use, we had to have one. The box is filled with ground coffee grounds and mushroom spawn. You simply mist one side of the box with water and the mushrooms grow out the side of the box. When you're done harvesting, begin misting the other side of the box for a second crop of mushrooms!

I was fascinated by the Hudson Valley Seed Co. packets. Every year they hold an art contest and the winners have their artwork on the seed packet that year. They're collectible and inexpensive. What a good idea!

This is the artist who created the paintings for the Heirloom Gardener 2012 calendar.

I liked this vegetable lady, all assembled out of colorful veggies.

It was a successful and interesting trip to Santa Rosa. I'm hoping the group that organized this will do it again next year. I'm just guessing, but I think there must have been about 24,000 people spread over the 3 days. Sure, standing on concrete at our booth with Herbal Nail Soak and my books for 12 hours a day, then driving an hour to get to bed, left me worn to a frazzle. But it was an exceptional event that brought together a lot of people who are interested in the enormous whole foods, organic and local foods movement. There were displays, speakers and vendors from all across the United States, this definitely was not a local event! And it also brought together lots of our Garden Writing Assoc. friends (Felder Rushing, Brent Heath, Kelly Norris and several more). This was my last speaking gig for the year, and a good way to end the speaking tours. I've been on the road between 1 and 3 weeks out of every month for out of state speaking since March and I'm ready to get to be home for awhile.

Edible Landscaping, French Laundry and Heirlooms

2011-09-11T23:54:00.001-05:00

Someone recently asked me what it is that I do when I'm not gardening, writing or traveling for lectures. I answered I visit other people's gardens and enjoy the food from them. Out of all my trips this year so far, this is the first one where I've had free time that didn't involve speaking or selling. What did I do? Visit more gardens, of course! Here's a sampling of time in and around San Francisco, with more details coming later.

The sign for the restaurant is so understated and hidden in the bushes, it's hard to see.

I've always wanted to visit the world famous French Laundry restaurant and today accomplished that. Restaurants like this one, as well as Chez Panise (owned by Alice Waters, one of the speakers at the National Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa where I'm also speaking this week) and the very famous Herbfarm Restaurant outside Seattle, have been early pioneers in the trend for restaurants having their own gardens. I've written several times about The Herbfarm Restaurant, owned by our friends Ron Zimmerman and Carry Van Dyck and their remarkable herb gardens and food. Here's a taste of the gardens at the French Laundry.

Tucker's a talented and creative horticulturist.

Meet the head horticulturist, Tucker Taylor, who is responsible for this bountiful garden. Tucker told us the gardens furnish all of the produce for not only the French Laundry but the 2 other restaurants they own in Yountsville, CA. While the garden isn't certified organic, they use organic methods for the lowest impact on the location. I was pleased to see the French Laundry has chickens, although our little flock of 60 birds back home don't have fancy digs like these.

The chickens have their own garden, umbrella, yard and house. Pretty cool.

But it's the gardens that are impressive, so here are a few pics of those and of their massive compost pile. I was glad to see how well they make and use their compost from the leftovers from the garden.

Tucker and his crew grow a wide variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers specifically for the restaurant.

One tiny corner of the garden, with the French Laundry restaurant across the street.

This year's compost pile, which will become next year's soil.

Another restaurant garden was at Oakville Vineyard, where we had brunch. Their extensive gardens provide the food for their restaurant chefs and for the many visitors who come on tours and meals.


Oakville's gardens are for both production and for easy access by the chefs and staff on a daily basis.

We spent the evening with our author and friend, Rosalind Creasy who took us to Palo Alto where we visited Stanford University, and the Facebook headquarters. I asked Ros to pose with her best-selling book, Edible Landscaping.
We had a wonderful evening in her garden and enjoyed dinner from her backyard, as well.

Palo Alto is the home of Facebook. They, too, have a very understated, modest sign.

If you haven't read her book, you should. She is also one of the early pioneers in the current whole foods, healthy eating movement. More about her gardens later and more gardens and stories from California. Happy gardening!

Garden Writers Association new plants and books

2011-09-02T19:57:00.000-05:00

That's Josh at our table, passing out media packets for How to Eat a Rose.

I always come away from a Garden Writers Association conference with new ideas, new friends and renewed connections. It is the best professional organization I belong to, and the best community of sharing authors and plant people. I was there, promoting my How to Eat a Rose book in conjunction with next year's Herb of the Year project as designated by the International Herb Association.

Josh Kirchenbaum, in the Territorial Seed booth, showing off their line of Mighty 'Maters, tomatoes with two varieties grafted onto disease-hardy rootstock. You may remember my earlier posts about these tomatoes I'm trialing this year.

It's a big conference, about 500 people and an impressive trade show. Plant people introduce their new plants for next year, book authors showcase their books, publishers seek out new authors and the garden tool companies offer new garden things to take home. All in all, we writer-types are treated extremely well, with all the companies wanting us to write about their products and plants (which I will be doing in the coming months). I can only hit some of the highlights here, I'm still processing and digesting all I saw and learned.

I like hibiscus of all kinds and this one is exceptional, from Proven Winners. It's called 'Summer Storm' with pink flowers and deep maroon leaves. You'll see it in garden centers and nurseries next spring.

Jenks Farmer was there with some of the largest Crinum bulbs I've ever seen. Look him up online, he's a terrific expert on bulbs. Check him on-line at www.jenksfarmer.com

You many not be able to tell from the photo, below, that's a 20 story atrium in the hotel we were in. The glass-sided elevators gave excellent views of each landing.

Looking down from the elevator, you can see our Garden Writers trade show floor.

There was lots of good food, too. (Somehow I always manage to get food into the gardening conversation, don't I? After all, why garden unless you can eat what you grow?)

That's chicken, cooked under a brick. Yes, really. It flattens the chicken, makes it crisp.

Shrimp Louie; even the deviled eggs were made with truffles. Herbs everywhere!


Angela Treadwell-Palmer & Jim Martin, always dress up the show with their plant introductions and their costumes. Angela is the PR person for Plants Neuveau, a company that has introduced some incredible plants in this and previous years.

Miniature and Fairy Gardens are popular this year. Tools, benches and more from Kathryn Newman of www.miniaturegardenshoppe.com. She even sells tiny fences, stepping stones and more for the Fairy Garden.

Pie Boy at the Blue Sky Cafe, Exit 30 on Illinois I-70.

And like any good trip, we finished it off with pie. The Blue Sky Cafe has been making real pie for half a century. I had banana, which is probably the best banana pie I've had in 30 years.

Don't you wish you had a piece right now?

Come see us at our booth at the National Heirloom Exposition in Santa Rosa, California, Sept. 13-15. I'll be speaking, along with Felder Rushing, Alice Waters and a whole lot of other garden folks. Stop by and say hi!

Food Fears

2011-08-13T11:03:00.002-05:00

It's hard to put your mind around the battle going on between organic (and non-organic) farmers, and the big giant, Monsanto. It would seem at first glance, that all are agricultural-based, and would have common interests. There's the rub.

On one side are the folks who grow your food and want to make a reasonable profit for their family farm. On the other, a giant multi-national corporation that is dedicated to creating products for maximum profit, at the expense of whatever gets in their way. You think I'm making this up? Simply do a Google search for, "Monsanto sues farmers" and check this link, too.

The bottom line is this. Monsanto creates genetically modified seed, which they patent and sell to large-scale production farmers, often called, "factory farms." The seed includes a gene that is specific, such as the Round-up Ready® gene that allows the farmer to plant corn seed, and once it emerges, spray the entire field with the herbicide, Round-Up® and all the weeds are killed, while the crop is not. Sounds groovy, right? But here's the problem. The genetically-modified seed with the added gene, can replicate itself. Not only can it replicate, it does so readily. The pollen can drift into nearby fields, onto organic farms, into your backyard. Monsanto has been aggressive in testing nearby fields of farmers who are not using their patented seed. If they find the genes of the genetically-modified seed in a neighboring field, they sue that farmer for patent infringement, even though the farmer never planted Monsanto's seed, and could not have prevented the Monsanto gene from jumping the fence and contaminating his crops. Through no fault of their own, the farmer gets sued for the contamination that came from a Monsanto-planted field. That's like someone comes along and dumps a pile of garbage in your front yard, then sues you because it's on your front lawn!

Sound like something out of George Orwell's "1984"? It's worse than that. Big Brother is not only watching you, he is feeding you and if you don't eat what he provides, destroys your means of eating anything else. The courts have upheld Monsanto's claims. Imagine being a little farmer, making a small living of $30,000 or $40,000 a year off your organic farm. Monsanto steps in and sues you for half or three-quarters of a million dollars for infringement - all because their pollen blew across the fence into your field. Do you have that kind of money? Do you have a few hundred lawyers on staff, like Monsanto does? Of course not. Monsanto wins the court battles and you're out of business.

Why does this affect you and why should you care? Because Monsanto's herbicide-ready seed, winds up in your corn flakes. It's in your bread, it's in the coating on your fried chicken and in those soy products you love to eat in place of meat. It's also in the honey you buy and the rice you cook.

Here's a very interesting story about what's happening in this struggle between farmers and the Big Giant bully. It gives an update on how organic farmers are combining resources to try to preserve their rights to grow organic food, without the fear of Monsanto trying to squash their operations. The link I'm guiding you to is Wood Prairie Farm's website, where I buy my seed potatoes each year. They're a nice family with an admirable organic farm in Maine. Their newsletter on the website is worth reading.

What can you do? Buy locally from your farmers market. Avoid buying genetically-modified foods if you can (unfortunately, foods like corn flakes, bread and soy products are not required to tell you if their products contain genetically modified ingredients). Why does it matter? Because there has been virtually no testing to see what happens in our bodies once the genetically-modified organism is ingested. The old adage of, "you are what you eat" comes to mind. Do you really want herbicide-ready genes bouncing around in your body, doing who knows what? I know I don't want that.

Read the comments section of this post and you'll see the fight is going on in New Zealand, too. And it's also being waged in India where Monsanto tried to make a deal with the government to regulate the sale of herbicide-ready rice. Imagine, a country that has grown rice for a thousand years as food, with people saving their own seed from generation to generation, having to buy only approved and over-priced seed from Monsanto or risk sanctions and fines! Fortunately, for now, farmers have been able to stop this from happening with their rice. Here in the U.S., people are more docile and more ready to eat whatever is put before them and organic farmers continued to be sued for "patent infringement" when pollen blows into their fields from somewhere else.

Summertime, perfect for Salsa and Pie

2011-08-05T17:00:00.003-05:00

The ingredients and method are in my Banana Salsa YouTube video.

This feels like a cool refreshing beverage kind of day. Maybe a pitcher of margaritas, or just some fresh mint tea over ice. Speaking of refreshments, how about making a batch of salsa for appetizers tonight? If you already have my Sensational Salsas, from Apple to Zucchini book, then you already have the recipe for my favorite Banana Salsa. But if you don't have the book, click on the link and check out my salsa video, here. And if you go to this link, you'll see that both my Salsas and my Homemade Crackers with Herbs books are on sale right now.

Lori & Tom Hess. Lori weaves pine needle baskets, Tom makes his famous pie plates.

Summer is also pie weather. I've been visiting with Tom and Lori Hess at the Reeds Spring (Missouri) Evening Farmers Market (you can see more photos on the market's FaceBook page). Tom Hess is famous for his incredible pie plates, hand-thrown in his shop. They're deeper than a regular pie plate, made of unglazed clay, and the pie crust actually cooks perfectly on the bottom of the pie.

Fine Cooking magazine (2006) declared Tom's plates as The Perfect Pie Plate.

The cool thing about visiting with Hess Pottery folks every Sat. night at farmers market, is they are also Pie-aholics. They keep a diary of the best pie places across America! They are always on the lookout for really good, homemade pie places. When I name this place or that I've visited, they've likely been there and have rated it in their pie diary! I'm always trying to add some new roadside pie stops to their list. So it was no great surprise when I mentioned Royers Cafe in Round Top, TX, and Royers pies, that Tom and Lori had been there several times.

That's it, that's just about all there is of Round Top, TX, population 50.

Round Top, TX is a little bit of a place, even smaller than the town where I grew up. You wouldn't think of it as the kind of eating destination that would be nationally known, would you? Nor would you look at Royers Cafe and immediately think, "Wow, I gotta stop there!" But for those of us who are adventurous-eating-travelers, it's exactly the kind of place we look for.

An unimposing place, it may not look famous, but it is. Most anytime you'll have to wait in line, or sit on bales of straw out front until there's a table empty. The lines to get inside to eat, are sometimes substantial and always worth the wait.

The King of Pies, is Bud Royer. He keeps things moving, personally greets every customer and is full of stories about all the famous and not-so-famous customers who've graced his table. And he knows his pies!

On a balmy evening this spring when I'd finished with my responsibilities at the herb festival at nearby Festival Hill, I stopped by Royers Cafe just as they were closing. Kind and genial hosts as they are to everyone who steps over their doorstep, they invited me to sit on the front porch and visit. It's a family place and the entire Royer family keep the place running smoothly. Even after a long, tiring day, they found the time to visit with a pie-hungry traveler.

It's fun to see a family that not only works together, but can laugh and like each other at the end of the day!

CBS Morning Show conducted a nationwide survey of great cafes. Royers came out in the top 3 or 4 in the nation!

These pies are famous, not just in nearby Austin, or only in Texas, but they have a following across these United States. And what do people come here for? Buttermilk and garlic marinated pan-fried chicken, sandwiches, quail, and pie. Real, homemade, honest-to-goodness pie, the kind that us hard-core pie lovers look for.

These are the real deal, homemade, over-sized, melt in your mouth pies.

Peach on the left, apple, their top seller in the middle, cherry on the right. Mmmmm.

Getting married? You can order a wedding pie. Why not? Cakes are boringly same.


People send thank you notes, signs, photos. This is just one tiny spot on a wall that's completely covered with notes from happy customers. All the walls, and the ceiling, too, are covered.

So if you're wanting something truly summer-ish, watch my YouTube salsa videos and make either my Banana or Peach-Mango Salsa. Then, dream about Pie. And if you get anywhere within 300 miles of Round Top, TX, plan to have pie (they also serve other food, sandwiches, quail, chicken, you name it) but save room for real pie at Royers.

That pretty well says it all.

A Harsh Summer of Drought and Heat

2011-07-30T12:48:00.000-05:00

Our booth at the Reeds Spring Market, late July.

It's hard to write about failure and despair in the garden. As gardeners, we start out as wide-eyed idealists. The season will be perfect, the packets of seed will be everything, and more, they promise. The photos on seed company websites give us waking dreams of perfect tomatoes, robust corn, twining, vining tendrils on skyrocketing vines. Some years our garden is a paradise. This year, it is struggling to stay alive.

Adam, waiting on a customer.

Adam, you may remember him from 3 seasons ago as our summer WWOOFer, came this year to experiment in production growing for farmers market. Because I had agreed to a great deal of lecture travel this season, it was a good fit for me to turn the entire garden over to him. A relief, actually, because he and I garden well together. He shares my passion for growing plants and experimenting. It was to be a summer with him and his girlfriend, Amelia, producing quantities of vegetables and selling them at market.

Beds that aren't watered, look like this. In the foreground is Mioga ginger, sad.

First, you may recall, we had an incredibly chilly, wet, prolonged spring. Each week brought us 4, 6, 8 or more inches of rain. Then, the second week of June, the water was turned off. We've had one, small rain since. Daily temperatures hover between 100 and 105 degrees F. (that's 37.7 degrees Celsius). Add that to constant sunshine, a bit of wind each day, and plants have gone into shock. Most put down few roots, thanks to the constant rainfall, so when the rains quit, they had to struggle to find moisture.

One view of a portion of the garden. It doesn't look parched until you look close.

We water daily, usually 12 hours or more a day, using soaker hoses, lots of mulch, and shade over the tomatoes. With over 100 tomato plants we should be harvesting bushels of tomatoes a week. But tomato blossoms fall off the plant in such heat, not setting fruit - a protective mechanism for the plant as they can't support more tomatoes in a drought. Even with constant watering, the plants struggle. And when plants are weakened for any reason, they are more susceptible to attack from pests.

A native bean variety, Potawatamie limas, seem to do well in spite of the drought.

Cucumber beetles and the viruses they carry, wiped out the entire melon patch in less than 24 hours. Then the cucumbers fell prey to the same problem. Next were the zucchini, attacked by both squash bugs by the millions, then by cucumber beetles, and finally by squash vine borers. Out of 50 plants, we have 2 left. Those have suffered the humiliation of rooting armadillos, which are attracted by the smell of damp soil, from our watering. They dig wherever there are earthworms or grubs, and simply root plants out of their way. Two nights ago, a huge armadillo, about 16 pounds, went right down the row of egg plants, tossing several out of its way.

The heat has curtailed the tomato crops severely.

Josh and Adam have taken turns, with Molly by their side, to sleeping on a cot outside next to the eggplants and 2 remaining zucchinis, standing guard. Molly alerts the guard to the intruder, who wakes up and shoots the armadillo. Or raccoon. Last night was an armadillo. Two nights ago it was 4 raccoons in the pear tree beside the eggplants, eating away at the pears. Between the squirrels and raccoons, we don't get a pear at all this year.

Fennel doesn't seem to mind the heat.

It's so frustrating, not just for the loss of the garden, but at seeing Adam's enthusiasm and excitement at the experiment at production, dashed by things out of any of our control. His goal was to learn how to time his plantings, what he could grow and how much he could make from selling at farmers markets. I'm certain he's learned a lot, but it's a hard lesson to learn in a year rife with problems.

Mexican oregano withstands the harsh conditions of this summer pretty well.

From friends in the greenhouse plant busienss I've heard this has been a very difficult and unprofitable year for plant sellers. Lowes and Home Depot, as well as Wal-Mart, all have enormous left-over shrubs, trees, perennials and even annuals, left in their inventory. All of them are trying desperately to sell off as much as possible. Yesterday when I was in town (Springfield, MO) I passed the Habitat for Humanity Re-Store and saw shelves and shelves of plants out front for sale. Nursery businesses can donate their left over plants to such charities, for a tax write-off and in turn the charity sells or gives away the plants to low-income people.

Swallowtail butterflies seem to do well this year. There are more than I have ever seen.

One worry I have is for the 7 million new gardeners last year and this, who were filled with enthusiasm for learning to garden. Since the drought and heat are widespread, from way out West, to New York City and south into Mexico, those folks will be even more discouraged than us seasoned gardeners. I worry they will be so discouraged they will not try to garden again. I worry, too, that this cycle of cool, wet spring, followed by 3 months of heat and drought, is here to stay. It's what has been predicted for several years by scientists who warn of global warming problems. This year is what we had last summer, only worse. If it continues, our gardening season will have to be early spring, and late fall, under plastic.

Fritilary butterflies are doing well, too.

It's not all doom and gloom. A few things, besides weeds, have managed to continue. But life in the garden is a struggle this year, almost nationwide. The great expectations we felt last spring have dwindled considerably. The reality of one of the harshest garden years in recent history, is daunting.

International Herb conference, Midland, Michigan

2011-07-23T12:26:00.000-05:00

Glass sculpture at the Dow Botanic Gardens, Midland, Michigan.

This week's trip was to Midland, Michigan, to the annual conference of the International Herb Association, or IHA. The IHA is the organization that created the Herb of the Year project in 1994. My Herb of the Year committee that year established connections with the Herb Society of America as well as herb businesses, wholesalers, schools and garden centers across the nation. This year's Herb of the Year is horseradish. Next year, 2012, the Herb of the Year will be the rose. If you'd like to know more of the history of the Herb of the Year project, visit my Herb of the Year blog and also my YouTube channel to see the video: http://youtu.be/S0_bMc-ZbHs

My part of the conference was a program, How to Eat a Rose (also available in brief form, on my YouTube channel), and my "Favorite Recipe in 10 Minutes" which was my banana salsa. The salsa was a hit and I sold some of my Sensational Salsas, from Apple to Zucchini and How to Eat a Rose books.

Unlike some of my fellow herbies, I wasn't in costume for the Favorite Recipe in 10 Minutes. But look at some of my competition.

There was an hour full of fun and cooking demos, each kept to 10 minutes each and it was a huge success. Organizer Donna Frawley, cracked the whip and kept the conference organized and on track and an army of volunteers made things run smoothly.

Zachery Kidder and his Cabana Soaps.

One of the vendors in the sales area, and new IHA member, was Zachery Kidder with his excellent hand-made soaps. He's a stay-at-home dad while his wife finishes college and he makes good use of his time making organic, healthful soaps. He sells his soaps at local farmers markets as well as through his website. His company is Cabana Soaps, and he was lovingly dubbed "Cabana Boy" by the other vendors. Everyone enjoyed his being there.

My favorite of all the soaps Zachery makes is Tangerine, which has a refreshing fragrance. He also offers special labeling for gift-giving, with your gift recipient's photo on the label. Great idea for weddings, birthdays or the Holidays!

I spent some time at the Dow Botanic Gardens and visited the kids garden, too. I like to check out kids gardens to see if they take kids serious. Some botanic gardens just create a kid-sized theme park with plants, while others create an outdoors classroom with lots of educational activities. I found this garden to have small plots where kids had their own little gardens for the season. Sometime in the spring Dow had hosted a scarecrow contest and the gardens were full, crowds of scarecrows.

It was fun to see kids actually playing and using the garden.

The boy is looking down at a turtle island, a topiary covered with living plants.

Kids love to run through sprinklers, no matter what location it is.

The Trees of Joplin

2011-07-12T23:05:00.002-05:00

Buildings gone, neighborhoods flattened, and trees left as mere trunks.

On Sunday we drove the couple of hours over to Joplin to view the damage from the recent tornado. And to see what progress the city is making in the clean-up process.

This is all that's left of Hope High School in Joplin.

The devastation is awful, a big swath of the city about a mile and a half long and half a mile wide, or so, just flattened. I can't even imagine having every article of life in many neighborhoods, mixed together and spat out, with nothing left except what looks like a landfill.

Trees in all directions were mostly without limbs.

The trees were hard-hit, as well. Lots of them are completely gone, but many are still standing, their limbs twisted off, leaving nothing but a tortured trunk.

This tree has sheets of tin roofing and other debris lodged in its limbs.

But if you look close at all of the tree pictures above, you'll see life. Many of the trees, even the ones that are no more than a stick in the air, are leafing out. Yes, they are badly damaged, but there is hope, there is life. The whole town wasn't destroyed, just a major portion, but the much of the town remains. And speaking of parts that are left, parts that show life will go on, we saw this, as well.

Hope High School sign in the school yard.

If you click on the photo, you can see someone's taken the downed trees and using a chainsaw, carved several eagles, the school mascot. How heartening, what a nice gesture of encouragement, to take the destroyed trees and carve out the eagle mascot, showing the school will rise again, rebuild and life will continue. With sadness and loss, forever changed, but they will rebuild and the carvings stand in front of the school for everyone to see that Joplin isn't about to give up.

Eagles in front of Hope High School in Joplin, MO.

German Potato Salad, Daylilies

2011-07-08T23:05:00.001-05:00

Barbara Young and her cucumber crop.

Josh and his mother, Barbara, made it back from Rhode Island yesterday. They'd driven my books and products to Pittsburgh, PA where I was speaking at the Herb Society of American conference. I flew home and they drove on to Rhode Island where the Young family had lived. Barbara hadn't been back to visit in nearly 10 years so it was fun for her to see relatives and friends. That's Barbara, below, with her Photoshop cucumber, obviously having more luck than we are here. Cucumber beetles wiped out several melons in just 2 days and are hard at work on the cucumbers. It's discouraging, as you can imagine. Nothing stops cucumber beetles (and no, don't suggest what someone last year did; we're organic, I'm not going to call an exterminator and spray the garden). Here's another of Barbara's giant Photoshopped vegetables.

Giant tomato, as created by Barbara's grandson, Christopher Young.

Heat is hovering in the upper 90s every day and we are getting serious about needing some rain. Constant watering, using drip irrigation and over-head, as well, keeps things alive but doesn't satisfy the plants like a soaking rain would. It's hard to believe we were inundated with rains and flooding less than 2 months ago and now we're getting desperate for moisture. Lady bugs are keeping up with aphids and other critters but they're no match for the bigger pests like the cucumber beetles, squash bugs and squash vine borers.

Lady bug on a native Solanum plant.

Here's a spotted cucumber beetle, in the photo below, taste-testing a winter squash leaf. Not even birds or chickens will eat these little yellow and black spotted critters.

Such a little bug, the same size as the lady bug, but one's helpful, and this one is a threat to crops.

The potatoes are nearly all dug, most have been sold at the farmers markets on Friday and Saturday night. We may try to plant a fall crop in a week or two. Friends told us they always plant their fall crop of potatoes in mid July so I think we'll give it a try.

Red potatoes, ready for market at a friend's house.

We had a very good crop of fingerling potatoes earlier (those aren't fingerlings, above, those are red potatoes). One favorite of the fingerlings is Anna Cheeka's Odette, one of the best for making German potato salad. Fingerling potatoes stay firm when cooked and aren't mealy, which means they don't break up into mashed potatoes when you make potato salad. Here's the recipe I like:

German Potato Salad

l pound fingerling potatoes, (or substitute German butterball or Yukon), skins left on
8-10 slices bacon
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 T. sugar

Put the potatoes in a steamer or double boiler and cook over salted water for about 30 minutes or until tender when forked. Let the potatoes cool, reserving 1 1/4 cups of the salted cooking water.

Fry the bacon over medium heat until nearly crisp but still bendable. Remove bacon from pan and cut into 1 inch pieces. Leave bacon fat in the pan. (Bacon drippings, after all, are "America's olive oil!")

Reduce skillet heat to low and add the chopped onion, cooking until soft. Raise heat to medium, sift flour into the onions, stirring for about 5 minutes to make a roux. Let the flour and fat become well bound together and lightly brown in color.

Slowly add the vinegar to the roux, stirring steadily until the sauce thickens. Next, add the potato water, also slowly, stirring constantly until the sauce is thickened. Add the sugar, stirring until dissolved.

Cut the potatoes into 1-inch cubes and add the sauce, tossing with the bacon pieces. Mix gently. Best served immediately while still hot.

Summer here at Long Creek Herbs means daylilies and we have several colors. Here's one of the orange doubles...

And this white one was a new one last year.

And one more, for contrast.

Grafted Tomatoes Offer Impressive Advantages

2011-06-29T12:52:00.001-05:00

Heirloom varieties offer great flavor but have more disease problems than hybrids.

In recent years heirloom tomatoes varieties have made a big comeback. The buying public has grown increasingly weary of store-bought tomatoes which have no flavor. More gardeners have turned to growing heirloom tomatoes, which have outstanding tomato flavor. But many heirloom tomatoes are prone to virus problems (which is one of the reasons tomatoes were hybridized, to avoid some of the disease problems).

According to several garden forums and blogs, the top-rated tomato for flavor is the ‘Brandywine,’ followed by ‘Cherokee Purple’ ‘Sun Gold’ and ‘Beefmaster.’ Of course, each gardener has their own tastes and preferences.

The graft of this recently planted tomato is between my outstretched fingers.

Log House Plants in Cottage Grove, OR has been testing grafted tomatoes for several years, attaching such varieties as ‘Big Beef,’ ‘Brandywine’ and ‘Sun Gold’ to the roots of reliably stronger, disease resistant root stock. Their testing has shown an average of 30% increased tomato production, without the disease problems.

Grafted and non-grafted field trials at Bear Creek Farm in Missouri.

In their growing trials, Log House Plants planted grafted and non-grafted tomatoes of the same varieties side by side, in exactly the same growing conditions. The results were dramatic. The grafteds produced larger, healthier plants with more pounds of tomatoes per plant than the non-grafted ones. Additionally, near the end of the season when the non-grafted tomatoes had ceased producing, the grated tomatoes continued producing fruit right up to frost.

Notice how small the tomatoes are when grafted, and the little grafting clips at the base of the plant.

Grafting tomatoes isn’t new, it’s been done commercially in New Zealand and Japan for many years. What is new is growers, like Territorial Seed, are making the grafted tomatoes available to home gardeners. There’s considerable labor involved in the grafting process, making the tomato plants more expensive, but tests have shown the stronger plants and longer production make it a good investment.

This is Lonnie at Bear Creek Farm, with a flat of recently grafted tomatoes, ready for the field.

I visited Bear Creek Farm, a certified organic commercial farm in central Missouri recently, where friends grow for both farmers markets and Whole Foods stores. They are conducting their own trials with grafted tomatoes to see if the claims about production yields are true. They’ve planted 4,000 non-grafted tomatoes, beside 2,000 grafted ones and are keeping detailed records. If the grafted tomatoes live up to their reputation, these folks will move to using all grafted tomatoes next season.

Air roots try to form above the graft and must be removed during the growing period.

What’s this mean for us little gardeners? It means if you like the flavor of heirloom tomatoes but are tired of the virus problems that often come with them, you may want to consider ordering some grafted tomatoes next year. I’ll be reporting more about my own small trials with Territorial Seed grafted tomatoes as the season progresses, along with the trials of the friends who have the 2,000 grafted tomatoes. Happy gardening!

Long Creek Herb Farm Open House

2011-06-19T22:32:00.003-05:00

People came and wandered through the garden, some took pictures, some made notes.

It was fun having lots of blog followers and readers of my newspaper and magazine columns come to visit for our annual Long Creek Herb Farm open house, June 18. People came with questions about something I'd written, some with questions about a plant they were having difficulty with, others just to see what we're growing this year.

The new interior is refreshing. It's not finished, more work to do, but ready for the day, at least!

We had worked right up to the hour, trying to get all the construction debris moved away, and we nearly wore out our good friend and carpenter, George, getting ready. In early April we decided this would be the year to give the Herb Shop a complete, and badly needed overhaul. It seemed like plenty of time, but it wasn't. When George and I built the shop 20 some years ago, I couldn't afford insulation in the walls, nor a ceiling, so it was just sheet rock (with wall paper) and open beams overhead. Hard to heat in winter, hard to cool in summer. So it has received a total make-over inside and in spite of the 90+ degree heat, it was c-o-o-l inside!

Everything's neat and clean, and old. We found a few antiques to round out the interior. I like the changes.

Some folks came from long distances. I think the ones from the farthest was the couple from just outside Dallas, TX.

Adam offered fresh produce on the Herb Shop porch and several folks took away fresh things from the garden.

Something new this year for visitors to see, is the change in our gardens from smaller plantings, to Adam's project of using the entire garden for larger production. He sells at two area farmers' markets, along with an occasional restaurant (plus feeds us very well and even the chickens have plenty). I've never done production gardening before, so I'm learning new things. Adam, you may recall, was our WWOOFer three seasons ago, and came last year for a month to help me get the garden underway before he went off to Santa Fe to work a production garden there. Instead of a row of carrots, like I grew, or 50 onions, Adam grows entire beds of both. I have no idea how many pounds of salad greens he's sold, and many bushels of carrots and onions It's impressive, and exciting.

Adam, a very talented gardener and cook.

I know I've mentioned in the past how inspiring it is for me to see younger people as excited about edible plants as I am. And having new, younger eyes look at what I've built over the past 32 years here, at my raised beds and arbors and trellises, is quite interesting, as well. As we get older, we can get stuck in our habits, we assume we know "the way" things should be. But of course, we experimented and learned when we were Adam's age, we developed skills that have served us well. That doesn't mean our way is the only way. This season, I've turned the garden over to Adam. He decides what to grow, and where, as well as when to plant and how much he will need for sales. I'm the occasional helper since I'm traveling for lectures a lot this season. It's very exciting for me to see what he's doing.

Lots of the early crops, like carrots, peas, lettuce, spinach, onions and beets, have been pulled, washed and sold. Some of the beds are getting fluffed up with the tiller, more compost and mulch, and Adam is planting the late summer crops already. Harvest is just beginning on squash, cucumbers, blackberries, bulb fennel, and tomatoes and basil will be ready in about a week. (He has over 100 tomato plants, probably 80-90 basils, beds and beds of potatoes and has made space in areas where garden has never been before in order to squeeze it all in).


These are new beds this year in what was pasture land before. The beds are being replanted this week. What you can't see are the many beds in the orchard, behind the barn in the old chicken yard, down in the pasture, every nook and cranny has garden plants growing this year!

Some of the visitors checked the viewing area beneath the bell tower to see the garden from above.

Looking down from the bell tower deck, you get a nice view of the herb beds and edible & medicinal herb beds.

In the lower left of the photo you may see some of our experimental fava beans. They're quite tasty!

Molly greeted each and every carload and gave attention to every visitor. By the end of the day she was hot and worn out, but happy. So were we!

Don't Kill That Caterpillar!

2011-06-10T15:43:00.001-05:00

Black Swallowtail on Butterfly Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)

Butterflies look so slow and docile, gently flitting about the garden. Just get our your camera and try to catch them in their daily duties of sipping nectar out of flowers; you'll quickly see they are shy, move fast and don't like being photographed.

I doubt their eyesight is so great they can see me, but maybe they can. I guess if you're an inch tall and a looming giant, 500 times bigger than you are and carrying a menacing black box with a big moving eye-lens, you might run, too.

Weak, tired and with much of her color worn down, she drank nectar for a day before laying eggs.

Maybe they simply sense a person following them in the garden. After all, their senses must be impeccable, or else they couldn't travel great distances. This Monarch butterfly, above, on the white flowered chives, showed up just as the chives were blooming. As you know, Monarchs spend their winter in South America and manage to navigate northward as the weather warms in spring. This one was worn to a frazzle, weak, but sipping nectar in order to regain her strength for laying eggs for another generation of Monarchs.

A Tiger Swallowtail, dishing up breakfast from dianthus in my edible flower garden.

Most people seem to like butterflies, but many of those same folks have no hesitation for stomping caterpillars. This time of year you'll notice what we always called "dill worms" when I was growing up.

The caterpillar of the Black Swallowtail Butterfly on a fennel leaf.

Black Swallowtail butterflies lay eggs on: fennel, dill, parsley and related plants. Those hatch into the caterpillar you see above. The caterpillar hangs around on one leaf and eats most of it, then pupates, building a little cocoon around itself and hanging there in a little hammock until it has grown. The cocoon splits and out comes the adult Black Swallowtail.

The majestic Black Swallowtail, newly hatched.


An older Black Swallowtail, on oregano.

The list of herbs that attract butterflies is long and extensive. A few you might want to plant if you wish to attract butterflies: Mint, oregano, butterfly weed, Mexican butterfly weed, rue, dill, fennel, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, lemon balm, roses, sweet marjoram, hyssop, chives, monarda, yarrow - the list really is quite long.

Monarch caterpillar, see how different they look from the Swallowtail caterpillar?

Monarch caterpillars, however, hang out, sip nectar and lay eggs on butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) which is in bloom right at the time Monarchs are looking for food and home. In case you don't recognize butterfly weed, here's a picture, below. Note that lots of butterflies like the nectar from this plant but it's the Monarch that likes to hang its hat there.

Fritillary butterflies on butterfly weed.

Here in the Ozarks, the butterfly weed is a common roadside plant, starting its bloom around the end of May. This is an old-time medicinal plant, sometimes called, "pleurisy root" because of its use in treating that ailment.

So, if you see, "worms" in your herb plants, let them be, they turn into butterflies or moths and they're not going to ruin your plants. You'll be glad you left them alone when they turn into butterflies! And if you're going to photograph them, well, give yourself more time than you think you will need, they can run faster than you can.

Cicadas, What's That Noise?

2011-06-04T00:45:00.001-05:00

Cicadas have emerged in about 17 states, including Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Mississippi and south.

What’s That Noise?

About 10 days ago I was traveling through central Mississippi for a State Master Gardeners Conference. All along the highways as I drove, I could hear the songs of cicadas. I knew ours at home would be emerging in a few days, as the great cicada hatch of 2011 moved northward.

We’re currently in the middle of the emergence of the 13 year cicada or periodic cicada (known as the Magicada). Cicada burrow upward out of the ground and the nymphs climb onto trees, bushes, even tires, where they fasten their claws and the cicadas emerge, leaving behind the old skin.

Cicadas don’t harm trees or shrubbery, and they don’t eat leaves of plants like locust or grasshoppers. The larger portion of the cicada’s 13 year life cycle (or 17, in the instance of the 17 year cicada) is spent underground, feeding on the sap of tree roots. Once they emerge, they are only alive for about 6 weeks to breed, then they die.

All that's left is the "shell" once the cicada has emerged and grown wings.

Cicada “nymphs” once out of the ground and having shed their old skin, climb upward, then fly off. The males are the ones making the noise, trying to attract a mate. Once they have mated, the female flies onto a limb tip of a tree and insert an egg into a tender twig. The egg grows, becoming a small grub which falls to the ground. Once on the ground, it burrows downward to tree roots where it will live and grow for another 13 year cycle. Tender limb tips near the outer edge of trees may fall off, but the pruning is generally helpful, and doesn’t harm the tree.

This one's been out of the ground for a few hours and its wings have matured so it can fly.

There’s no control for these insects, nor is there any need to control them. True, they can be irritating, but even if you sprayed them with insecticide, more would fly in from next door - plus the insecticide would kill off songbirds, cats, dogs and other things that find cicadas to be a delicacy. Be patient, they will be gone in a few short weeks and won’t return for another 13 years.

Cicada killer wasp.

A natural predator of cicadas (besides dogs, cats, birds and humans) is the cicada killer wasp, a flying insect that looks very much like a hornet. Unlike hornets, this wasp lives in a single hole in the ground with just a male and female. While cicada killer wasps can sting if seriously provoked, even then would rather fly away then sting. These wasps are harmless and do a service to homeowners by controlling cicadas.

Cicadas are quite edible and you’ll find plenty of recipes on the internet. (And for those readers who think they look awful and inedible, think of shrimp. A truly ugly little critter, but does a cicada really look worse than a shrimp?

Does a shrimp REALLY look that much better than a cicada?

We cooked up a batch of fresh cicadas for supper this week, stir-frying them with garlic, ginger and shallots, then adding Chinese noodles and cilantro. Next I’m going to try the German chocolate cicada cake recipe I found.

Some sources suggest par-boiling the cicadas first (they're also known as "sky prawn" due to the fact that in some regions of the world, they are collected in large nets and meals made from this free protein source).

I fried these in a hot skillet, right after stir-frying some garlic, shallot and ginger. When that was ready, I added some soy sauce - actually Tamari - then added the noodles and some sugar snap peas, with another quick-fry, adding fresh cilantro from the garden just before serving.

Here are some other recipes for you to try.

Chocolate Covered Cicadas
Anything coated in chocolate can be tasty!

8 squares (about 4 oz.) dark chocolate
30 *dry roasted cicadas

*Roast young cicadas in the oven for 15 minutes at 225F.
Melt chocolate in a double-boiler over low heat. Dip insects in chocolate, place on wax paper let the chocolate harden. Sprinkle with coarse-ground sea salt.

Cicada Wontons

4 oz. package cream cheese, room temperature
30 freshly hot water boiled cicadas (boil for 3 minutes and drain)
1 Tablespoon freshly chopped chives
1 package Wonton wrappers

Drop approximately 1 teaspoon of cream cheese on each of the wonton wrapper, add a pinch of fresh chives, then place 1 cicada on each of the wrapper. Fold in corners and seal with egg white. Fry in hot oil until crispy and brown. Serve with sweet and sour sauce.

(And yes, for those who asked, all 4 of us ate the Chinese Cicada Stir-Fry and it was quite tasty. Cicadas are kind of crunchy with a mild flavor).

For recipes of herbal things that don't involve cicadas, visit my website for my Homemade Crackers, Dips, Salsas books, and other foods, which all include herbs.

Happy Gardening!

A Garden of Soap

2011-06-01T15:52:00.000-05:00

These festive scarecrows guide visitors to the Soaphouse.

If possible we always attend the Herb Day Festival at Evening Shade Farm. Our late friend, Gayl Bousman, began Herb Day in May 10 years ago at her farm near Osceola, Missouri. (I grew up just 20 miles from there, in the western part of Missouri, so it's somewhat returning to my roots each year).

The festival isn't just about buying and selling, people come and spend hours, visit, make friends, eat and shop.

Herb Day attracts a variety of vendors, plant people and crafters, all coming for 2 days of visiting, selling and eating. This year, the parking lots were filled to the brim and they had the biggest attendance ever. Some came as a tribute to Gayl, who made friends and customers in many states with her kind ways and excellent soaps (some made from the herbs in her garden and the goats milk from her herd of goats on her farm).

There were a variety of plant vendors, trug makers, photographers, wood turners and potters.


We know him as the "Iron Guy" and he makes hand-forged garden pieces.

The iron pieces are organic and graceful as well as functional.

Steve Hassell, Gayl's brother.

Gayl's brother, Steve, has been working with her for the past 2 or 3 years and since her passing, he and her daughter, Cindy Parker, have taken over the soap business.

One of the things people look forward to each year is having a piece (or a whole cake to take home) of Gayl's lemon verbena cake. I remember last year Gayl saying she'd made something like 30 cakes for the 2 days and sold out!

The famous lemon verbena cake, delightfully lemony.

There are always musicians playing on the Soaphouse porch. People sit under the old mulberry tree in chairs and visit, listening to the local musicians playing. Homemade rootbeer is always on hand, as well.

Handmade soaps, with enchanting fragrances and flavors.

But soap is the real reason for the festival, soap made on the farm, from herbs and flowers from Gayl's garden.

My personal favorite soap is the spicy caravan soap.

In memory of our friend Gayl Bousman. Your tradition of the Friday night potluck, lemon verbena cake and Herb Day Festival at the Soaphouse, continues and you were with us all, the entire time.

Visit their website to learn more about their organic, hand-crafted soaps from the farm.

First Aid for the Garden

2011-05-25T21:30:00.003-05:00

Sharon's watercolors make Trowel & Error an even more charming book!

Cucumber beetles, those dastardly, yellow, ladybug-sized pests that don't stop eating a plant until it is dead, have arrived in our garden. Last year they were in such great flocks, clouds really, that control was useless. The alternate host is said to be the corn rootworm larvae but information is murky. I've tried everything with these pests including yellow sticky traps with little soil-soaked cottonballs (soaked with oils of allspice and bay rum, which is claimed to attract them to the sticky trap, see below). Last year someone suggested that I call an exterminator and spray the entire garden. I try to be ORGANIC, so no thanks to that. Someone suggested a vacuum cleaner. Imagine trying to suck up a dust storm with a vacuum cleaner!

This year we're starting early. First, the sticky traps with allspice and bay rum oils. A few pests hatch from the soil early, breed like rabbits, then lay eggs and die, which means the main bug crop is coming, coordinated with the sprouting of cucumber, squash and related plants, which they attack near the base of the stem and eat. So I'm turning to Sharon Lovejoy's amazing book, Trowel and Error and using some of her suggestions.

Sharon's books are always a delight to read. She has a charming, childlike amazement at every living thing and translates those wonders through her joyful books and art. In this book she gives a recommendation of items every gardener should have in their garden first-aid kit (or as Sharon dubbed it, "The Gardeners Apothecary" which sounds much more gentle than First-Aid).

Sharon suggests several methods of attack. One, a basil sun-tea, which you brew up in the sunshine, combine with soap (not detergent) and spray on the cucumber beetles.

On the next page of Sharon's Dispensary, you'll read how fermented salmon repels deer and chipmunks, and how flour (white but not self-rising) sprinkled on plants deters grasshoppers. Other household ingredients such as honey, rubbing alcohol, petroleum jelly, liquid soap, vinegar and many others are important to have in your arsenal for protecting your garden plants.

You'll learn why soap makes a good insect control for certain pests in the garden.

Here's a formula from Sharon's book that makes the entire rest of the book worthwhile, IF there was nothing else in it!

One of our methods we use here at Long Creek Herb Farm to help control the early cucumber beetles are sticky traps, baited with allspice and bay rum oils. The cups are covered with Tree Tanglefoot, then the oils added. (Yellow sticky traps attract and trap flea beetles from tomatoes and egg plants, too, and with the addition of the oils, the cucumber beetles think it's tasty - until they are trapped, that is).

Yellow cup, covered with Tree Tanglefoot, baited with allspice and bay rum attracts insect pests.

For some really good, inexpensive and organic methods for pest control in your garden this year, you need this book. And if you haven't found Sharon's blog yet, visit her there, as well (or on the Lowe's Garden Blog, where she also posts). You can order Trowel and Error, as well as her other books on her website.

Sharon Lovejoy's fanciful watercolors reveal her sweet spirit, and bring her books to life for adults and children, alike.

Happy gardening, and may your garden be free of cucumber beetles this season!

Mississippi in May

2011-05-16T12:30:00.001-05:00

Magnolia blossom.

All along the mighty Mississippi, flooding. Those 20 inches of rain we had in 12 days here, eventually wound up in some farmer's backyard, down around Vicksburg, MS. I'm sorry for the people who have had to move, or had everything washed away.

My reason for being in Mississippi this past week was for the Mississippi State Master Gardeners Conference in Ellisville, MS. Driving down, I could hear masses of locust in the timber along the roadsides. But the scent in the air was of magnolias in bloom. Along the highways the native magnolias were showing off, their dinner plate-sized blossoms waving at the passing traffic. If you've not smelled magnolias in bloom, its a heady smell, a soothing, relaxing fragrance that will almost lull you to sleep. I sometimes add magnolia blossoms, dried, to bath blends.

Ladies having a flower arranging session.

I arrived the day before the conference so I could set up my table of wares and check out where I was to speak. These folks were having a great time with a flower arranging class.

The roses were donated by a local grower, the Mills Rose Nursery. This is one of the creations of the class.

Upon arriving at my motel room a few miles away in Laurel, MS, I found a gift basket. It contained an assortment of snacks and a jar of blueberry preserves and one of plum jelly, both homemade by members of the Jones County Master Gardeners. What a great welcome. Folks down South show such generous and warm hospitality!

One of my programs was, "Eat Your Landscape" where I talk about all of the perennials and shrubs (and water garden plants) you may not think of as food, but which you can make good meals from. I had lots of slides in my KeyNote program to demonstrate what I was talking about. This was my audience, in a very nice auditorium.

It may not look like it, but there's quite a bunch of folks up there, and some along the sides.

It's hard to see me there amongst the roosters and paintings but if you look real close in the middle, next to the rooster, I'm there. The projection screen behind me was partially hidden but what you don't see is above my head is a giant screen, too.

Roosters seemed to be the theme of the very impressive stage display the gardeners had created.

The group's creativity was everywhere. The Jones County Master Gardeners were the hosts for the rest of the state.

Another display by the Master Gardeners. I always like taking pics of masks.

A small portion of the rose fields at Mills Rose Nursery.

The Mills family grows roses for the wholesale and retail trade. From what I could tell, the rootstock for their award-winning roses is jasmine. I didn't even know you could graft a rose onto jasmine rootstock! I didn't bring back any roses for my garden as the Mills' said they probably wouldn't be hardy for me here.

Good food!

Like all plant conferences and herb events, the food was very good. The facility where the conference was held, also is host to a culinary school, and we reaped the benefits.

Jan Knight was the winner of my bentwood trellis.

My second program was, "Making a Bentwood Trellis for Your Garden" and Jan Knight won the drawing for the trellis. Several others said if Jan couldn't get it in her car, they'd take it home.

Robert St. John is owner of several restaurants in Hattiesburg, MS

The keynote program was given by a local hero, Robert St. John. His quirky, down home newspaper columns have a huge following in Mississippi, and rightly so. He had no idea what Master Gardeners were all about, but proceeded to entertain us for the entire evening with his stories of his children's most embarrassing moments, as well as his own. His tales of being a restauranteur and all around foodie were fun. He also told how he had visited an Alice Waters' program a few years back and came home inspired to grow as much of his own produce for his 3 restaurants as possible. He bought 2 acres and the first crop he planted was a 100 ft. row of summer squash. He explained that as a novice gardener, he had no idea they would produce so much, or keep producing for months.

The smells of honeysuckle added to the magnolia air.

I was blessed with a wonderful helper, Kay, and lots of hosts and kind people. Merry Beth Tigert was my guide to being there and I got to see great folks from past trips to Mississippi as well as meet lots of new friends, as well. Those Mississippi folks really know how to make a northerner feel welcome!

Baker Creek Spring Garden Festival

2011-05-05T23:35:00.000-05:00

One tiny corner of the Seed Store.

It's always fun to go to the Baker Creek Festivals but it's the spring festival I look forward to the most. Lots of plant vendors have great varieties of vegetables, herbs, berries and fruit plants for sale. This year I took my Red Flyer wagon so I didn't have to carry everything. Unfortunately, it rained and was chilly both days, which made it pretty miserable for the people with booths.

Booths cover the hillside leading up to Bakerville.

They were expecting about 25,000 people but the days and days of constant rains kept the numbers lower. Still, people came, they shopped and had fun.

Across from the Seed Store is the garden in the center, and the restaurant, apothecary and store.

It's actually pretty amazing that this town, Bakerville, didn't exist just 5 years ago. If you could see to the left of the photo, pretty far to the left, is the old farmhouse where Jere and his wife, Emilee, live. The town square is built in what would have been their front yard, or front field.


This is Jere Gettle, whose vision it is to create an old-time country town. One of the requirements for being a vendor, or a speaker at the festivals, is to be in period costume. Jere's outfit is always interesting, often bizarre, but always fun.


I don't know this character's name, but he's always a fixture of the festivals. He's a good musician, and changes costumes, and characters, about every 2 hours. He keeps everyone laughing.

The Tomato Meter offers a comparison for tomato sizes.

One of the interesting things I saw at the festival was this Tomato Meter. Dan, the inventor, said people used to give him a blank stare when he'd say that a black cherry tomato was the size of a large marble. Or that a patio tomato was the size of a golf ball. So he put together this Tomato Meter, so people can actually visualize the sizes of the tomatoes they will produce on the plants he sells them.

I don't know the number of booths, but several large tents were filled, as well as rows and rows of vendors in tents. I didn't see everything, somehow I missed an entire tent.

Hank Will and Karen Keb

This is Hank Will, editor of Grit magazine, and his wife, Karen Keb, editor of The Heirloom Gardener magazine (you'll find my regular columns there, under the name of The Heirloom Herbalist; you can get a sample issue here). They were giving a program on the many varieties of corn. You can see one of my bentwood trellises in the background. I'd given my program just before theirs.

There are lots of music groups playing in various parts of the festival. Jerry Van Dyke played and sang on Sunday. Every hour of the festival you could sit and listen to several groups playing in several locations.

This young fellow was tuning up his washboard, getting ready to go on stage.

I don't know how you tune up a washboard, but this fellow seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

People who attend the festival, get into costuming, as well.


Our friend Robbins, who sells plants. She came from Osceola, Mo, near where I grew up.

People come from pretty much the entire U.S. You'll find vendors and customers, too, from every state.

The groups that perform at the festival are very talented and fun to listen to.

Baker Creek Seed is helping organize the National Heirloom Exposition, to be held at the Sonoma, CA County Fairgrounds, Sept. 13-15. It's shaping up to be a pretty amazing event, combining seed companies, chefs, organic organizations and lots more. I'm pleased to be one of the speakers!

This young fellow's job seemed to be guarding the wagon, which he was doing very well.

So I'm off to Mississippi for the Mississippi State Master Gardeners Festival. My programs are, "Eat Your Landscape" and "Make a Bentwood Trellis for Your Garden." Here's a plug for my book, in case you want one.

Happy gardening!

Jim Long's Garden: Spiderworts

2011-04-30T22:31:00.000-05:00

Jim Long's Garden: Spiderworts

Spiderworts

2011-04-30T22:20:00.002-05:00

Please click on the photos, you can see the details of the very feathery center, possibly the view bees see when they visit looking for nectar.

We have Spiderworts in bloom this week in the yard and around the edges of the garden. I have several kinds, collected in various locations. This pink one I found in Arkansas several years ago and is Tradescantia ozarkana. It's found growing in rich, rocky areas, including woods and bluff ledges.

Look close into the center. If the stamen hairs turn orange, there's a radiation leak somewhere!

Tradescantias are claimed to be indicators of radiation leaks. I found this quote on the web: "All members of the Spiderwort are used extensively in scientific research to detect radiation fallout or exposure." The name, Spiderwort comes from the feathery, glistening hairs on the sepals and the buds which resemble spider webs, especially when covered with dew. (Wort, is the old English word for plant). Other sources claim the name comes from the leaf arrangement that looks like a squatting spider. Really? I don't see it.

This one is a deeper purple, with a brighter yellow-green leaf color and is a selection of Tradescantia virginiana.

Most spiderworts grow in shady areas around the edges of woods and the flowers bloom from early morning until around noon. Mine are growing under various oak trees in the yard but we had them growing in full sun on our cellar when I was a kid. Sometimes on cloudy days the blossom will last from morning to night, but like a daylily, the flowers only last one day.

Note the cluster of buds, each one ready to open for just one day. This is T. bracteata, native of Missouri.

The Cherokee Indians and probably other Native tribes, used the plant medicinally in preparations for "female" and kidney problems. The sticky, muciliginous sap was rubbed on insect bites and poison ivy.

This is the more common color of spiderwort.

In the afternoon the flowers wilt, turning into a jelly-like fluid but before that, there is a constant line of bees and butterflies going after the nectar. The flower has very little fragrance to the human nose but evidently bee noses sense something special because they line up like kids at a hot dog stand.

I'll leave you with just one more photo to consider. Know what this mean looking critter is, resting on a spinach leaf? You'll be surprised if you don't already know the insect. It's the larval stage of the common ladybug! A very desirable insect to have in the garden. They love to eat the aphids that eat young plant leaves.

Happy gardening!

The Royal Wedding

2011-04-28T14:54:00.003-05:00

To commemorate the Royal Wedding.

People often grouse about the Monarchy in England, about its being occupied by dinosaurs, about being an institution that has outlived itself. Maybe, but I think the world needs a good royal wedding from time to time. Most people feel their lives are rather bland and predictable and once in a while I think it's good to let your fantasies run wild and imagine what life must be like for those who seem to have it all. Few of us will ever have a 30 million dollar (or pound), wedding, or can even imagine having 6,000 of our closest friends in attendance.

When I was in Italy in 2005, Prince Williams' father, Prince Charles was one of the speakers at the Slow Foods Conference. I was impressed at his knowledge and dedication to not only gardening, but pushing organic gardening in England. Our friend, Elvin McDonald traveled to England to interview Prince Charles, in his garden, and told me that Charles is a very dedicated gardener who actually works in his own gardens.

I was recently inspired by reading Amanada's Dablings and Whimsies blog post of lilac syrup and lilac martinis (in response to my Lilac Sorbet recipe) and she gave me an idea. It's perfect timing that Sweet Williams are bursting into flower today in the first sunshine we've had in over a week.

Sweet Williams are a biennial, plant one year, bloom the next.

So in honor of Prince William and Catherine Middleton's wedding on April 29, I offer up the Sweet William and Catherine Martini (and for those who don't drink alcohol, you can leave out the vodka and put in some fizzy water). Make a batch and give a toast to the royal couple tomorrow.

If you don't have Sweet Williams in bloom, use dianthus, they're relatives and taste the same.

First you'll need 1 cup of fresh Sweet William (or similar dianthus) flowers. Stems picked off, just the flowers. You'll also need 1 1/2 cups of water and 1 cup of white sugar.

Sweet Williams come in various shades of pink, red and white. All are fragrant and all have a spicy, clove-like flavor.

Bring the water to a boil, add the sugar and stir to dissolve. Add the flowers, lower the heat and simmer for about 5 minutes. Cover pan and let the syrup cool for a few hours or overnight. Strain out and discard the flowers. Add a drop of red color, if desired. You now have about a cup of Sweet William syrup. Use it over ice cream, over strawberry shortcake, or in a Sweet William martini to toast the royal couple.

Not having martini glasses, I chose the closest thing. These look more royal, anyway.

Prince William and Catherine's Martini
3 oz. vodka
1 1/2 ounces Sweet William syrup

Fill a martini shaker with ice. Add vodka and Sweet William syrup and shake.
Pour into 2 martini glasses and garnish with a sprig of dianthus, in honor of Prince Williams' mother, Diana

Dianthus, a close relative of Sweet William, much like Princess Diana was mother of Prince William.

Kate Middleton and Prince William

An Herbal Affair

2011-04-23T16:12:00.004-05:00

Booths are set up on both sides of the street around the town triangle.

This was the 22nd annual Herbal Affair at Sand Springs, OK, which is always held the 3rd Saturday in April. This year it was chilly, but thankfully, not raining. Josh, Barbara, Adam and I all went, with Josh and Barbara staying with our friends, Tom and Sue Stees in Tulsa. We always have a booth, taking along Herbal Nail Fungus Soak, my books and assorted other things to sell.

One of the great things about this event, and one of the many reasons vendors happily come back every year, is the complimentary dinner the festival hosts provide the night before. Every year, the volunteers who organize and work the Herbal Affair, cook up a bunch of great food and invite all us vendor-sorts for dinner. It's always a welcome event, many of us having driven many hours to set up our booths. The food is always great, with all sorts of salads, sandwiches, beverages and desserts. It shows their appreciation for our being there, and it's also a great opportunity to get to visit with people we see only once a year.

On Friday night, while most of us were sleeping, strong winds blew through Oklahoma. Some of the vendors who'd set up their tents, and secured them down low over their goods, discovered on Saturday that the tents had taken flight, tumbling along down the street and breaking apart. It was sad to see, but everyone picked up and moved on, selling their produce or plants even without the tents.

The festival is a pretty impressive event, with around 30,000 people showing up this year. One of the local churches offers free plant sitting, so that shoppers can drop off their plants while they shop for more.

It's always remarkable how many people bring their dogs to this event. Women carrying little cuddle-dogs in their arms, men leading giant horse-like pets, small dogs on leashes dodging feet in the crowd. With the 30,000 people attending, I'm guessing there were about 2,000 dogs in attendance, as well!

People come for the plants and while Mr. Tomato Man (who's there every year) does a very brisk business, selling a couple thousand heirloom tomato plants, it's the herb folks that are the primary focus. This festival is fully an herb festival. The Boy Scouts sell drinks (out of a canoe filled with ice) but it's either root beer - herbal based, or water. The food vendors must include herbs in their foods, as well. There's a big outdoor food court and it's a great way to visit with other shoppers and see what plants you might have missed.

The 5 women who started this festival 22 years ago, including the late Ruth Leib and Sandi Bylerly, visited my Herb Day in May back when I was still having a festival at Long Creek Herb Farm. They took notes, asked questions and inquired if I minded if they borrowed some of my ideas for their festival. I was pleased to know another festival was forming, as mine had outgrown its space. They took some simple ideas and ran with them and their festival is one of the best herb festivals anywhere!

People not only bring their pets, they bring their wagons, as well, and fill them several times with their purchases. By the end of the day, the plant booths are pretty empty with little left to choose from. Even though the festival opens at 9:00 a.m., people start arriving even before we have our booths set up, wanting to buy things at 8:00.

People bring wagons of all kinds to haul around their purchases.

Everything sold has to relate to the garden or herbs. That includes old garden antiques, painted garden furniture, trellises, even worm tea, produced by kids at the local grade school and sold to fund school projects.

Worm tea, from the children's worm farm is excellent fertilizer.

Rustic furniture made from twigs, along with trellises and everything else for the garden, could be found at Sand Springs.

And last but not least, in the spirit of herbs, check out my recipe this week, for Lavender Cookies that I served to Texas visitors yesterday, on my Recipes Blog.

Lavender Cookies, so good you want more!

Happy Gardening!

Lilac Sorbet

2011-04-12T23:32:00.001-05:00

There are some fragrances that are just better than others. This one is my favorite, the primary fragrance I look forward to each spring and I have a long history with this flower. Along about the year this embarrassing photo was taken, I was in love. No, not with the bear, but with Clara Jean Graves.

Jeanie, as I knew her in the first grade, had freckles and blue eyes and a sense of humor that made me happy. I looked forward to seeing her every day. We were in the same one-room school, along with 28 or 30 other students, grades 1-8. Every day she and I took our lunches over to an old Osage Orange tree that had a limb near the ground, looking for all the world like it was reaching down, just so school kids could sit there. We'd unlock our lunch boxes and talk about classes we'd had that day. Her being a year older and in the second grade, she was more knowledgeable. But since I sat behind her, my being the only one in the first grade, I got to listen in to her lessons and learn second grade material.

I decided during lilac blossom time that I was going to propose to Jeanie before someone else claimed her for a future wife. I wanted to do something special to make sure she knew how serious I was about her. We had an ancient set of Encyclopedias in the school and I read up on how to make perfume. Basically, I learned, flower essences were the collected steam of hot water vapor from flowers. Knowledge in hand, my mother allowed me to bring some water to a boil into which I added a whole lot of lilac flowers. I covered the steaming pan with a tea towel and collected the steam. I'd found a very tiny, old perfume bottle, so wrung out my lilac flower essence into the bottle. Next day, I could hardly stand it until lunch time came. Out of my lunch box I pulled the tiny vial of lilac flower essence and handed it to Jeanie. She wasn't impressed, and refused to believe I had made it. Her not believing me, no matter how much I tried to persuade her, ended our lunches together, and any future marriage plans, as well. But I never stopped liking lilacs.

I've been making flower and herb sorbets for years but it was my friend, Cathy Barash (author of Edible Flowers) who told me about using lilacs for sorbet. Recently I made plum blossom sorbet, another favorite, but even though it is very fragrant and tasty, nothing compares to lilac sorbet. Here's the recipe, from my book. If you're interested in lots more easy and delicious Herb and Flower Sorbet recipes, order the book, here.

Lilac Sorbet
2 cups water
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup (or more) lilac flowers, stems removed, chopped slightly in the food processor

Pour the water into a non-aluminum saucepan, add sugar and stir to dissolve. Bring to a boil, turn down the heat and add the flowers. Allow the liquid to simmer for 3 or 4 minutes. Remove from heat, cover with a lid and chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours or overnight. Strain.

Pour strained liquid into a small ice cream freezer or sorbet maker and freeze. Serve as soon as sorbet is fully frozen, or pack in ice or the freezer for an hour.

I use a Donvier sorbet maker, which I found at a yard sale for $5. I often see them in thrift shops and have bought a couple more that way. You can order them from the company, new, for about $60. The inner part is kept in your freezer, then when you want to make sorbet, remove the liner from the freezer, put it inside the plastic cover, pour in chilled liquid and turn the crank. In a mere 15 minutes, with turning the crank once every couple of minutes, you have perfect sorbet!

And what you get, is perfect sorbet every time. Here's a photo of the plum blossom sorbet (recipe also found in my book). I haven't taken a pic of the lilac sorbet yet.

If you like the fragrance of lilacs, or plum blossoms, then you will really enjoy the flavor, too. It's more intense, delightfully fragrant and keeps well in the freezer.

Pansies, lavender, roses, Sweet Williams, violets and many more edible flowers make outstanding sorbets. There are over 45 recipes and lots of tips and instructions for great sorbets in my book. Springtime, it's time for sorbet, healthier than ice cream, quicker than a trip to the store. Happy spring!