The forum's been awfully quiet this week, so I wondered what everyone had been up to?

I've had a herb filled half day putting my newly dried herbs into jars, cleaning the larder shelves where they live and throwing out my old stock which was two years old. It was nice to find some rose hips I'd forgotten about!

I threw out mugwort, hawthorn flowers, SJW, elderflowers, plantain and vervain and put back some fresh hawthorn flowers, dead nettle, greater plantain, dandelion leaves and sage. It doesn't sound much when you list them, but it's taken me all afternoon while I watched the tennis.

My vervain flowered last week and the first borage flower was out this morning. The evening primrose flowers are gorgeous - all self seeded. The heartsease are coming up all over the place. I think the American's name for them "johnny-jump up" is really sweet, but I prefer heartsease.

I made some rosepetal vinegar and sugar last Thursday from petals I'd gathered from my friend's garden in Sheffield. The vinegar has gone a deep red after only two days, whereas the dogrose vinegar is much more orange. I put up some fresh mugwort vinegar yesterday evening and it will be interesting to see what it tastes like.

It's so exciting watching the SJW oil turn colour. There was a definite reddish tinge this morning when the sun was shining on it. I picked flowers again at lunchtime today, but they were still damp from the morning's shower, so I added them to the tincture, which is also going red.

So, what's happening in other people's gardens or has every succumbed to Wimbledon?

Sarah

Hello Sarah,

Wondered where every one was but then realised that I'd been pretty tied up myself for the last week or two.

Apart from organising and recovering from our village Open Gardens and Art Exhibition, (£500 for church funds), I've been trying to get some soft fruit in before the little thugs with black feathers and orange bills ate the lot. Picked 6lb of blackcurrants, should have been more like 9 but they had all gone done feathery gizzards. That made 4lb of blackcurrant jelly. Will be great for winter colds etc, (maybe with a drop of rum added) Then picked 8lb of gooseberries and bottled most with just a few for a crumble, I know we are on a diet but you must have a least one Gooseberry Crumble in the season. This coming week I hope to get the White Currants off as I have lost all the Red ones, down the afore mentioned gizzards. I love the birds but fair is fair when alls said and done I did plant the blooming things. To add insult to injury they sit on the bean poles and harang me loudly as I pick, cheek! I like the sound of the Rose Vinegar, shall have to try that when the next flush of roses come out on my Etoile de Holland. Shall also be trying some Lavender sugar etc as the various lavenders are just right at the moment. I find it very hard to keep up with everything in the garden at the moment because the rain makes all the weeds etc grow a the speed of light, or so it seems. Great though, I would not be with out it. You are very good with clearing out the larder, I keep putting that job off.

Jane

Hi Jane

Good to hear of all your fruit exploits! I am very envious of all your blackcurrants. I have one large bush which I've managed to pick a few from this year - just enough for a compote with red currants, red and yellow raspberries, gooseberries and alpine strawberries. I did pick a large bowl full of gooseberries last weekend and those have gone into the freezer. A lot of my fruit also feeds our feathered friends. I wouldn't mind so much if it were just the blackbirds, but with us, it's mainly enormous pigeons.

After attacking the 3 dried herb shelves in the larder on Saturday, I foolishly turned my attention to the tinctures yesterday, throwing out all the old jam which hadn't been eaten since 1995 to make more space. I figured they had "matured" for long enough! I must have emptied and washed about 2 doz jam jars and over a dozen large wine and brandy bottles - all of which will come in handy when I start decanting macerating tinctures in a couple of weeks.

Half the floor is now free of extraneous bottles, but I didn't have the energy to sort out the other side and the 3 remaining small tincture bottle shelves. I also want to go through the oils, some of which are now three or four years old and stacking two jars on top of each other can get a little dangerous!

I suspect it will be either the end of July or the end of August before I get to tackle anything else as I only have 2 weekends at home before we fly off to the States for three weeks in September. I'm looking forward to the winter, when apart from Christmas, things won't be quite so busy.

Best wishes

Sarah

Hello Sarah,

I think I must really start to have a sort out of rather "mature" jam and chutney. As for jars, well. I did have a bit of a sort out last year after learning a lesson from clearing my elderly aunt's house when she went into a retirement home. The under stairs cupboard was absolutely jam packed with jam jars, wine bottles and other assorted detritus. Took several trips to the tip. I did clear the understairs cupboard but empty jars do seem to accumulate how ever much I try to control myself. We do have a re-cycling scheme here so my husband slips bottles out to the bottle bank in the Rec. while I'm at my art class. I do have one or two (!) large jars that I have had for years which have become real old friends which are used for particular preserves each year. Mother was the same and I fear that my daughter has already caught the bug. Some thing to do with coming from cottager stock I suppose. Every thing might come in useful some day.

Jane

'What's everyone up to?'

Well, I've been distilling!
Never done it before, so finding it instructive but fascinating!
Oh, you can see the oiliness of the lavender as it comes out the spout of the condenser (and this is LAST year's lavender flowers - already anticipating the richness of this year's crop). Massive high!

The low is then attempting to use me Portuguese copper alembic to distill another herb... in this case Lemon Verbena, which I had severely cropped and packed into the alembic. As it was starting to bubble, Wifey came in and commented "distilling MORE lavender, are we?"

Ah... I had discovered the problem with cheap (if beautiful) copper alembics from Portugal: the last very potent herb you distilled embeds itself in the metal. Anyone want any of my Lemon Verbena essential oil with a distinct lavender after-scent??? Didn't think so...

Oh well, 'tis all jolly fun! Will spend next week soaking my equipment in an ultra-dose of washing soda & then embark upon one of my many "distillation fantasies": lovage perchance... or how might sorrel distill?... perhaps an attempt at capturing the essence of balm of gilead??

High summer - lots and lots to do,
Jim B.

Well, this is my first venture into all things herbal. This morning I've picked some sjw flowers and put them into some olive oil to infuse. I've also got some comfrey leaves drying in the shade in the garden and some pot marigold flowers drying in the airing cupboard. Plus some yarrow and some lavender hanging upside down in the conservatory to dry. Does that all sound ok?

I have got meadowsweet, balm of gilead, bergamot, hyssop, myrtle, feverfew, sweet woodruff, marshmallow, plus a few others, but I'm not really sure what I can do with these. Do I dry them to make teas?

I'm waiting on my delivery from Neals Yard for my beeswax, and then I hope to be able to start making some salves with the comfrey and the pot marigold, and the yarrow?

It was lovely out in the sun this morning, but it's gone quite windy and cold now. Where is our summer?!

Sue

Good to hear about your harvesting, Sue!

I shall be interested to hear about the progress of your SJW oil. I've always used sunflower oil for mine as Christopher Hedley said it was better to use a lighter oil for infusion. I know other herbalists use all kinds of different oils to infused SJW. You might want to think about moisture levels if your comfrey leaves are drying outside in the garden.

Do you have your yarrow and lavender inside paper bags as they hang in your conservatory? It's really important to keep them out of direct sunlight or they will fade and lose all their efficacy. Lavender buds also tend to disappear once they dry if they're not encased in a bag of their own. I would dry the meadowsweet for teas, unless you've got enough to make some infused oil or syrup. It's more a tea herb than anything else, as is bergamot and sweet woodruff and marshmallow. I would try an oil with either fresh or dried marshmallow leaves just because it's so thick and wonderful. Don't try tincturing it or you will end up with a jelly like gloop from the gelatinous precipitation.

Harvest your hyssop when it flowers and dry for soups and cough syrups. Sweet woodruff is supposed to make a delightful soothing tea when fresh and releases a "new mown hay" smell because of its coumarin when it dries.

Let us know how you get on.

Sarah

Well since you asked, I wondered what on earth we really do all day; after all, there are three of us just to look after a few soggy leaves. It shouldn’t keep us that busy should it?-, even though I am supposedly retired and the other two are part time. So bored rigid with the telly as always, I thought I would try and write it down as much for my own curiosity as yours

We start at ten and there is invariably a discussion about the cats, once that was out of the light this morning, (panic, where was Molly the favourite kitten, had a fox got her in the night? –No she was just having a lie-in) Jenny pumped up more water from the borehole (18 gallons a minute for 90 minutes which lasts about half a hot day) and watered the tunnels. She weeded and repotted the plants in the orders tunnel, priced the e-mail enquiries, collected the plants for the visiting customers, two wanting wild flowers, one group wanting plants from the more ornamental end of the herbal spectrum and a witch who arrived three hours late, all of which took endless conversation about the characteristics of the plants, I am always grateful that she has infinite patience and is more tactful than I am. In between all of which, she squirted some greeny, eco-friendly organic stuff over the six legged predators in an 85 ft long tunnel, not only does she have more patience than me, she has more faith in organic techniques.

Meanwhile Debz tightened all the jubilee clips on the place, which had mysteriously seemed to slacken off, oiled the padlocks, replaced all the geka washers because we are all fed up with the connections pouring water into our jeans pockets. She picked for our favourite restaurateur, because although we gave up fresh cut years ago, it’s nice to maintain our old contacts and better still to boast that we still supply the best restaurant in Bristol. Then, inspired by The West of England Group outing to Chelsea last Sunday, she added some more plants to our demo “flowery mead”

I started as ever, writing for an hour waiting for the drugs to kick in before trying to do anything physical. This meant the blog, replying to e-mails and an article for which the editor has been waiting weeks. I answered endless phone calls mainly about Salvia candelabra initiated by a plug in the “Telegraph”, gave the computer a service since it seemed to be going in to a state of catalepsy, collected Sweet Cicely seed and a bundle of stinging nettles for the witch (god knows what she was going to do with them!) Brought some more compost round to fill the bin, an old dairy wash-trough, made up our “desert mix” (Sinclair Alpine plus Cornish grit plus sand plus 18 month slow release fertiliser) and restocked the label dispenser. Moved the Gromwell, checked the Hemlock for slug damage and the black mustard for caterpillar holes. Potted the Salvia lyrata, Psoralea, Phlomis tuberosa and Asclepias tuberosa,- also checked their identities on the internet, in Hillier’s, RHS Encyclopaedia, Genders “Scented Flora of the World” and Banfi’s “La Flora Mediterranea” because we have found that bought-in seed doesn’t necessarily do what it says on the label. This is something we all care passionately about, as supplying plants to RHS exhibitors, if we don’t get it right, our customers are down-marked by the judges, which is embarrassing to say the least.

We put up the “Closed” sign at 4, but there is always at least an hour’s work to do after we shunt the customers out. But eventually everyone went away, including the rather charming witch for whom I found a taxi, then I could feed the cats, put on the security alarms and have a glass of something powerfully therapeutic. Hurrah, it seemed a relatively stress-free day, I wonder how we ever managed to fill it. Anyone want to buy a nice leisurely herb farm?

Thank you so much for sharing your day with us, Anthony.

It was a real insight into life within a herb nursery. I'm sure we never think about the painstaking attention to detail which goes on behind the scenes when we go to a nursery to buy plants.

I do hope one day to be down in the Bristol area at an appropriate time to visit your establishment.

Sarah

Thanks for that Sarah, we would be delighted to see you, come and join in the fun!
Anthony

Hi Sue

You were asking what to do with your bergamot flowers. I've just come across a super suggestion on Kiva Rose's blog http://bearmedicineherbals.com/. She suggests infusing bergamot flowers, evening primrose flowers and bud and rose petals in honey to treat burns. I shall be trying this in a couple of weeks. It sounds such a wonderful things to do and she says it tastes good too!.

Don't be put off because she called Bergamot Bee Balm. Americans do that.

Sarah