Identifying Plants - Feverfew

There's a clump of feverfew that's growing by my chicken feed shed all spring. 

I know it's feverfew but I don't know how I know that (if that makes sense). I can't ever remember looking it up, maybe I saw it in a book once and it stayed in my memory. But my daughter was asking me just the other day what the flower was. 

I thought it was a great exercise to confirm the knowledge in my brain, that it was the right plant, and show her that looking things up in a book is a good way to identify something you're not sure of. So we picked a sprig of flowers and went to one of my identification books (I have many) that I brought from a carboot sale years ago for a couple of pounds. 

This book is called "The Wild Flowers Of The British Isles" by Garrard & Streeter and although I know that these days most people just post a picture of a plant on a forum or a Facebook group and expect someone to come up with an answer, I still think it's great to look it up in a book. To me it seems a much more accessible medium to a young child. 

Luckily I was right, my daughter seemed to really enjoy the process and it was a fun five minute activity to do together. 

Apparently this plant is a great migraine preventative along with other medicinal uses. 

Anyone use this plant? I have loads growing!

Physics Garden (Herb Garden)

One area that I was really impressed with at Hellens was their Physics Garden. My pictures really don't do it justice as my lens wasn't wide enough to capture it all. 

It's set out like a large wheel with raised beds, each section is divided into a different area of healing or usage. 

This is one section I really loved, all the poisons, but many had different uses. 

I also love their use of slate to mark the different plants and areas, this would be a great way to learn each one if you're reminded what they are each time you're in the garden. The manor was run by monks at one time so it quiet appropriate that they have this healing garden growing there now, this is in a little courtyard by the dovecote over looked by the manor house. 

The different sections for different things was also really clever. 

 The descriptions on the plants were really great and interesting.

.

See all this has really inspired me to up my herb game and grow more here. I grow quite a few culinary herbs (many with other purposes) but it wold be great to have lots more growing for other uses as well, maybe labling in this way would be a good way to increase my knowledge as well and make it sink in! 

What do you think? Is this a good layout for a herb garden? 

Anyone have anything similar growing in their garden (maybe on a smaller scale!)?

Temporary Cold Frame For Cuttings

On Thursday I had a bit of a frenzy on taking some cuttings. Trying to increase my stocks of rosemary, sage, bay, blueberries, goji berries and a few others for free. 

Quick fix cold frame

I've no idea if they will all work or if it's the right time for all of them, bay for one I'd imagine would be better in the autumn but it's worth a shot as I'm doing others and had everything set up.

A gritty sandy mix for the cuttings (I mixed up an ericaious one for the blueberries)

Rosemary cutting with the bottom leaves stripped away

Once I'd finished with the cuttings I needed somewhere to keep them. Most books say a plastic bag over the top or a cold frame out of direct sunlight. I decided that a cold frame would be better so I found a few sheets of old corrugated perspex saved from a job and set about building a temporary one on our north facing patio.

All the cuttings under my temporary, quick fix cold frame.

This turned out to be a little bit simple, even for me. I stacked the quarry tiles that I've got saved for when we build the porch and then added one of the sheets on the top and front weighted down with a few more tiles.

Temporary cold frame

Hopefully this should work well, it's easy for me to water them and as it's by the house I should be more inclined to keep an eye on them. One day I'll get round to building some proper cold frames, with brick sides and glass tops, but that's some way off yet!

What else should I be taking cuttings of at the moment? Anyone else built a temporary cold frame like this?

Chive Rust

A little gutted the other night as I discovered rust on my chives. This has come on suddenly and spread through the whole boarder of chives that surround my herb bed, the week of wet weather hasn't helped I guess. 

Rust spread through the whole patch

The chives are no more!

Evalyn loves picking the flowers when we're in the garden together and the bees go mad for them, but I've too many other alliums growing to risk leaving them in. I'm not looking forward to seeing her reaction when she sees they've all gone!
 I don't want it to spread to my garlic, onions, leeks and shallots so I pulled them all out and put them in my burning barrel. The chives are no more, it's a shame as they made a pretty boarder around the herbs and everyone said how nice they looked.
Anyone else have experience with rust on their chives or other alliums? Am I doomed to loose my onions as well due to them?

Comfrey Root Cuttings

As I've been try to be more organic and contained it's made me realise that comfrey is a pretty valuable plant with loads of uses from making comfrey tea to using it as a mulch or filling the bottom of a trench to grow beans on.

thee roots of a small clump of comfrey

 I've got two patches in corners of the veg garden but this is nowhere near enough. I looked on the internet at the prices and decided that I could probably propagate it myself for a fraction of the cost. I did divide the roots in early spring and doubled what I had, but I need a lot more of this herb to be useful. Looking on the internet I saw that one of the best ways to propagate it is to take root cuttings. 

Root cutting

 In essence, dig up a clump, cut some of the large roots into 1.5-2" lengths and plant this into compost.

Plant in small pots of compost

Cuttings done, now just got to wait!

I did this 26 times so we'll see how many of them will work. If they do I'm going to add a few patches around the smallholding, in the orchard and the coppice so I should always have a supply and be near to where I need it.

How does everyone else use comfrey and how do you propagate it?

Herb Garden

Last year I brought some herbs to replace the ones I'd left at our last house. From these I took cuttings from and divided up to make more plants (all in hundreds of pots which need watering). My idea was to have a large herb area in the front garden, but I've got bigger plans for that at the moment (more on that later) so I decided to get them out of the pots and make an area to house them in the veg garden.

From this...

 The first bit by the gate has been looking a little scraggy for a while now so I decided to give it a little make over.


To this!

I had over 25 chive plants to make a boarder around the outside (all just coming into flower so it should look nice) and then thyme, sage and rosemary were planted in the middle, many to these from cuttings I took in the autumn. The back edge was then planted with a line of lavender plants, although I'm fairly sure they're not going to stay there it will be a good place to grow them on until they're ready to be moved.
Now I could just do with some lambs to go with the rosemary!

I Beg Your Pardon,

I never promised you a herb garden!

Bargain Herbs

I've been looking out at car boot sales for lots of herbs so I can plant up a herb garden at the front of our house, but we found them just as cheap at a garden centre today. They were buy one get one free, which worked out at 75p for a good sized plant.

We went mad and bought 6 rosemary plants, 4 different thymes, Lemon Verben, a Curry plant, a gold veined sage and a pot of chives. Not bad for just over £10.

Now I need to sort out the area I'm going to plant them in, the trouble is this means digging up some large roots from an old rose bush and other shrubs so lot of work involved. It should make a nice herb boarder when it's done and make the front of the house look nicer.

Bay Trees

There's not many things I miss about living at our old house but I do miss my herbs. When we moved not all of our herbs survived or the ones that did are still recovering from being dug up and having 4 months of rain chucked at them! There were also a few which were a little too big to move as well.

The garden at our old house. The bay tree was the large green tree on the left

Our old house used to have a huge bush of rosemary and a massive bay tree. This was until the harsh winter we had in 2010/2011 where temperature dropped to -20 degrees and killed them both. It was a shame as I'd never really seen a bay tree get so big in this country, many people keep them in pots and take them in when the winter weather comes, but the protected south facing garden was perfect. We used to use bay all the time, and lately we've been missing the flavour it adds to our meals. So when I was at my first car boot sale in what seems like ages and I saw these two 4ft trees I knew I had to have them. At £28 for the pair they were good(ish) value and will look good in some big pots outside the front door.

Two "new" Bay trees, I've got to change the pots!

We've rabbit for tea one night this week so I'm sure that will be the first use of this aromatic herb in a slow cooked stew.

I'm really keen to build a herb garden at the front of our house (as it faces south) with big bushes of strongly scented rosemary and lavender, with other herbs dotted around, I just need to find some plants the right size and the right money.

We've things like fennel, sweet Cicily, angelica, sage, thyme, lemon balm, mint, etc at the moment, any herbs away from the norm that anyone recommends?