Pivoting towards culinary and medicinal herb growing

Here is my booth at my very first farmers market in Hartford.  It is Forge City Works Farmers Market next the the Firebox restaurant, Thursdays 11-2pm.

 

This year I decided to focus growing culinary and medicinal herbs, and making herbal teas and tinctures to sell at local farmers markets in my area. I have taken so many herbalism courses and been to so many herbalism conferences over the past 20 years that there is no excuse to finally just do it.  Working with plants from seedlings to harvest, to turning them into beautiful health-promoting products, is a joy.  Make no mistake, there is A LOT of work involved and timing is critical at each stage of the process.  Then there are challenges in drying the herbs--a food dehydrator is not always effective and sometimes the old fashioned way of drying herbs by hanging them upside down is the best. As usual I am still learning--but learning about something I love is a joy.  

 

Lost and Found

 

Its difficult to create a portfolio of your work if you don't RECORD your work!! 

Now that I am ready to transition away from garden maintenance toward design work it is imperative that I create a portfolio to showcase my style, design capabilities and experience.  However, going through my files I find that I have not saved copies of the designs I have done most recently.  

The plan above is for my sister and brother-in-laws new home--it is the first design I have done in color and using proper design techniques.  It was the final assignment for my design course at Naugie Valley. Before this is what my designs typically looked like: 

Most of the time I worked in existing gardens and sometimes, if I had to add, subtract or edit a garden I made a quick hand-drawn map of it.  Those are typically for my own use and are full of scribbles and crossed out plants.  The client doesn't usually ask for a copy.  However I had one client who is a member of the prestigious Garden Club of Hartford who wants to keep track of what she has in her tightly planted, overflowing garden beds.  Again, hand drawn on graph paper with the date, circles of plants constantly be erased and replaced or moved, lists and arrows all around the demarcated bed.

Its my dream of making a professional landscape map for the Silas Robbins House where I worked for many years.  I have taken many pictures of the beds at different points in the season, but drafting is work for the winter.  Right now there is just too much to do in my gardens, especially at the Knox Parks plot. So to that end, I must sign off and get to the garden! ~Happy august everyone 🌼🌼🌼~  

 

Reassessment and clarification of my direction(s)

 Now that I've dabbled in having a farm row and shadowed local grower Derrick Bedward at a couple farmers markets, I am reminded of what my actual passions are, what I am good at, and what I am capable of.  Intensive vegetable farming is NOT it.  I never wanted to be a full time farmer, but I ALWAYS wanted to have a large garden of culinary and medicinal herbs which to share with my community.  Showing people new things, new experiences, especially connecting people to the earth through gardening and using herbs has always been a love of mine. 

Hartford has a rich network of people who want to connect with each other, with the earth and with new knowledge of things that heal and restore. I have a lot to share but also a lot to learn from this community.  I honestly love the people I have met through Knox.  And through my time there, I can see how easy it is for me to network--I am not shy to go up to a local mercado owner to see if he interested in local organically grown produce.  I am not shy to approach people to sell the things that I think make life richer, more vibrant.  When someone isn't familiar with an herb I am growing, I let them smell it, taste it.  Lovage is a great example--no one is familiar with it, but everyone who tries it, buys it.  At the Promise Zone Farmers Market where Derrick sells, I hung some fragrant sweet annie (Artemisia annua) up on the tent and the aroma enchanted people drawing them in and instigating their curiosity. 

That all being said--there isn't a strong market for fresh herbs. I have many friends who are avid herbalists with HUGE herb gardens and fancy apothecary barns, but really never made a living on selling and teaching about herbs.  To be fair, a few have made a lifestyle out of it, but basically they are farmers 'round the clock. Turning the soil, sowing the seeds, harvesting, drying, packaging, going to markets, having storefronts, etc etc etc.  It is a little less intense than vegetable farming, because the herbs are often perennial, and not prone to as many pests, but its still tons of physical work. And then on top of it there's the bookkeeping and administrative work.  Its no nine to five, that's for sure.  No job in horticulture/farming/landscaping really is.

Back to clarifying my direction:  As a friend said, it is better to dig one deep well than many shallow holes.  Mastery comes from a singular focus.  To that end, I have decades of landscape maintenance experience and an artful eye that should be utilized.  That doesn't mean I can't have an herb garden and delight my friends with aromatic dishes with fresh herbs and curative lotions and potions.  It doesn't mean I am not part of that ancient tradition of using plants for health. But it does mean that I have to, as Charles Bukowski said once, "put my ass in the seat" and do the work of landscape design. Become a master at creating beautiful outdoors spaces for people to find pleasure and leisure in.  And maybe, just maybe, I can occasionally get a way with tucking a few herbs in just to pique the curiosity.  

Trying to keep up with my Knox garden plot and all the other fun seasonal outdoor activities!  This year I joined the CT Valley Mycological Society (http://www.cvmsfungi.org/).  This Sunday was my first mushroom foray with them--awesome weather and at an AMAZING location! I never knew about Winding Trails (private park). Check out all the crazy 'shrooms. The grey shaggy one is called Old Man of the Woods (Strobilomyces strobilaceus). Also I didn't know that all Amanitas are not red capped. Also by unbelievable coincidence, my friend was at the pond with her family and I fit in a visit with her and the girls after the mushroom walk.  Such a great day!

 

 

Quick Tip on Planting Annuals

 

 

This is a Gazania.  It is an annual that one of my clients loved to plant in her front door flower bed.  Its bright, requires pretty much zero maintenance and attracts butterflies.  One summer I noticed that a few of them weren't looking so hot, so I investigated further.  When I tried to deadhead and remove dead leaves off a few,  whole plants would pop out of the ground with the slightest tug on a leaf.  Crown rot. Also there was a whitish coloration to the leaves.  These were a sure sign of fungal infection.  These annuals prefer well draining soils and dry conditions, but the soil they were growing in was very damp.  Not only that but, as I discovered, there were two or three plants all grouped together very closely. 

Often, when a grower seeds trays of annuals, they expect that not all the seeds will germinate, so they put more than one seed in a cell to make sure that cell grows at least one plant. If a cell is empty the garden center consumer will not likely buy a six pack with one or two empty cells.  If a six pack has an extra seedling well all the better, a consumer thinks.  However when two or three seedlings are growing in a single cell, they compete for water and nutrients.  That's fine for the short time they may spend on the garden center tables, but after a few weeks this forces the plant to go to seed and senesce faster.  After a few weeks, most seedlings reach a point of no return--even if one were to plant them in a roomy garden bed with healthy, moist soil, they would still simply just go to seed and die after just a few flowers.

Back to my clients garden.  They were healthy and strong when she bought them, however when she planted them she didn't pull apart the two or three seedlings that were growing together in one cell.  Which means they were still competing for nutrients and growing space.  The crowded conditions lacked airflow and moisture lingered on the leaves to the point where they developed fungus and started to rot all the way down to the crowns.  

This anecdote illustrates just how important it is to separate annuals seedlings and space them appropriately (depending on the species) when planting them.  This will help them to grow full, flower adequately, and stay healthy for the whole season. Happy planting!

April Vegetable Bed Preparation: Sifting Soil at Knox Parks

 

So it begins!  This year I am participating in Knox Park's 3 year Incubator Farm program so that I serve my clients better with planning and maintaining their vegetable gardens. 

At home I grow fruits and vegetables in containers because it is so shady and most of the sunlight only hits paved areas or stone walls.  This year I want to be more deliberate and organized around crop planning, and the Knox farm program provides just the kind of support I need to deepen my food growing skill set. 

The open field at Knox is in an urban center where winds blow in all manner of plastic bags and bits.  Over the next couple of weeks I will sift the rocks and plastic waste out of the soil, foot by foot, planting as I go until I run out of time.  The likelihood is low that I will get to sift all of it, but I can put aside the sifter and just turn the soil with the shovel and cover it with cardboard until I'm ready to plant it.

Soil samples have already been received and the soil is good, with very low background levels of lead.  Unfortunately lead is present at varying levels in most soil urban and suburban.  

Seeds are germinating in the adjacent greenhouse: leeks, onions, tomatoes, peppers, okra, basil and other herbs. Two unusual vegetables I will be growing are New Zealand spinach and Mexican sour gherkin cucumbers.  The latter is per the request of my husband who read that it tastes like a cross between a lime and a cucumber--both things he enjoys in a summer gin and tonic. The New Zealand spinach was grown at a farm I worked at and I really like it much better than our common spinach. 

Next post will be pics of my seedling babies! I will track what germinated and what did not, and maybe if I can fit it in, plant melon seeds!

 

One of my other loves, still related to plants and gardening, is herbalism. I have a pantry full of herbs and spices. Tonight I took the idea of golden milk and made my own version: Macadamia nut milk and coconut milk, a little ghee, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, tumeric, cardamom, rose petals and chrysanthemum, then a touch of maple syrup. The dominant flavor is cinnamon and nutmeg but it has the lightest hint of rose. I think I will play around with the ratios to see how to turn the volume up or down on a particular flavor.