A Note About the Communial Herb Garden

After dinner at my friend Carolyn's house, about 15 years ago, we decided to take an early evening walk to the community garden she had recently joined. You could see it from her back window through the trees. It must have been late July, the garden was lush, a tangle of tomatoes, beans, squash and flowers all organized in rectangular plots. I was amazed that she could find hers it was such a wild place. She picked a bag of herbs, some sage, basil rosemary and parsley and sent me home with some. I tucked it in my refrigerator and used it through the week on chicken, tofu, in salads. It was a revelation. How could somethings that I never really thought about make such a difference. I decided then to learn about herbs. We joined the garden the next year. After a while I became the go to person for the herb garden. I hope that my excitement about sage, thyme, marjoram ect rubs off. At the last work day several gardeners were waxing fantastic about sorrel. I thought now we need more.

The herb garden is arranged at the edge of the garden space in several triangles. I discovered, when I tried to double dig parts a few years ago that these raised beds are mostly on top of an old driveway.

Before the workday last week it was hard to tell which were the herbs and which were the weeds. There are tags but horsemint and wildly reseeded nigella masked many plants. I like the nigella but selectively weed it out maintaining a clump and little plants here and there for syncopation. French tarragon that I planted in the front triange last summer is coming up. The marjoram and lemon thyme next to it are doing nicely, they only required the removal of some dead wood to expose the fresh growth. The two patches of oregano are doing fine, sometimes it overwhelm its neighbors. The thyme was a little sparce. I spread it by burying parts of the plant anchored with stone it roots and new plants develop. In a few weeks it should be looking up. People always want to cut back the sage. They don't get it. It's such a wonderful herb. it is so good fresh in salad dressing, roasted with potatoes and garlic, with chicken and one of our gardners recommends it in a bath for relaxation.

We pulled up some of the mint that is threatens the sorrel and dislodges the Belgium block walkway spanning one of the triangles. In the herb garden the peppermint is the best.

The back triangle is mostly medicinals. Valerian, Clary Sage, Comfrey, Echinacae, Bergamot I'm working on establishing some lovage as well. Lovage has a flowery parsley celery taste. Great with carrots. We used to have some on the other side by the bench. It got crowded or weeded out a few years ago.

I've got flats of parsley, lovage, Thai basil, dill and genovese basil in the works to plant out mid May. It find that if I do it earlier it doesn't thrive. I wasted basil seeds last year planting them directly not enough germinated. Or, perhaps, the ants ate them. Some of our herbs are not hardy in Philadelphia Zone 7b. I dig out the lemongrass, rosemary and rau ram aka Vietnamese coriander and keep it going in a sunny window. I also had Greek myrtle that did great indoors. I'll put it out in a few weeks. If the lemongrass doesn't survive. I'll just buy a few pieces from the Thai grocery, stick them in the soil and in a few weeks they root and there you have it. They are 4 feet tall by August.

Last year I established an herb garden annex for basil in a small plot that was mostly really good spearmint. I planted Thai Basil on both ends Genovese Basil in the middle and let the mint florish around the edges. It worked quite well.

When I tried to grow some southeast asian herbs last summer I realized that direct sun isn't the favored climat of all herbs. This bamboo structure (bamboo from the dog park across the way) was my way of providing shade; the Vietnamese coriander grew lush underneath it.