Herbaholic’s Herbarium

I’ve been growing herbs for years, and using them in cooking, but only late last year with the encouragement of Sarah Head have I begun to harvest herbs and make my own remedies, I started with herb vinegars back in October 2007 with the very last of the lavender flowers in the garden and a handful of lavender leaves. I also made lemon verbena vinegar, rosemary vinegar and sage vinegar. So far this year I’ve made peppermint tincture, honeysuckle honey, honeysuckle vinegar and rose petal vinegar. The vinegars have a lot of uses, cosmetic, culinary, medicinal and domestic. I’m intrigued by some of the oxymel recipes in Julie Bruton-Seals book ‘Hedgerow Medicine’, these call for 1 part vinegar to 5 parts honey, and as you can use a variety of vinegars and honeys, this could turn out to be a very nice way of curing sore throats and other winter ills.

I’m increasingly becoming interested in using the flowers of herbs in a variety of ways, most people don’t give flowers a second glance beyond their perfume, but there are so many things that you can make either cosmetically or culinary from things like marigold, lavender, roses, pinks and evening primrose and many more herbal flowers as well. Two of my favourite uses for lavender flowers on a culinary level include lavender biscuits and lavender lemonade. Armed with a garden full of delightfully scented herbs and flowers and a lot of recipes and enthusiasm I’m going to have a go at making some flower powered goodies that can be eaten, used to treat our ills and for bath time treats.

I’ve spent this morning in the garden and kitchen, after harvesting some lavender, roses and marigolds I’ve made a litre of lavender vinegar, this stuff is great as an alternative to fabric softener in the wash, add a touch to the water when cleaning the windows, use in the mop bucket to mop the floor to help disinfect and fragrance the room and as a bonus you can use it to add zing to summer salad dressings.

I also made some marigold tincture, most recipes I’ve seen call for using the fresh petals only, but I added half of the flower heads as well because they smelt so good and it seemed a shame to waste them. I have some dried marigold petals so I’ll make a batch of tincture with those and see which smell better. I’m going to use the tincture to make a cream, as I’ve just read that marigold cream is good for treating spider veins (thread veins), something I suffer from, as did my Mum. In a few days there will be another batch of marigolds ready for use and I’m going to make an infused oil with them, following the method Sarah showed me, from there I’ll progress to making my first salve or cream, using the recipes I’ve gathered.

I also checked out my rose petal vinegar and discovered that despite having a beautiful colour, the vinegar hardly smelt of roses at all Not to be detered, I strained the vinegar from the first batch of petals and added fresh petals from the garden and a couple of handfuls of dried rosa centifolia petals. As I’ve read that highly scented dried petals give better results than fresh if the the fresh are not very highly scented. I’ve also made a small batch of purely dried rose petal vinegar, to see which is better. I have to say that I used my hands to squash all the vinegar from the first batch of petals and afterwards nmy hands felt incredible soft. I’ll have to pick some fragrant wild roses and try with those, the type I’m using from the garden are Rosa Mundi ‘Rosa gallica versicolour’, one of the gallica type of roses, which is a lovely old rose, with semi-double blooms with large with splashes of pink and white on a crimson background. It is fragrant, but maybe not fragrant enough! Incidentally, ‘Rosa Mundi’ is said to be named after ‘Fair Rosamund’, the mistress of Henry II back in the 12th century!

Last weekend I helped out on the Herb Society stand over the Gardeners World Live event at the NEC, I discovered a new herb nursery there called Hooksgreen Herbs they had some lovely herbs and have an impressive catalogue, one plant I picked up to add to my collection was the Toothache Plant (Spilanthes oleracea), which also gets called Australian Cress and Paracress.

It’s a member of the Aster (Asteraceae) family, its a lovely half-hardy perennial which will need overwintering in a greenhouse or conservatory if you want to keep it. It has olive shaped golden yellow flowers with deep burgundy red eye on long, pendant stems, beautiful bronze green foliage which in full sun set off the flowers to perfection. The leaves and the more potent flowers have a taste and properties similar to coneflower (Echinacea purpurea). Spilanthes also improves digestion, eases flatulence, improves the appetite, and helps to overcome nausea and vomiting by its stimulating effect on the salivary glands.

But the most impressive quality of the plant is when you chew on the leaves or flowers it produces a numbing effect to the tongue and gums. Spilanthes can be used in this manner to help ease the pain of a toothache! You can find out more about this plant here.

Like an excited school child I witnessed my very first home grown pea developing yesterday and couldn’t resist taking a picture! When the sunlight caught the pod you could see the little tiny peas inside developing and I got all excited. Now for those amongst you that have been growing your own veggies for a while, this process isn’t new. But this is my first real year as a veg grower so I crave your indulgence! No signs of any beans yet but they’ll come along, I did noticed that the sweet peas were also beginning to flower. the thing that I find so amazing about this whole process is I planted the seeds that gave me these babies! In the past sweet peas were a bit hit and miss, but this time every single one germinated, they’re an old variety as well and the perfume is supposed to be outstanding, so fingers crossed.

 As I took a tour of the veggie beds, I was fascinated to see that the pumpkin plant now had about 4 little pumpkins on it, I was shocked because I was expecting to have to do the cotton bud pollination dance! Still we do get lots of bees in the garden and other pollinating insects so maybe I’ll be lucky? The whole point of growing my own pumpkin is to make pumpkin pie come Halloween, and to be able to make our own halloween lantern. I have no idea what the variety of pumpkin is I bought from the garden centre as it wasn’t named. Next year I’ll get a named variety and try growing that from seed. Having a degree of success with garden centre plants and peas sown from seed, I’m spurred on to try growing all our veggies next year from seed!

This morning Si went out into the garden and picked some endive and radishes to go in the salad he takes to work to go with his sandwiches, he came in grinning with the homegrown stuff, bibbling about zero air miles, do the bees air miles count I wonder? This afternoon I’ll be harvesting some more rhubarb which I’ll stew with some sweet cicely and a little sugar. Let it go cold and serve it with fresh cream poured over and it makes a lovely delicious dessert.

I thought I’d share the calabrese with you, no I’m not going mad, I bought the plants from the garden centre as was looking forward to growing some tender calabrese and they’ve turned out to be cabbages, I think when I go to the local garden centre at weekend I’ll take a photo and complain! Still cabbages or not, the netting has kept the pests off so far and the cabbages are hearting up nicely. We did have a small disaster, we bought some radicchio but when we came to taste it, it was very bitter for both our tastes, so we discarded it and have planted January King cabbage in its place. I did a little research to see what I can still plant and what will crop well in the winter and I have some kale, landcress and beetroot seeds to sow, I’ll pick up some swede seeds and maybe some turnips to.

The garlic is coming along in leaps and bounds as are the red onions, I’m looking at a bumper crop of strawberries, at least a pies worth of blackcurrants (hopefully more next year) and the potatoes are really doing well. Not much from the tree spinach and ruby chard as yet but theres time. The tubs in the greenhouse are now ready to plant out. Unfortunately I didn’t get the cucumbers in on time and they’ve all died off, but I’ll get the tomatoes in and then I can make room for growing a few last minute veggies. So far I’m impressed with my bounty and if it produces what I hope it will and tastes half as good as it looks I’ll be more than happy.

Above is a photo of the pots in the greenhouse ready to be placed around the new seating area. I have some herbs to plant up as well and some basil that needs potting on to go in the kitchen. Later today if the weather stays fine I’ll finally be going for a walk to pick some elderflowers to make wine, cordial, tincture and vinegars. So a productive time in the kitchen over the next few days, the lavender is almost ready to make vinegar and the lemon verbena is really coming along, which is good as I have lots of plans for that particular herb this year, so watch this space!

First I have to say PLEASE DON’T LOOK AT THE DIRTY WINDOWS!!! Okay now you’ve looked I know you, that you know that I haven’t got round to cleaning the kitchen window for a while, and it doesn’t really matter now! truth is I’ve been busy in the garden and with work so doing things like window cleaning is something that hasn’t been top of my list of things to do. Will have to do it soon though or I won’t be able to enjoy the garden from the kitchen window eeeek! Still the whole point of this blog post is to show you my wonderful rose petal vinegar, so I’ll get on with it. Like most herb vinegars its really simple to make, 1 part flower/herb to 4 parts vinegar, you can use any sort of vinegar (except the brown malt vinegar!) I usually use cider vinegar, but for the rose petal vinegar I used white vinegar.

For this vinegar I used rosa mundi petals plus a few Cardinal de Richelieu heads which are a deep pinky purple, above is a photo of what the vinegar looked like after just 1 hour in the sun and below is the result after 3 hours!

I’m so glad that I used white vinegar now as I don’t think the colour would have been as pretty with cider vinegar. I’ll try using white vinegar with hidcote lavender and see if it turns the vinegar lilac like it does lemonade. I forgot to take a photo of the vinegar when I first made it when the vinegar was just white, I’ll be making somemore in a few days time and will remember to take another photo then.

Using Rose Petal Vinegar - You can use rose petal vinegar in the mop bucket, in bath water, in salad dressings and you can also dilute it half and half with rosewater to make a wonderful tonic for the skin. Or why not make a rose petal oxymel with 1 part rose vinegar to 5 parts honey, great for sore throats. Rose vinegar is also good for cooling sunburnt skin, soak a cotton wool ball in the vinegar and apply to the sunburnt area.

Things have certainly began to flourish since my first blog entry about the garden Out With The Old… I’m rather proud to say after the advice from Sarah I have a rather fine crop of pot Marigold’s this year for the first year EVER! This is one of the herbs that I have a lot of trouble with and have never been able to grow before, but as you can see in the centre circle bed above I have a wonderful display!

I’ve just been out and picked the rose petals for the rose petal vinegar, which is now made up and sitting on the kitchen window ledge, which I’ll blog about later, but whilst out there I noticed that Brother Cadfael had graced me with his presence, although not fully opened yet, so I can’t smell his full perfume, but that isn’t too far away. I couldn’t bare to pick this rose to add to the vinegar even though more buds were waiting to burst forth. Somethings we just have to enjoy for their beauty and perfume! Did I just hear a chorus of monks followed by a gong?

My Apothecary Rose (Rosa centifolia) is ready to burst open and release its heavenly fragrance, fingers crossed we’ll get enough petals from him this year to make a batch of rose petal wine! If we don’t I’ll add some wild rose petals from the local hedgerow to make up the difference, rose petal wine, like elderflower cordial is something no summer evening in the garden should be without!

The early honeysuckle is almost over, but still at night it perfumes the air, thats almost a months worth of delicious fragrance now, I have a Lonicera japonica ‘Halliana’ honeysuckle over the archway into the garden that is in bud and will be releasing its wonderful sweet perfume soon. The golden hop is scrambling along the wall and up to the garage roof, the sweet cicely is ready to harvest the seeds to make liqueur and the lemon balm, is constantly being harvested to make a refreshing herb tea and will very soon be harvested to make a batch of lemon balm wine. I noticed to, that the valerian was now in flower, the plant is a lot smaller than last year, sadly, as I wanted to make a tincture from the fresh flowers, which I think smell absolutely wonderful! Still there is always next year and I can console myself with the photo of the flowers and the delightful perfume, and if I’m lucky it may give me more flowers perfume the summer is over!

A bit late I know, but at the beginning of the month I helped out on the Herb Society stand at Herb Day which was run jointly by Garden Organic and the Herb Society over at Ryton. It was a lovely day, there was a lovely cookery demonstration by Sophie Grigson, she actually converted me to gin, but only if it has elderflower cordial in! All the recipes from the event will be on the Herb Society website soon.

Caroline Holmes gave an interesting talk on the plants in the Poison Garden at Alynwich and Jenny Jones gave a couple of guided talks around the herb garden at Ryton to members of the public and Herb Society members. The lady in the pink top with the little girl at her side is Madeleine from Mad About Herbs ::Waves:: sorry I didn’t get chance to chat to you properly, hopefully we’ll meet again soon! Maddie took some photos of the day, so check out her blog post Herb Day at Garden Organic

Kim and Rob Hurst from The Cottage Herbery were at the event selling herbs, I picked up a Tree Spinach (Chenopodium giganteum), a Camphor Plant (Tanacetum balsamita) and a new African Blue Basil (Ocimum kilimandscharicum x basilicum) as the one I had last year died, hopefully now I have the greenhouse I’ll be able to overwinter the tender herbs. But the best part of the day was meeting people and hearing what they had to say about herbs, answering questions where possible and recruiting new members to the Herb Society, I’m helping out at Gardeners World Live on the HS stand on the morning of Saturday 14th so if anyone reading this is going, please drop by the HS stand G496 and say hello!

Out in the garden yesterday we noticed that the new ‘Orange Electric’ lily was in flower, its supposed to be fragrant but I couldn’t smell anything. Simon decided to investigate, but shoved his nose in before I had chance to warn him not to get to close to the stamens. I was in a fit of giggles when he looked up and said that he could smell something, luckily I had the camera so snapped a shot.
The orange spot on the tip of his nose is pollen, it also caught his cheek, I said not to rub it, but he did and half of his face ended up looking like he’d used a cheap fake tanning cream.

I haven’t had time to ‘blog’ for a while, I’ve been so busy with life and Herb Society stuff that I haven’t had any spare time. Things are evening out and today I’m having a ‘relax and catch up’ day. Later today I’m off picking elderflowers to make some homemade goodies, which will include wine, cordial and tincture and the Rosa Mundi in the garden is set to give up some of her delightfully scented petals to make some rose petal vinegar and Cardinal de Richileiu will have some of the flowers removed and dried for adding to pot pourri. My friend Sarah Head has done a lovely posting about elderflowers over on her blog with a couple of nice recipes Cooling herbs for summer – Elderflower I’m going to try her elderflower water recipe, and I fancy making eldeflower vinegar.

The second veggie bed is now complete, I’ve add ed chives, garlic and marigolds and theres a tree spinach and ruby chard in amongst the peas and beans and raddichio so the herbs still get in the veggie patch. I’ve threatened to turn them into herb beds if we don’t keep the veggies going! Simon is determined we’ll keep up with the veggies. The first bed is really coming along, the pumpkin is now about 6 times the size it was when we planted it, the first batch of raddichio, endive and oak leaf are almost ready to eat and the calabrese is doing fine, we have had a little slug damage, but that seems to have slowed down since Si installed two little organic ‘Slug Pubs’ sounds better than beer traps lol! Originally the plan was to have 3 - 4 veg beds, but as we’re new to veggie gardening we’ve decided to start with two and see how we go on. We can add more beds next year if we want, and so far we’re managing to keep on top of things. Great progress methinks if you compare it with before we began The Veggie Plot Finally Emerges still lots to do, but its more a tidy the area and add the bark chip paths, after the compost bins have been moved.

Yesterday I noticed that a family of blackbirds were nesting in the honeysuckle, mummy blackbird was flying down to the pond to get some spent watercress sprigs to line her nest and daddy blackbird stood watching her on the bird table. I just bought I new bird feeding station at weekend which will go near the new veggie patch when we’ve finished tidying up the area. The lavender is almost in bloom and the bees are feasting on the nectar from the other herbs and flowers. The creation of the new seating area has begun and I have my bench and the pots of scented herbs and flowers have been done ready to go round it. By the end of June the back garden may be finished!!! That all depends on how much time we get in the garden and how many other things we have to do first.