Grow Better Veggies

Pinching Basils - the Key to Success

These are some of the little basil seedlings growing in our greenhouse.  I've talked to loads of people who seem to have trouble with basil.  They plant it out in their herb garden or kitchen garden, and find that it never gets very big or bushy. The key to its success is pinch pinch pinching.  Even at this very young age, we pinch off the top.  No scissors or clippers required, the growing tip is easily removed with just your fingernails.

Right below your pinch point, the basil will send out two new shoots.  This starts the branching process.  Once the two new shoots get bigger, you can then pinch the tops off of those.  Four new shoots will then sprout, two from each pinch point.  Repeat the process continuously throughout the season.  Eventually, the basil will send up some fledgling flower spikes.  It's imperative you immediately remove those as well.  If you don't, the basil "senses" that it has fulfilled its biological destiny, which is reproduction.  It then stops growing, and dies. 

You see, basil is an annual plant.  It has a short life span, just the warm part of the year.  Here in coastal central California, we start the seeds on a heat mat in our greenhouse in late January.  We then separate the tiny plants into larger pots about a month later.  Shortly thereafter, we start to pinch.  Since our last frost will be sometime in April, we will wait until after May 1st to transplant these babies out into our herb garden.  But we still get the taste of summer now, as the pinched tops don't go to waste.  We will take these precious handfuls into the house, and throw them into a pasta sauce, or even the quick and dirty quesadillas we often make for lunch.

Class: Growing Herbs from Seed

This class will teach you the basics of growing your own herbs from seed. You take home both live plants and a sown flat of herb seeds to tend.   Learn the soil, light, warmth, fertilizing, and climate requirements for the basic culinary herbs: basil, chives, oregano, rosemary, marjoram, tarragon, thyme, parsley and cilantro.

This class is scheduled in the afternoon of two of our Growing Tomatoes from Seed workshops.  You may take both the herb and tomato class for a total discount of 10%.

This herb class is scheduled for early February, as that is the right time to start herbs from seed.

Available Class Dates:

February 8, 2009 (Sunday) 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
February 10, 2009 (Tuesday) 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Tuition: $30
Materials Fee: $20

Choose a Date to Register for Herb Class:

February 8, 2009 February 10, 2009 Option 3

Choose a Date To Register for Both Herb and Tomato Classes:

February 8, 2009 February 10, 2009

A more in-depth class on a wider range of freakier culinary herbs will be held on April 25, 2009.  That class is called "The Proper Cook's Herb Garden."

To view all of Love Apple Farm's classes, from gardening to bee-keeping, click here.

Give a gift of health, nature, and self-sufficiency by buying someone a gift certificate for a class.  Email us to do so: loveapplefarm@gmail.com

Ladybug visiting a Chervil blossom

We love our Chervil around here, and of course we very much like to see the ladybugs enjoying it too.

Chervil is a herb often used in French cooking  It has a subtle, Tarragon flavor.

Much easier to grow than its fussy taste-twin, Chervil is best sown directly in the garden bed (rather than starting it in flats in the greenhouse).  The soil should be a neutral Ph of about 7, which means I've got to add lime to my acidic soil.  Keep the bed uniformly moist after covering the seed a 1/4 inch.  Once it's up and growing, I don't even thin it.  I just let it do its thing.

The chef loves using the small, fine leaves as well as the beautiful, delicate flower.  As you can see, the ladybug loves it too.

The Herb Garden in All Its Splendor

I'm loving my herb garden right now.  July is its most magnificent month, and all the hard work that has gone into it shows.  I created it oh, about 9 years ago.  I sited it in an odd part of the farm, a place that doesn't get an awful lot of sun.  Most herbs don't need all day sun, like most vegetables do.  We're not really looking for them to flower, so less sunlight fills that bill.  It's in the shape of a circle, about 24 feet in diameter, and I cut it into pie wedges, twelve of them.  Then I bisected each pie wedge so that it really is two circles, one inside the other.  That gives me 24 different spots in which to plant herbs.

Here is a picture of the herb circle during the winter, when most things are dormant.  That gorgeous specimen in the middle is a Clematis Montana putting on its annual show.

We changed the herb garden slightly this year.  The chef was not loving the various sages I originally planted so long ago, and he had no use for a few of the other oddities I had in there, such as St. John's Wort, Germander, and Lamb's Ear. 

So we dug those out this spring and added some new herbs that I've never grown before, but they're coming along nicely: Chervil, Safflower, Anise Hyssop, German Sour Dock, and Fenugreek.

The newbies have been added to our tried and true favorites: Stevia, Rosemary, Oregano, Bronze Fennel, Basil, Chives, Lavender, Parsley, Thyme, Summer and Winter Savory, Golden Marjoram, Garlic Chives, Dill, Purslane, Cilantro (he loves the flowers and the green coriander seeds), Sorrel, Yarrow, Tarragon, and the bully, Nasturtium.

The Nasturtiums are always trying to dominate the others, overshadowing (literally) the basil and chives next to them.  I get in there and hack away at the invading army, and try to revive the squashed neighbors.  I do love the Nasturtiums, though, they remind me of my grandmother, who had a small patch of them growing under the stairwell of her apartment. I insisted on going out there and watering them with her little watering can.  So much so, that she'd eventually have to call me in, saying, "That's enough, sweetie."    They were the first plant I ever nurtured.   So I see Nasturtiums as not only a reminder of my grandma, but of the start of the obsession I have with plants.

I'd love to be able to show this herb garden to my grannie.  I think she would have loved it.  When I re-open the farm to the public soon, you're all invited to come over and take a look at it. Bring your watering can.