A Gardener's Retreat

The Herb Garden at A Gardener’s Retreat Community Garden is finally starting to look like an herb garden!  Herb gardeners Lise, Annie, and Chris have all been hard at work, filling the garden with plants, tending and weeding, and recently laying in a layer of leaf mold.

Mullein Seedling

As planned, the layout is more or less as follows:  flowers in the front by the garden entrance, culinary herbs in the half of the garden closest to the entrance, and medicinal plants toward the back.  We expect the addition of new plants to be ongoing at this point.

In the medicinal area, we have first-year mullein, wormwood, calendula, monarda, sage, yarrow, and skullcap, among others.

In the culinary section, there are a great many plants, chiefly thyme (two kinds!), sage, parsley, winter savory, apple and peppermint, basil, pineapple sage, and tarragon.

Flowers are still a bit thin although we have wonderful healthy Coreopsis clumps in front (the large yellow flowers) as well the aforementioned Monarda, which gives off the sweetest lemony aroma when you walk by.  We’ve added Obedient Plant (thank you, Jane) as well as Evening Primrose, Echinacea, Salvia, and Snapdragons.

One interesting discovery:  the two tall plants that resemble milkweed turn out to be Elecampane.  Who knew?  Fortunately, we  didn’t weed them out pending identification.  You’ll recognize them by their yellow, thistle-like flowers and fleshy leaves.

Donations are still being accepted.  Just leave your labeled plants by the entrance to the Herb Garden and we’ll put them in for you.

We hope everyone enjoys the garden almost as much as we did planting it.

This recipe is inspired by the those French pureed soups you see in gourmet magazines as well as by the delicate but still way spicy greens growing in our garden this year.  I’ve taken a lot of liberties with the ingredients and you can too.

Ingredients:

• 3-4 large handfuls of mesclun greens, coarsely chopped (any combination will do including lettuces, baby kale, arugula, baby mustards, spinach, sorrel, parsley, chives and the like)
• 1 medium Vidalia onion, chopped
• 1 medium potato, diced
• 1 tbsp. olive oil
• 1 tbsp. butter
• 1 can of broth or equivalent homemade
• 1/2 cup cream or light cream
• Sour cream or yogurt as garnish

Heat the oil and butter in a medium soup pan and saute the onion for 5-8 minutes until translucent.  Add the coarsely chopped greens and stir around a couple minutes in the butter and oil until slightly wilted.   Add the diced potato and then the broth. Simmer for  15 minutes or so until the potato is tender.

Get out your puree stick and whirl your soup until it is as smooth as you like it.  (Alternatively, puree the soup in batches in the blender).  When it is nicely pureed, add your cream and reheat for five or ten minutes.  

Serve in bowls with a dollop of yogurt or sour cream and freshly ground pepper.

Serves 4 as a starter.

We went over to the Community Garden today to take advantage of the weather and plant some seeds and starts. I had on my calendar to plant cabbage, kale and arugula around this time, and since there’s rain in the forecast, it seemed perfect.

We got our starts out at Walkers over the weekend – 6 cabbages, 6 parsley and a thyme plant.  I also had a bunch of kale seeds left over from last year, a Russian Red as I recall, and some more of that wild arugula.  

Once out at the garden, we realized that there was a lot to access.  Although at first glance, most plants seemed small, there was more action than we expected.  We have a full bed of peas, with seedlings around 4 inches high on average.  The lettuces, which seemed non-existent, are just small. I planted more red romaine to supplement.

On the more robust side, the spicy mesclun are doing great (planted more of them too) and the radishes getting appreciably bigger.  In between, there’s a nice carrot crop coming up, a lot more than I expected.  We’ll still have to replant a few patches but overall it’s looking good. 

Chris did a lot of work on the B&J plot north of us and it’s all over but the sifting for grass roots.  The turf is out.  This is great timing because we want to plant it in two weeks.  I guess we’ll be out there this weekend, weeding and prepping.

A final word on our herb bed which has been going for several years.  Although the echinacea are not as vigorous as I’d like, the chives are huge, and it looks like the lavender and sage are growing in really well after having been cut back almost to the ground last fall.  The thyme plant, which is small but tall, will keep them company.  Meanwhile, the chamomile Nancy gave us is starting to look comfortable — I hope it does well.  It makes the sweetest tea.