Cèilidh Nam Freumhan

Tag: herb garden

  • My Garden Compendium Has Already Changed

    My Garden Compendium Has Already Changed

    The garden compendium was originally meant to be a catch-all. It included medicinal herbs with drawings, uses, and recipes; planting, care, and harvest instructions for all of the herbs and vegetables I planted; a diagram of this year’s layout; a planting calendar; and a journal of what I did, what happened, and how I could fix my mistakes.

    That plan hasn’t changed. The notebook will continue into next year, or however long it takes me to fill 300 sheets.

    What has changed is everything else.

    Originally, I wrote herb recipes on the back of each herb page. It didn’t take long to realize that a tincture is a tincture, my handwriting was getting messier, and my fountain pen was ghosting through onto the drawing on the other side. So the recipes are getting their own section, but only for the preparations I’ve actually made with herbs from my own garden. The herb pages themselves will stay as a high-level overview with drawings and uses.

    Then there are the medicinal herbs.

    I have become fascinated by them and have been researching them like crazy. That rabbit hole is deep enough to fill 300 sheets all by itself, which wasn’t the original purpose of the compendium. I wanted this notebook to be something I could leave behind someday—a record of the garden that my descendants could flip through and (hopefully) ooh and ahhh over.

    So, naturally, I’m making another notebook.

    Medicinal herbs deserve one of their own. The subject is practically endless, and if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that I’m incapable of leaving well enough alone.

    I’ve also started color-coding the page edges. The notebook only came with two ribbon bookmarks, which isn’t nearly enough anymore. By highlighting the edges of each page based on the section—herbs, vegetables, diagrams, journal entries, and so on—I can find what I’m looking for without even opening the book.

    And finally…

    I did the one thing I swore I wasn’t going to do.

    I started an Excel workbook to track planting and care information for vegetables I haven’t even decided if I’m going to grow yet.

    Just in case.

    table with seeds, twine, and scissors for gardening
    Photo by Micheile Henderson on Pexels.com
  • The Garden Doesn’t Care About My Plans

    The Garden Doesn’t Care About My Plans

    No matter how much research I did before planting my garden (and I’m certainly not finished), there were still plenty of surprises. Some things completely failed, while others did far better than I ever imagined.

    I organized my garden into separate beds based on companion planting, water needs, soil type, and a handful of other factors. It definitely created more weeding than I would have liked, but I needed to see what worked and what didn’t.

    In some beds, none of it seemed to matter. I planted starts at the right time, paired them with their companion plants, and they promptly died. I direct sowed whatever I could, and sometimes nothing came up at all. I even moved some of those stubborn plants into bins with fresh potting soil. A few are thriving, while others are either refusing to grow or have become an all-you-can-eat buffet for whatever animal keeps digging them up.

    Then there are the pleasant surprises.

    The borage is so big that I’m honestly not sure what to do with all of it. I’ll keep tossing the flowers into salads, and the rest will probably go to seed. It’s one of the best bee attractors in the garden, though, so it’s earned its place. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s gorgeous.

    The calendula is massive. I’m drying flower heads for a future tincture, chamomile for tea, and I have dill coming out of my ears. The lettuce just keeps producing, and the carrots have done far better than I expected.

    All that being said, the garden has been a fruitful learning experience. (Fruitful. Get it?)

    As the season goes on, I’m no longer fighting the garden. I’m letting it show me what works, what doesn’t, and how I can make next year’s garden even better.

    And as the universe is my witness, I will not let the quince from hell win.

    stock photo of a calendula head
    Photo by Prashant Gangwar on Pexels.com