herbs in the summer

From a post I did on the Florida Forum of GardenWeb:

it's a tough time for herbs in the garden. here's what's coping with the heat/humidity/deluge/drought of late summer.

- rosemary: in pots, doing well. i've discovered that it's key to buy rosemary from local growers (mine are from seminole springs). i always underpot these. partial sun in the summer, full sun the rest of the year

-african blue basil: in the ground. not at its best now, but still tons of blooms and bees. i don't consider this a culinary herb, but i do use it in thai dishes. lots of camphor flavor.

-other basils: i had italian (genoa) basils in the ground and full sun, but they've all burned out/gone to seed. the surprise winner here is a purple basil still going strong. in years past, the purples have burned out early. this one i got from a friend, so i don't know the variety, but i plan to save the seeds. tony's greek columnar basil in a pot is thriving and about 3' tall right now.

-mint: spearmint, in a pot, almost full shade, lots of water, doing well.

-sweet marjoram: surprise of the year. got some from seminole, planted in the ground, still doing very well in nearly full sun.

-thyme: started to decline in july when we had so much rain. now dead. oh, well. i need to remember to get more.

-parsley: the ones in the ground went to seed at the beginning of the summer. i have one plant in a pot from winter that's still eking out life, but prognosis is poor. i've found just buying a new plant from the produce market once every other month or so works best. we use a LOT of parsley. i keep these in morning sun, afternoon shade.

-mexican tarragon: in a pot, next to the parsley. done very well. doesn't like to get dry, but thrives with lots of water.

-chives: great, no problems in a pot near the parsley. in the past my pots of chives have lasted more than a year. i throw them out because the flavor seems to grow worse with time.

-oregano: i don't know what kind, but purchased a couple years ago from seminole. even though it's in full sun in a small pot and has not been repotted since i bought it, this is more a mound of oregano than a pot. it's colonized the kumquat pot next to it, flowed across a garden path, and never looks unhappy. i should use this as a groundcover!

Tomatoes and Peppers

Today, for fall/winter garden,I planted some Solanaceae:

• Nepal tomato
• Black Plum tomato
• Jetsetter tomato (these three tomatoes were recommended highly for fall planting on the Florida GardenWeb forum)
• Sweet Spot X3R Hybrid pepper
• Little Fingers eggplant

And, because I had some seeds, papalo and epazote to replace my exhausted herbs.

Most of those seeds were purchased from Tomato Growers Supply. Or search this site for other sources.

I've only ever had modest luck with fall-planted tomatoes. This time, I'm going to grow only the three above (and probably the couple of Sun Gold tomatoes that have been growing since early spring -- they will continue to produce until frost, if I let them). Give them a ton of room and a strong pole.

Greens in the garden...

Agina Cutting Celery (Pinetree).... Like celery, minus the crunch.

Upland Cress. Mmmmm... Prolific. Crunchy. Nicely bitter.

Red Sails lettuce and Chervil.

Seminole Springs

Some of us GardenWebbers from the Florida Forum spent the morning at Seminole Springs Antique Rose & Herbs, an organic grower not far from Mt. Dora, Florida. Tracy, the owner, was kind enough to open her shop on Sunday for us to hang out. We hung out for an hour or so there, exploring the scores of herbs she has. We then swapped some of our own plants before heading for a nice lunch in Sanford.

Dutch Lavender. Tracy tells me it doesn't bloom much, but it's a pretty silver and has all the fragrance of regular (French) lavender... and it survives our summers!

Tracy, owner & engine of Seminole Springs Nursery, talking about getting certified as an organic grower.

My friend Bill, exploring the greenhouse.

I bought a couple thymes (French and a variegated one), marjoram, a bay tree, cilantro, prostrate rosemary, Dutch Lavender. At the swap, I got some more Rudbeckia triloba, some flowering vines for the gazebo, and cuttings from salvias and Buddleias.

Weekend bustling 'bout the garden...

I came home on Friday night to find (somewhat mysteriously) a box of strawberry plants on my doorstep -- three-hundred of them to be exact. I had contacted Ruby Mountain Nursery last week with an inquiry about their berries. It sounds like a great idea -- grow the berries at high altitude, far away from other strawberry plants (thus reducing the chances for viruses). Use minimal fungicides and almost no herbicides. Since it's so cold in La Jara, the plants have already had a good amount of winter chilling and flower bud development; they should produce earlier and grow more vigorously than plants grown in milder areas. Plus, he had commercial varieties that are hard for a home gardener to get. (I got Chandler (an old favorite), Strawberry Festival, and Winter Dawn.)

Anyway, I had contacted the grower last week, expressing interest and asking for ordering instructions. Next thing I know, the box is on by doorstep... (Two-hundred fifty of the plants went to Nize, my local sustainable grower. Fifty should be enough for my family.)

(For the Yankees reading this blog, in FLA we grow strawberries as annuals.)

I still don't know how I'm supposed to pay for the plants, but I guess the guy will send me an invoice. No complaints here, the plants were very nice, and I'm delighted to have plants this early in the season.

Anyway, lucky thing the weather on the coast was too bad for me to fish for reds. Instead, I spent a VERY HOT and humid day yesterday quickly preparing my beds (lots of mushroom compost, a two-inch layer of live-oak leaves, lots of cottonseed meal). I'll need to run the microsprinklers in the bed a bunch this week, with the hot weather we're predicted to have. I'm a bit worried about the plants, but they looked fine this morning. (Though by late afternoon they were again very wilty...)

I took the time, while I was hot and very sweaty, to go ahead and clean out my perennial bed. I pulled a diseased rosebush, ripped out a bunch of overgrown Alternanthera and weeded the backs of the beds. We had another inch of rain on Friday and Saturday. It's crazy how quickly weeds and mushrooms can grow here when the sun's a bit less intense and the ground's sodden.

Some relief is around the corner: This coming weekend the National Weather Service is predicting our first big "back-door front" pushing down from the Great Lakes. That should drop the temperature down to the low-eighties during the day and upper fifties at night... There will be much rejoicing in this household.

Tonight, while cooking my wife her birthday supper, I managed to plant geraniums ('Summer Showers' ivy mix and 'Ringo Deep Scarlet', both from Swallowtail), cilantro ('Delphino'), dill ('Dukat'), parsley ('Rezzemolo Gigante d'Italia'), cutting celery, and some Broccoli di Rapa.

A brief natural history of Arugula

I've been very happy with the 'Apollo' cultivar of Arugula that's been growing in my garden all winter. I can harvest a couple of salads worth every ten days from a single square foot of the garden. Totally pest free. Healthful. Tasty.

Arugula refers to several species, including Eruca sativa (Eruca means rough or harsh, presumably referring to the peppery flavor of Rocket; sativa refers to a cultivated rather than wild plant) and some spp. in the Diplotaxis ("double rows," referring to the double rows of seeds) genus. The Eruca, which I believe is the one almost universally called Arugula here in the States, is in the Brassicaceae, so closely related to cabbages and mustards.

It was a well-known herb in ancient times, gathered for eons as a potherb, and surely part of the horta (χορτα), the mixed greens gathered by Greeks and Etruscans that formed one of the bases of their diets.

We find it, for instance, mentioned in the Book of Kings:

4:39 One went out into the field to gather herbs [oroth, widely believed to be E. sativa], and found a wild vine, and gathered of it wild gourds his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of stew; for they didn’t recognize them. So they poured out for the men to eat. It happened, as they were eating of the stew, that they cried out, and said, “Man of God, there is death in the pot!” They could not eat of it.

Mmmm. Death in the pot. (My guess: Zucchini!) Guess they should have brought back the Arugula.

In most cultures where it is indigenous (the Mediterranean basin and some parts of western Asia, particularly Turkey), it has been considered an aphrodisiac, but it was more than a classical Spanish Fly: I've found it cited as a cure for freckles, baldness, and intestinal worms. Its healing virtues are lauded as a cure for children's coughs, as a way to increase milk flow, and as a way to "take away the ill-scent of the arm pits." Given that one book I came across referred to the smell of Arugula as "like rancid bacon," one wonders if this might not be another case of the cure being worse than the disease. (Personally, I like the bitter and peppery smell of Arugula, and I'll often mash a leaf between finger and thumb while watering or weeding.)

I read that Pliny advises one to eat Arugula seeds before being whipped: Anyone who does so shall be "so hardened, that he shall easily endure the pain." The Talmud teaches us that it can be used to treat eye infections.

Most cookbooks I've glanced in claim that Arugula first gained popularity here in the States in the 1990s, taking its place alongside roasted red peppers during the mania for all things Mediterranean. However, I read in a 1960 New York Times article ("A Green by Any Name; Pungent Ingredient Is Cause of Confusion for City Shopper Arugula -- or Rocket -- Is the Secret of Experts' Salads") that Craig Claiborne, the Times food critic, found the herb everywhere in New York City: "Most Italian chefs know [that Arugula] is the secret ingredient of their salads-about-town." He lists a half-dozen stores in the area that sell bundles of the stuff for fifteen to nineteen cents, about the price of spinach. (The Publix down the street sells a couple ounces of "baby Arugula" for close to $4!)

Galen, the Greek physician whose theories dominated 'medicine' for over a thousand years, proclaimed Rocket to be "hot and dry in the third degree" and therefore unfit to be eaten alone. He instructed that the herb be eaten with "cold herbs" like lettuce and purslane. Galen's advice aside, I eat the stuff straight with a cheesy vinaigrette or stacked high on a roast-beef sandwich. It's an undemanding herb, and the 'Apollo' cultivar is ready to pick within a few weeks. The seeds germinate at nearly 100% and transplant easily from a seedling tray into my garden. I've tried the wild stuff, but it grows much more slowly and the leaves are far smaller and have an unpleasant rubbery texture.

(The photographs are, from top down, 'Apollo', "wild" arugula (E. sativa) and 'Selvetica')