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Herb Day!
I know I haven’t gotten back into a regular Friday PhotoEssay habit yet, and I think it is going to have to wait one more week. Besides, I’m tired of posting construction pictures!
Tomorrow (Saturday, May 5th) is our 17th annual Herb Day! We will be featuring the National Herb of the Year: Rose, from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Extension Center.
Guest Speaker, Jim Long, owner of Long Creek Herbs in Blue Eye, MO, will share with participants about “How to Eat a Rose” and “Growing & Using the 10 Most Popular Herbs.” He is a regular columnist for The Herb Companion magazine and his gardens have been featured in many publications and TV shows.
In addition, seminars by members of the Herb Society and Master Gardeners will cover topics relating to growing and cooking with herbs. Plant vendors from around the region will have herbs and other plants for sale. Of course, the Kansas Grown! Farmers Market will be going on in the parking lot.
Herb Day Events:
- Seminars in the Sunflower Room, Meadowlark Room and the Demonstration Garden
- Master Gardener Plant Sale
- Herb Society Box Lunch Sale
- Children’s Activity
- Garden Magazine Sale
- Vendors selling herbs and other gardening items
- Door Prizes
Seminars in the Sunflower Room:
8:00 History of Herbs (Old Time Herbs)
9:00 GUEST SPEAKER: Jim Long – Growing and Using the 10 Most Popular Herbs
10:00 Rugosa Roses (Roses that Grow Good Hips)
11:00 GUEST SPEAKER: Jim Long – How to Eat a Rose
12:00 Cooking with Herbs
Seminars in the Meadowlark Room:
8:30 Planting Herbs in Containers & Small Places
9:30 Composting
10:30 Spring Rose Care
11:30 Walking Tour of the Nature Trail
Mini Friday PhotoEssay
I think this is the first offical Friday PhotoEssay of the year! Of course, you’ve been seeing a bunch of construction pictures, but I think it’s high time we moved on to plants, don’t you?
This is a bit of a “mini” photoessay because I’ve only got 3 pictures to share, and they are all of baby plants – seedlings. All of the seedlings I planted last week have germinated, so I thought we’d take a look since they aren’t your common, everyday seedlings.
This is the Thunbergia (aka Black-Eyed Susan Vine). Those big seed leaves look kind of chlorotic with the dark green veins and pale yellow areas between veins. However, want to get some true leaves growing before I start with any fertilizer. You can see those first true leaves starting to unfurl. Since this is a vine, it is going to get rather gangly rather quickly. That will be a challenge with the lights!
This is the Thai Red Roselle seedling. It has its first true leaf already and while it isn’t red yet, you can see that tinge of red in the leaf petioles (stems) and starting into the veins of that true leaf.
This is the Jicama. If it looks a little bit like a pole bean, well there’s a good reason for that. Jicama is a member of the Legume family (the same as peas, beans, vetch, etc). Theoretically that would mean that it fixes a little bit of nitrogen from the air like other legumes, right? The seed packet does specifically say that it does not like too much nitrogen. I wonder….
After a quick internet search, it would appear that jicama does have the ability to fix nitrogen like other legumes. That ability results in a tuber that has more nitrogen than other edible tubers, theoretically making it more nutritious. I found a couple sources citing it as being more nutritious because of the nitrogen…I wonder if they are equating more nitrogen to higher protein? Nitrogen is an important building block in proteins.
So, even if we don’t get a great yield from our jicama plants this year, we should get some nitrogen for our new garden soil out of the deal!
Garden Plans for 2012: Edible Flowers
We are planning to make good use of the variety of sizes of our new raised beds by trying some different things in a small area, rather than devoting half or all of one of our old beds to them. One of the new 4′ x 4′ raised beds will have a theme of “Edible Flowers” this year.
Edible flowers are a fun subject, but the challenge that we ran into during the planning is that most of the really popular edible flowers are all cool season. In other words, since we won’t be able to plant them in March, we had to try something else. When we get to fall, we’ll be able to plant pansies, violas, nasturtiums, calendula, dianthus, snapdragons, etc. However, since we’re aiming for a planting date of mid-May, we had to focus on flowers that like warmer weather.
In the very center of the garden is an edible hibiscus, called Roselle. It is popular in southeast Asia and Mexico. The buds are used to make drinks, teas, jellies, and more.
Then we will have ‘Cardinal’ Basil, the same type we have in the “Beautiful Vegetables” garden.
On the edges will be a reblooming daylily, supplying us with edible buds. Then in the corners will be citrus marigolds and French marigolds. The citrus marigolds are sometimes called “signet” marigolds, and they have a definite citrusy scent and flavor, rather than your typical marigold odor.
Friday PhotoEssay: A Look Back at 2009
Last week I finally finished uploading all of the 2009 Demo Garden photos to Flickr. I have to say…the vibe from those pictures is much different than you get from looking at a lot of the 2011 pictures! I thought I would share some of my favorite pictures from that year, since I got to enjoy them again as I was uploading them. To see all the 2009 pictures, click here.
We overwintered this radicchio from 2008, and this is what it looked like just after Valentine’s Day in 2009! Still one of my all-time favorite Demo Garden pictures.
I think all of the radishes we planted in 2009 were Easter Egg Mix Radishes. At least, all the pictures I took were of them.
2009 was the year of the cherry tomato! We had them coming out our ears. This bowl was one of the first harvests in early July.
This was the year we had a full bed of zinnias. The flowers were extremely photogenic, even if the rest of the plants weren’t particularly beautiful.
We got lots of rain in 2009, and the garden was lush and full of insects. This big grasshopper was one of my favorites, but there are lots of pictures of spiders, grasshoppers, butterflies, and other bugs in the archive.
Fall 2009 was the season of beautiful Bok Choy. And rain, as you can see. I think that was the season that our Bok Choy looked its absolute best. The weather was perfect with no insects and no bolting.
Since 2009 was the year before our raspberries succumbed to Phytophthora Root/Crow Rot, the berries were large, luscious, and still ripening in November!
Doesn’t looking back at some pictures of a really good gardening year make you a little more excited for this year?
Have a great weekend!
First Look at our Garden Plans for 2012
It’s a little bit funny that we’re talking about our planting plans when we aren’t remotely close to having beds to plant in. However, we’re eternal optimists and are forging ahead with our planting plans, regardless of whether or not we ever actually get to implement them! I think we’ll have some very exciting things in the garden this year, assuming the construction goes well this spring.
