Stoney Ground Herbs

Beautiful, strong herbs for NZ gardeners and herbalists of all levels

Herb List 2016

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Finally I have updated my website with the herbs I have available this year and oh la la it’s so exciting to have this many!  They’re all listed under the “Herb Plants” drop down menu.  See it?  It’s just up there ^  Goes all the way down to White Sage… I’m going to start doing blog posts on the individual herbs for more information on their uses and how to grow them well.

Southernwood (Artemisia abrotanum)
That’s my mint there in the background, growing with shallots and carrots
salvia purpurea
salvia icterina
Lemon Thyme, Thymus x citriodorus aureus
Motherwort, Leonurus cardiaca
Lemon balm, Melissa officinallis
Soapwort (saponaria officinalis)
French Tarragon, Artemisia dracunculus
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Rose Geranium, Pelargonium graveolens
Clary sage, salvia sclarea turkenstein
Squashed, but coming back!
Peppermint, mentha piperta
Not only does pineapple sage smell good, the flowers are beauts too

And I’m all set to go for the markets on the 15th, yippee!!

No.8 Wire Week Workshops

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Come join me at my workshop “Herbs for the Winter Months” for Kapiti Councils N0.8 Wire Week.

 

I’m at Otaki College on the 17th July and at Kapiti College on the 24th, both 11.30-1pm.  There are heaps and I mean heaps of crazy cool workshops to do.  Go check it out…

What to expect in mine is lashings of tea (special herbal blends), a good ol chit chat about different herbal preparations and herbs that are super good for those winter ailments.  We’ll make a sage tincture for you to take home and you’re going to do your own hard-wood cutting as well so you’ll know exactly how to procur plants for free from your friends, neighbours and public gardens  of course not public gardens because that is surely not legal….ahem!

So book yourself in, share the link, tell your anybody and see you there!

Using a Seed Saving Screen

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Seed Saving Screens from Love Plant Life

Seed Saving Screens

I recently purchased  seed saving screens from Anna at LovePlantLife.  I’m quite excited as it’s going to make my life a little simpler and I’m going to multi-task it, as one of the screens is the perfect size for processing culinary herbs.

I’m going to use it on this occasion to process my lemon verbena seeds….

Seed Saving Screens from Love Plant Life

Spent lemon verbena flower spikes

So it’s basically a cake tin with four different mesh dent sized bottoms.

One thing I quickly learned was that you should use a bowl that is bigger than the tin or else this happens….

Seed Saving Screens from Love Plant Life

Oops! The side dropped down and nearly scattered my seed!

(I can hear Anna chuckling from here)

Have two bowls at the ready because you may find you need to transfer your siftings to a smaller screen because seeds and crap have fallen through.

Workout what the aim is; crumble leaves and stems small enough to fall through the gaps so you’re left with seeds or have seeds fall through and the crap can be tossed from off the screen.  Guess it depends on the seed and what they’re surrounded by.

You could just use the screen within a bowl..

Seed Saving Screens from Love Plant Life

but it might slip and everything goes into the bowl (if you’re rubbing) or fly (if you’re shaking).  You could get your son to hold it for you if you’re rubbing vigorously within the tin, because it does have a tendency to slip around…or get a better bowl! (note to self)

Seed saving screen from LovePlantLife

..and he just wanted his photo taken!

All in all it was fun and easy to use and I’m lookung forward to using it more as we come up to seed saving time (and drying herbs time).

lemon verbena seeds

Now will lets hope the blighters grow!

 

Seedy Discoveries…..

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Well how now.  I’ve made an exciting discovery that I don’t know if it really is as exciting as I think it is until I’ve done some experiments.  So it’s exciting for the fact that it’s leading to experiments.  And experiments are exciting!

Oh.  You actually want to know what I’m on about?!

Well, it’s all about lemon verbena (Aloysia citriodora) and her seeds…..

Lemon verbena is mostly propagated by cuttings, which can be a bit of a hit and miss affair.

It just so happens that my lemon verbena is/was flowering a couple of weeks ago, of course you might’ve noticed that in the post I did about my lemon verbena diy deodorant.  Here’s that photo again as a reminder!

Lemon Verbena, Aloysia citriodora

Lemon Verbena, Aloysia citriodora

More often than not, fruit/seed follows flowers right.  So I picked some of the spent flower spikes and some of them appeared to have seed in them.

Now, whilst my plant was in flower I noticed these other things coming out of the plant; long and skinny, not a flower, not leaves…

So this is the exciting part.. these things exploded, have curled back and are releasing what looks to me like seed!  Like a cross between very fine lettuce or dandelion seed.

lemon verbena seed capsule?

lemon verbena seed capsule?

And it is actually a rogue tall willow herb!  Thank you Hannah!

Are these the true lemon verbena seeds?  Then theoretically shouldn’t we have lemon verbena sprouting  up like dandelion everywhere?  Is lemon verbena a monoecious plant?  (Monoecious means a plant that has seperate male and female flowers on the same plant)  Because lemon verbena goes dormant in winter do the seeds need stratification before germination?

Lesson to be learned here folks.. if you’re excited about something unusual happening in your garden or on a plant, check it out with a friend first before you write a bloomin’ post about it!

Herb labels

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herb labels, stones

Generally, if you’ve purchased a plant you’ll know what it is and particulay with a herb it will look quite different from other plants.  But.  Often other people in your family aren’t so savvy and when you ask for someone to nip out and grab you some thyme they come back with dill, or they need a vivid description of said plant which by that time you may as well just got it yourself!

So in support of getting other people to help you I’ve made these, which I’ll be selling at the markets with my plants.  If you have specific plants that you want labelled I can take orders and if you’re not in Kapiti I can even send them!

Buy herbs!

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Hey hey hey!

For your ease, comfort and delight you can now purchase my dried herbs through the wonder~full Annas’ website LovePlantLife here.  Check out her seed lines as well if you haven’t saved your own.

Dried Chamomile Dried Yarrow

 

Having my herbs in a more visible spot now gives me the kick that I need to get started on my herb crop beds so I can have a bit more selection available!

I have oregano waiting in the sidelines.  Look out for whole calendula flowers, perfect for an assortment of remedies.  Playing around with some other potential crop ideas….

Oooh, the possibilities!

Any ideas gladly received, you are my market!

 

Purple Treasure

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My crop of urenika is in!

Maori potato, Urenika

Maori potato, Urenika

 

I love digging for these purple treasures, they’re almost iridescent when they first come out of the ground.

Maori potato, Urenika

I usually use them to make a bright potato salad but this week I decided to try them in Emma Galloways recipe for potato flat bread.  Emma is a New Zealand chef and Mum living in Perth, Australia with her gorgeous, gluten free, vegetarian family.  She is the woman behind mydarlinglemonthyme and author of self same titled cookbook that you can check out on her website too.

My Darling Lemon Thyme, Emma Galloway, gluten free, vegetarian, cookbook

‘Tis a wonderful book with tasty gluten free recipes

 

Anyhoo, the flat bread.  The potatoes.  The glorious purple Maori potatoes called urenika.  Oh no! Hang on.  Story of mu urenika seed!  I didn’t just buy it…….

A couple of years ago we were travelling around the North Island in our beauts 1979 Merc looking for a place to live, as you do!

1979 Mercedes Benz

Us and Lillith the mercedes, 2012

Whilst we were camping in the Kaimanawas’ the kids were playing down in the river when J came back with some small urenikas.  Curious.  A couple of weeks later (we went up and down the island three times before settling on Paekakariki)  we camped there again.  J and I discovered urenika plants on the side of the river bank!  I don’t know whether they actually grow there naturally wild.  Or if someone had chucked out some urenikas into the river and they’d lodged into the river bank only to start growing and me to plunder a few!  Either way I now grow what I call Kaimanawa Urenika potatos!  The first year was a pretty small crop but it was my intention anyway to save all the tubers for seed.  So this year I got a pretty decent crop.

Right!  So this is the urenika mashed.  Awesome colour eh!

mashed urenika, purple potato, Maori Potato mashed

Stunning mashed Urenika

This is the flatbread dough.

Potato flat bread dough

Potato flat bread dough

And this is the bread…

Maori potato flat bread

Maori potato flat bread

Not quite like the picture in the book and looked reminiscent of cooked playdough!  But they were delicious and was nice with our sprouted chickpea felafels (recipe also found in My Darling Lemon Thyme recipe book).