Seasoning Your Cooking From The Garden

"Herbs should be gathered while in blossom. If left till they have gone to seed, the strength goes into the seed. Those who have a little patch of ground, will do well to raise the most important herbs; and those who have not, will do well to get them in quantities from some friend in the country; for apothecaries make very great profit upon them."

– Lydia M. Child, The American Frugal Housewife (1832)

      I feel like I am swimming lost in a sea of garden updates as that seems to be the trend on the blogs that I follow this time of year (it probably also helps that I follow a lot of gardening blogs.)  What I find strange is that most of those blogs are not updating you on one of my favorite things to plant (now that I don’t kill them) – herbs! 

      Herbs can grow just about anywhere as you will quickly find: from sunny windowsills to sunny patios to sunny gardens.  The key is SUN!  They love lots and lots of sun and will do best with a large amount of it on a daily basis. 

      No matter where my husband (and later I) lived we needed to have an herb garden.  We both adore cooking, and cooking and canning with fresh herbs is an amazing experience.  Mrs. Child never really told us what the most important herbs should be in the garden, although she did tell us how to tend and harvest some of the most dependable herbs for housewives in the mid-nineteenth century.  Below are my favorite herbs to grow in the garden and just why you might do well to have them in your own gardens as well! 

      BASIL is probably the most utilized fresh herb at our house.  This year we have three different varieties planted Sweet Basil, Blue African Basil and Purple Basil.  Each of these varieties serves a slightly different purpose for us.   Sweet Basil is used in pesto and canned spaghetti sauce, and Purple Basil I use in pasta salads and cooking (which gives them a beautiful purple coloration).  This is the first year that Blue African Basil (which has subtle flecks of navy blue in the leaves) is in the garden and we’ve already used it in pasta salads and cooking.

      CHIVES have a wonderful flavor for baked potatoes, but can also be used in other dishes as well.  We really enjoy them in omelets, pasta salads and also to top soups.  If you get an over abundance of chives, they can be cut and stored in a damp paper towel in the refrigerator for up to two weeks.  Additionally, they can be cut or diced and stored in the freezer for a couple of months to be used as you would fresh chives in recipes. 

      CILANTRO / CORRAINDER is a dual-purpose herb.  While the herb is leafy green it’s used as cilantro, which we can in fresh salsa and use for omelets (add some salsa on top of the omelet with cilantro cooked inside the omelet and you have a tasty treat).  Once the cilantro goes to seed, the seed is coriander and can also be used in cooking.  The only problem that I’ve found with cilantro is it’s quick to bolt and seed.  I find that if you start cilantro in stages, it ends up extending your harvest.  Also, the coriander seeds will seed themselves, and we have some baby cilantro coming up in our herb wheelbarrow from last year’s seeds. 

        LAVENDER is one of our experimental herbs, and we first planted it last year in containers on our corn crib (which is now nothing more than a foundation that we use as a patio).  I’m hoping to use the lavender to make sachets, and use it to scent soap and candle wax.  Since the lavender did not overwinter (even though it was taken inside), we are replacing it this year and also thinking about getting a few more plants to place by the upcoming chicken coop.  I’ve read that you can use lavender to help freshen up the chicken coop, which from what I can smell from the large chicken houses around our parts, would be an amazing thing.

      MINT, oh how much mint we have.  Meadow mint, which is planted in a flower bed alongside the house before we got here, comes up in abundance.  Spearmint was added to the upper garden the first year we came, to grow wild alongside the overabundance of catnip that lived there.  Our farm cats love the catnip.  The spearmint and meadow mint we harvest, dry and store in our dry goods downstairs, awaiting for an idea on just how to use it.  Both the mints make wonderful tea (if you have the taste for it), and they can be used in cooking and scented oils.  Unfortunately since neither my husband or I like the taste of it (with the recipes we have), most of it is in storage downstairs.  Fortunately, like lavender, mint is supposed to be good for scenting chicken coops, so our stock downstairs may get a use after all!

      Mrs. Child did find a use for the catnip, aside for making our farm cats go crazy, in the mid-nineteenth century: “Catnip, particularly the blossoms, made into tea, is good to prevent a threatened fever. It produces a fine perspiration. It should be taken in bed, and the patient kept warm.”

      OREGANO comes in two varieties in our garden this year as well.  Greek oregano has almost fuzzy leaves, which might not be to everyone’s texture palette, and Italian oregano has smoother leaves.  I personal prefer the texture of the Italian oregano, but we utilize both in cooking and especially in canning pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce. 

      Sweet marjoram, which is similar to oregano, was also used in abundance in the mid-nineteenth century according to Mrs. Child: “Few people know how to keep the flavor of sweet-marjoram; the best of all herbs for broth and stuffing. It should be gathered in bud or blossom, and dried in a tin-kitchen at a moderate distance from the fire; when dry, it should be immediately rubbed, sifted, and corked up in a bottle carefully.”

      PARSLEY, sage, rosemary and thyme… I can hear Simon and Garfunkel singing it now.  Although we only have three of those herbs in our garden, the parsley is used so much in canning and pasta salads, we actually have five plants planted this year, and I can only hope we have enough for everything we use it in (and I hope the rabbits don’t eat it all, especially since two of the plants are looking a little heat beat in this weather.  I should be just as concerned about our farm cat Purrball who had an overly interest sniffing session with it the day I planted the herbs outdoors this week). 

      Parsley is actually a bi-annual, which means it will come back for a second year, but not a third season. 

      Speaking of things you have to do to keep overly eager farm cats away from your plants.  The ROSEMARY, which overwintered rather well unlike the lavender, had a metal cage around it as the farm cats were enjoying it before we even had the chance to. 

      We really love to have fresh rosemary around for cooking; although, for a few years we haven’t had the possibility since the plants that are not contained inside 24/7 haven’t been doing very well.  Rosemary is exceptionally good on roasted garlic-rosemary chicken with red potatoes and onions, along with other chicken-based recipes. 

      SOAPWORT is an herb that is hardly found in gardens today, and up until two years ago, I had never heard of it either.  Soapwort can be lathered and hence it’s name, although most people will probably know it better by its other name of Bouncing Bet, a cascading plant that blooms beautifully in red, pink and white along roadside banks.  In hard times soapwort was used in place of soap in homes in both England and America, and is still used in cleaning historical textiles due to its gentle cleaning abilities.  This heirloom plant managed to overwinter in a pot in the shed rather well.  I’ve been waiting until it gets a little larger to try to lather it up, myself. 

      To find out more about how to use soapwort, head over to The Herb Gardner’s blog.

      THYME, the one thing you can never have enough of (with either spelling).  Thyme can be used for just about any meat from chicken to beef to pork, and is particularly good when making soups, stews and casseroles to give the dish an extra kick.  I personally like to use it in my homemade cream of chicken soup.  Thyme comes in many varieties (mine is French Thyme) and works great as a ground cover as well.