Category Archives: Herbs in the garden

annuals and perennial herbs for containers, landscapes and kitchen gardens.

“Hot House Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire” by Margot Berwin

Posted on October 29, 2010 by | 2 comments

In late spring, I volunteered to review “Hot House Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire”, a first novel by Margot Berwin. I can count the books I’ve reviewd on one hand, so I thought this early work of Margot Berwin, would be a great “summer read.”

Hot House Flower

The book was free, as was my review. The paperback, “Hot House Flower and the 9 Plants of Desire,” by Margot Berwin, is published by Random House and retails for $14.95. I expected this to be a lightweight summer read and was looking forward to “discovering” a new garden writer.

I, being a slow reader, usually get the benefit of early reviews from my speed reading garden blogging friends. I think many folks took this book too seriously and were disappointed. I was expecting a light and lively summer read and that is what I got.

Corpse plant

I was waiting for Hot House Flower to blossom into a full fledged romance novel, a genre seldom on my reading list. Thankfully, it was not. There was just enough travel and horticulture information to keep me turning pages.

Margot, you had me when you wrote the words Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Our protagonist, Lila, is learning about these nine plants of desire throughout the book. Each chapter starts with a little introduction to one of the nine plants and a hint about whats coming next.


I am glad “Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire” found it’s way to my reading stack. This is a romp through the jungle and there is even a bit of beach time, some totally unbelievable horticultural anticts and even a bit of magic and mystery.

This ain’t no botanical encyclopedia. My garden blogging friends would still be quibbling over the details of this book, if they hadn’t figured out it’s supposed to be fun and fictional light reading.


Heck, Margo took Lila and me to a place I’ve only dreamed. She even started out in a place I too would have wanted to trade in for tropics. She may not be that stong female heroine we are all looking for. She can’t turn all the raining monkey poop in to compost as she drives by, for example.

I received this book as a TLC Book Tour, a virtual book tour site. Virtual book tours are a promotional tool for authors to connect with readers via well-read book blogs and specialty blogs.

Realism? You want realism, well my friends, tune into reality tv. Accuracy? You want accuracy? Join the Royal Horticultural Society or stop by Martha’s on the way home.

You rarely find this kind of fun and imagination in contemporary (adult) literature. You don’t have to learn anything, just read. Relax. What could be more fun?

In garden terms think of an informal cottage garden, a little messy but delightful, never the less. After reading “Hot House Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire”, I wonder whats next for Margot Berwin.

  • Title: Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire
  • Author: Margot Berwin
  • Release date: June 1, 2010
  • Publisher: Vintage
  • Pages: 304
  • Genre: Adult fiction

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Black Krim

Posted on October 28, 2010 by | Comments Off on Black Krim
Black Krim

Black Krim with a slightly salty tomato flavor

So you thought I was done talking about tomatoes for the year.

But no. There are more heirloom tomato surprises from zone 6 in Southeast Missouri.

Called black tomatoes, Black Krim produces a medium size (10 to 12 ozs.), dark browish-red tomatoes. This heirloom is growing in popularity and being discovered by black tomato converts every year. It has just a hint of saltiness, and rich, comomplex flavor.

Black Krim gets darker in hot weather, which may shed some light to neighbor Bill’s very colorful cooler season Black Krim Tomatoes.

Here is a bit of a surprise. (I pulled up all the tomatoes in my garden 3 weeks ago.)

Patsybell,

This tomato plant you gave me this spring has just now sprung into action. All summer it produced a few tomatoes that would ripen and rot at the bottom of the fruit
while the top was still green.

When October got here – lots of fruit, ripening evenly and the very best tasting tomato of the year. Should I save some seed from them?

Hope you can see these pictures.

Thank you,
Neighbor Bill

Black Krims are a generous sandwich sized slices.

Black Krim plants were sent to me for trial from Hort Couture®,

Hort Couture® is only available through independent garden centers and retailers- you won’t see these plants in the mass markets. While the plants arrived healthy, I shared one plant with my neighbor, Bill, The head tomato grower in our neighborhood. These tomatoes have a very tasty smoky/rich flavor that was a regular and consistant indeterminate that only sucummed to late blight as did all the tomatoes in my garden.

Grown in the heat of summer, my Black Krim had brownish shoulders and red purplish skin and flesh.  The color was not as distinct this summer. I used the black heirloom tomatoes in fresh salsa the summer. The Black Krim just seems to add another level of flavor to salsa.

two late season Black Krims

Two late season Black Krims

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Toasty Pumpkins Seeds

Posted on October 25, 2010 by | Comments Off on Toasty Pumpkins Seeds

Save some seed for planting and use some for healthy snacks.

Photo by Brook Ashley

Saving seed from pumpkins and squashes

An easy seed to save, and you’ve got time. Most winter squashes will keep for months. When you do get around to eating these hardy winters wariors, save some seed before you cook the squash. Rinse the seed, let then dry, flat and in a single layer between a paper towels.

If you do have bumper crops of pumpkins and squash, save seed from your brightest and firmest of your collection.  Save the rest for of the seeds for toasting. You might just discover an inexpensive, homegrown and homemade treat to use for garnishing winter soups and breads. Stir Pumpkin seed and sunflower seeds into holday party mix,

Small sweet pumpkins selected for punkin soup. The seeds make a great garnish,

Ingredients:

One pumpkin
Salt
Vegitable oil

Toasty pumpkin seeds

Scoop the pulp and seeds from inside the pumpkin. Seperate the stringy pulp from the seeds. Compost the pulpy core. Rinse the seeds.

To make salted pumkin seeds:

Bring 4 cups of water with a Tablespoon of salt to boil. Add seeds. Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes. Strain seeds and spread out in a single layer to dry on cotton towels or paper towels. Skip this step if you do not want salted seeds.

To make seasoned pumpkin seeds:

Heat oven to 375. Spray pan with any good vegetable oil. Spread seeds onto cookie sheet in a single layer. Spay lightly with oil. If you want spicy seeds, add seasoning now.

(Try a light sprinkle of chili seasoning mix, butter flavored popcorn salt, or onion salt. If you use a seasoned salt, skip the boiling-in-salt-water-step.)

Bake on the top rack until the seeds begin to brown (about 15 to 20 minutes). If you would like seededs darker, put back in oven, checking often until they are as brown as you like. Watch carefully, the time between browned and burned is but an instant.

Remove the tray of pumpkin seed and cool on an a rack. Let the seeds completely cool. Eat the seeds whole. If you have all the time in the world, crack open the pumpkin seeds and eat only the inner seed. I like te eat the whole seed.

Chop and use as garnish in soups and other dishes that could use a little crunch. Store in an air tight zipper bag in the frig.

If you do have any left over, roasted or raw seeds, share them with the birds.

20% off on ALL pumpkin seed ar Renee’s Garden.

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My Patio

Posted on September 23, 2010 by | Comments Off on My Patio

2 New Coleus

Red Head (Solenostemon hybrida)
Versa Crimson Gold Coleus ( Solenostemon scutellarioides)

Red Head coleus

I combined these two coleus in hanging baskets that had late afternoon shade. Generally these plants were left on their own. I cut them back only twice during the growing season.

Red Head is truest red color in the Ball coleus collection. I like these newer coleus that can take the heat and hold their henna color in both full sun and part shade.

The Versa Coleus series includes Crimson Gold. These coleus were neglected, not fertilized, and inconsistently watered in hanging baskets. The bicolor leaves held their color, were vigorous, and quickly branched into a full mounded hanging basket.

All coleus will be gone with the first freeze, but till then, these plants provide bright, bold color on the patio.

Bright color all season

I’ll be using more coleus in my gardens because, unlike flowers, you get bold, season-long color.

If I can get bright , fade proof red in my garden all summer, I am inclined to plant it again next year. Most folks look at a garden at a distance. They just see the red. And this Ball Horticultural trial plant is a long lasting, fade proof busrt of red in my garden from spring till frost. Look for it next spring.


Most of my trial plants went in containers like this.

Coleus gave my garden bright season-long color.

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Cute as a Baby Bell

Posted on September 16, 2010 by | Comments Off on Cute as a Baby Bell

Bright and crisp

These little peppers are crisp and sweet. I ate the first ripe pepper right in the garden. I’m growing a few  chilies and several different mild or bell peppers.  These mini bell pepper plants are compact and heavy producers. Baby bells are a good choice for growing in containers.

There are truly a rainbow of colors for bell peppers. Try something new, like Baby Bells, beautiful in the garden and tasty in recipes. The green peppers are not as sweet and sometimes more bitter than the red, yellow or orange peppers. Bell peppers are at their sweetest when allowed to ripen on the plant in full sun.

Red peppers also have twice the vitamin C content of green peppers. Bell peppers are an excellent source of vitamins C and A. One raw pepper provides more vitamin C than one cup of orange juice.

Red Baby Bells

The red and yellow baby bell peppers are beautiful together on an antipasto plate or in a big summer salad.  This pepper seed is easy to find in several catalogs.

I got my seed at Renee’s Garden. I like that both the red and yellow peppers came in one seed pack. After all, how many pepper plants does a home gardener need?

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Homemade Sun-dried Tomatoes

Posted on August 26, 2010 by | Comments Off on Homemade Sun-dried Tomatoes

Try Tomaccio Tomatoes

The most prolific tomato in my garden is ‘Tomaccio’™.

Cluster after cluster until frost.

‘Tomaccio’™ originated at Hishtil Nurseries in Israel as the result of a 12 year breeding program using wild Peruvian tomato species to create the world’s finest, sweetest snack tomato, fresh or dried. Europeans in France and Germany have been growing and enjoying tomato ‘tomaccio’ for several years.

These tomato plants are huge, about 7′ tall, so I trimmed the tomato plant and hung some of the tomato vines to dry to show you how to do it. Tomaccio are the first tomatoes to ripen, continuously producing cluster after cluster of fruit.

Bargain sun-dried tomatoes

I’ve been drying cherry tomatoes for many years because I love the intense tomato flavor in winter soups, on pizza, and in spaghetti sauce. Tomaccio are rich and sweet fresh off the vine, drying simply intensifies their flavor.

Living next the Mississippi River, the air is usually too humid for fruits to dry naturally, but a 5-tray food dehydrator makes fast work of drying cherry tomatoes. I cut each tomato in half and fill the trays in a single layer.

You can also dry tomatoes in an oven on 100-degree F for about 3 hours. Snack on the dried tomaccio or store in a plastic zipper bag in the freezer.

C. Raker & Sons partnered with the Israeli firm Hishtil to bring Tomaccio to the United States. Look for Tomaccio plants at independent garden centers next spring, or visit www.raker.com to find a retail source near you.

As a member of the Garden Writers Association, I had the opportunity to trial Tomaccio this summer. These plants are prolific. I think I am getting more tomatoes from a single Tomaccio plant than I would from three or four cherry or pear tomato plants. That’s more produce in less garden space.

Plants will grow to 9'

The plants continue to grow and produce sweet cherry tomatoes. Later, I’ll have more details about drying Tomaccio.

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La Crema sage for fashionistas.

Posted on August 20, 2010 by | 1 comment

IN THE HERB GARDEN

Flavorful Bicolor sage

Hort Couture is a company that offers “the most sought after new plants and genetics from the world’s best breeders and plants people,” according to their website. One of their more popular plant collections is Culinary Couture, a line of fashionable heirloom vegetables and herbs.

So far, I’ve grown the following plants with panache this summer: Salvia officinalis ‘La Crema’, ‘Black Krim’ (an heirloom tomato) and the worldwide hit ‘ Tomaccio’ (a new dried snack tomato). I’ll share the results of my tomatoes later this year. (It will be more than a month before I’ll have dried tomatoes and a final report.)

One of my favorite herbs from Culinary Couture is ‘La Crema’, a fragrant, variegated sage that is currently thriving in my Zone 6 garden. Reminiscent of the familiar common garden sage, ‘La Crema’ is aromatic and beautiful enough to be in the flower garden.

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Look for ‘La Crema’ in independent garden centers next spring.
It is thriving in my humid, Zone 6 garden.
Photo by Patsy Bell Hobson

What I’m most excited about is using this flavorful herb in my family’s cornbread and sage dressing this Thanksgiving. I suggest that you use this sage as you would any other garden sage. Low-growing sage can grow as a border plant in a perennial garden. In spring, blue sage flowers appear about the time chives have blossomed. The flowers also make a pretty bouquet or can be used as an edible garnish.

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Photos by Patsy Bell Hobson

Hort Couture is the fastest growing plant brand in North America. Their plant collections include Avant Garde Annuals, Prêt a Porter Perennials, Tres Chic Tropicals, Culinary Couture and Sunny Succulents. ‘La Crema’ is from C. Raker & Sons, a wholesale plant propagation specialist based in Litchfield, Michigan. C. Raker & Sons is in partnership with Hort Couture, the fashionistas of the plant world.

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Photo by Patsy Bell Hobson

Have you ever bought herbs from Hort Couture? What do you think of their products?

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Grow Swiss Chard ‘Bright Lights’ From Seed

Posted on June 27, 2010 by | 3 comments

PBHobson2 Patsy Bell Hobson is a garden writer and a travel writer. For her, it’s a great day when she can combine the two things she enjoys most: gardening and traveling. Visit her personal blog at http://patsybell.com/ and read her travel writings at http://www.examiner.com/x-1948-Ozarks-Travel-Examiner.

Chard is becoming a favorite summer green for home gardeners. It’s beautiful! And, long after the cool season, when greens such as spinach have faded from my Zone 6 garden, chard is the one that steadily produces fresh greens for my favorite salads.

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Make tomato and swiss chard soup this summer.
Photo by Robyn Lee/Courtesy Flickr

Grow and Cook with Swiss Chard

Swiss chard ‘Bright Lights’ was honored as an All-America Selections (AAS) winner in 1998. When buying herb and vegetable seeds, I look for seeds that are AAS winners, which are selected based on their superior performance. AAS winners will also grow most anywhere in North America. The All-America Selections® logo tells me that I can grow this plant easily from seed.

Swiss chard, or chard, is a beet that is usually selected for its leaf production, not for its root formation. Plant chard seeds a week or two before your favorite salad greens, such as spinach, bolt. When you pull up these greens your chard seedlings will be well on their way. Also, by the time tomatoes are ripe and ready, lettuce will be long gone from your garden. Instead, grow young chard leaves as a lettuce substitute. I use it in the summer’s best sandwich: the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, or the BLT.

Many cooks remove chard’s colorful stems, which can be yellow, gold, orange, pink, red or white, and cook them separately before adding greens to the mix. (The stems take longer to cook.) Cut off the outer leaves 1 1/2 inches above the ground when they are young and tender, which is when they are about 8 to 10 inches tall. Larger leaves can be cooked and used as you would use spinach. If you like spinach, you will like this hardy and more earthy-flavored relative.

Fill your garden with Swiss chard whereever you find an empty space. It grows well in containers and is pretty enough to grow in a flower bed. Swiss chard is loaded with vitamins A, C, and contain vitamin B, calcium, iron and phosphorus. Like most greens, chard is very low in calories. And unlike most vegetables, it has a slightly higher sodium content than most leafy greens.

Seed Packet Giveaway!

Burpee has generously agreed to give away three seed packets of Swiss chard ‘Bright Lights’ to my Herb Companion readers. Winners will be selected at random. Details below.

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• Post a comment below: Share your experience with Swiss chard. Do you currently grow this plant? What would you like to use it for? 

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It’s dill pickle season

Posted on June 27, 2010 by | Comments Off on It’s dill pickle season

Patsy Bell Hobson is a garden writer and a travel writer. For her, it’s a great day when she can combine the two things she enjoys most: gardening and traveling. Visit her personal blog at http://patsybell.com and read her travel writings at Ozarks Travel Examiner.

Best known for pickling, dill (Anethum graveolens) is also a good herb for succession planting. If making dill pickles is on your Summer To-Do List, try this variety: dill ‘Dukat’. This variety, which is bred in Denmark, has finely cut leaves that stay fresh longer than other varieties.

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Hanging herb garden hung by the window to grow in Brooklyn.
Photo by Dory Komfeld/Courtesy Flickr

I like this newer variety of dill. It is pretty enough to plant in a sunny flower garden and it’s more compact than taller, older varieties. This is one of the few herbs that I enjoy to use both the ferny leaves and the seeds. Those beautiful lacey leaves are often referred to as dill weed. After this member of the carrot family has bloomed and set seed, cut it and hang it upside down in a paper bag to collect seed.

8 June Caterpillar
While the black swallowtail butterfly is a caterpillar, it feeds on dill.
Photo by Ken Pomerance/Courtesy Flickr

I suggest that you start this plant from seed—it has a long tap root, which means that transplanting it will have limited success. Plant a few seeds every two weeks to extend your season of fresh dill and to grow more than you need to share with local butterflies. Grateful butterflies will enjoy finding this smaller, more compact variety in your garden and caterpillars will appreciate its ready supply. It’s a well known fact that dill (as well as parsley and fennel) will attract butterflies to your garden.

To preserve, freeze your dill plant by cutting the branches into sections short enough to fit into heavy plastic freezer bags. Do not chop the leaves into bits until it is ready to use. This will brighten the fragrance and flavor when you use it in any recipe. Dill will keep in the freezer for about six months.

8 June Dill and Garlic
Use dill and garlic to make homemade pickles.
Photo by Sarah Reid

Use dill for more than pickles and dilly beans. Try a little dill in a favorite biscuit recipe. If you are serving pre-made biscuits, brush a little dill-infused butter on them. Also, I couldn’t make potato salad without dill weed.

This dill seed is easy to find. I bought my seeds at Renee’s Garden, Burpee and Nichols Garden Nursery online catalogs; several other companies also sell dill seed. But if you don’t want to find them on your own, enter my garden giveaway!

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Book Review: Tomatoes Garlic Basil

Posted on June 23, 2010 by | Comments Off on Book Review: Tomatoes Garlic Basil

PBHobson2 Patsy Bell Hobson is a garden writer and a travel writer. For her, it’s a great day when she can combine the two things she enjoys most: gardening and traveling. Visit her personal blog at and read her travel writings.

In my Zone 6 garden there are always three kinds of tomatoes: a paste tomato for sauces, a cherry tomato, because these small tomatoes are always the first to ripen (and later, when the big tomatoes are producing, these small ones will be dried), and a big, meaty tomato for eating fresh (and for bragging rights). I love tomatoes and when I saw Tomatoes Garlic Basil (St. Lynn’s Press, 2010), I judged the book by its cover. It is beautiful. Eventually, I was tempted to open the paperback tribute to the garden and kitchen’s favorite produce and I’m glad that I did. The book only gets better!

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Tomatoes, garlic and basil are the holy trinity of the vegetable garden.

Doug Oster’s Tomatoes Garlic Basil is a love letter about our favorite home garden produce. If you are one of the millions of backyard gardeners who grow tomatoes, this book is for you. Tomatoes are the star of the show. And, just like most gardens, basil and garlic have strong supporting roles in the book that magnify the magic of home grown tomatoes.

The book will not overwhelm you with soil science and plant genetics. It will give you some good advice about soil preparation and plant selection. The pleasure of reading this book grows as Oster offers us many choices with these three simple garden staples.

Like most gardeners, Oster is generous in sharing his experience and recipes. If you are new to gardening, try the simple combination of these three plants. He also encourages people who do not have garden space and shares some planting options. Each chapter begins with a garden or food quote that ties into the chapter. In Chapter 2, I was inspired by “Summer Celebrations” and looked forward to incorporating some of his ideas as I create new traditions for my own family. And by the time you get to the great advice in Chapter 9, which is about soil preparation and weed control, Oster will feel like an old neighbor

Oster is still on the big adventure of trying some different tomato plants every year as well as growing his favorites. It’s a good idea and you will never run out of tomato varieties to try. After reading this book you will be able to speak about basil and garlic as well as tomatoes with any home gardener.

This book would make a great gift for either a new or experienced gardener, as well as for the recipients of your produce bounty. (I recommend you buy the print version to enjoy the artful photographs.) The only difficult part is deciding whether to put this book with my cookbooks or on the shelf with the gardening books. I decided to take the book into the kitchen and try the recipes with my own fresh tomatoes, garlic and basil.

I enjoyed the humorous and serious gardening stories and there are plenty of artsy photographs throughout the book. I will definitely put Doug’s recipes and gardening tips to use this summer.

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Cherry tomatoes are heavy producers.

Book Details
• Tomatoes Garlic Basil: The Simple Pleasures of Growing and Cooking Your Garden’s Most Versatile Veggies by Doug Oster
• Paperback: 272 pages.
• Publisher: St. Lynn’s Press; 1st edition, ISBN-10: 0981961517 and ISBN-13: 978-0981961514
• See Doug Oster’s Blog at http://www.dougoster.com/books/ to read “My favorite story from Tomatoes Garlic Basil.”

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