Mad About Herbs

A chance to win chocolate!

I'm reviewing the direction of Mad About Herbs and have created a short survey , please complete it if you are interested in gardening, cooking, crafts or specifically herbs and feel free to forward the link or direct others to this post so they can complete it too so they too have the chance to win a 100g bar of Green & Black's organic chocolate - you get to choose the flavour (there will be 5 winners drawn at random on 31st August - but hurry because I am limited to 100 responses so if you can't access the survey you are too late).

Click here to take my survey (should only take 5 minutes).  Many thanks.

Free lavender has arrived and phase 2 of my Herb Garden

My 5 lavender plants arrived from Thompson and Morgan (Gardeners World offer) on a lovely sunny weekend so I planted them out straight away which is great, I can't wait to see how they flower and hopefully survive.

My new herb garden has been rather neglected recently due to a combination of 'indoor work' to do and the wet weather.  There are now three beds, the fourth bed still needs some edging and the back border is also a work in progress and the paths will eventually be gravel! 

So far, I have 5 lavender plants (lavender 'hidcote', lavender 'imperial gem', lavender 'papillon', lavender 'kew red', lavender 'regal splendour'), dill, calendula, chervil, summer savory, salad burnet, flat leaved parsley, lemon verbena (in a pot - it needs protection in the winter), chives, gallica rose, cotton lavender, lemon balm, thyme, lemon thyme, marjoram, oregano, tri-colour sage, yarrow, hyssop and chamomile.

In other parts of the garden/allotment or in pots I have cinnamon basil, coriander, wormwood, sweet basil, rosemary, lavender 'angustifolia', lovage, angelica, chocolate peppermint, spearmint.  There are still plenty more herbs that I would like in it but that will have to wait until after my holiday now.

I now need to be patient and wait for some of the existing ones to be large enough to pick from!

Hope your herb gardens/herb plants are all blooming for you, let me know if you have any herb gardening questions and I'll do my best to answer them on a future blog post.

Harvesting and Preserving Herbs

If your garden is full of herbs and you don't know what to do with them all, you can listen to a short overview of how to preserve your glut on the Alternative Kitchen Garden's podcast episode 23.  You'll also find out about beetroot, seeds for late sowing and information about heirloom seeds.

I should have mentioned that the herbs such as mint, basil, chives, coriander, sage and tarragon should be harvested preferably before they flower if they are to be used in cooking (for the best flavour), and also cut them on a dry sunny day after the dew has evaporated.  If you live in England you will know how rare this type of day has been recently!  So grab your chances!