One of my favorite and a simple ways to use fresh chives is to make chive blossom compound butter. I grow common chives with delicate purple blossoms, but yours may be white, pink or even crimson. Any variety can be used for this recipe. Compound butter can be used to add a delicate buttery onion flavor and splash of color to fresh-baked bread, savory biscuits...
Foliage truly anchors an arrangement. It draws all the elements together, frames your focal flowers, fills in the gaps, hides mechanics, and often provides flutter AND fragrance all in one stem. Better yet, when you use culinary herbs as your foliage, you gift yourself (or the lucky recipient) something that’s not only beautiful but useful too. Here are my favorite culinary herbs to use as foliage:
I am a huge fan of lemon balm and am on a personal mission is to inspire everyone to grow and use it. A member of the Lamiaceae (mint) family, lemon balm has vibrant green heart-shaped leaves with toothed margins and a bright lemony scent and flavor.
Like many of you, my love affair with gardening began as a child. I have fond memories of my grandma walking me around her backyard, with my skinned knees and pigtails, showing me how beautiful it was to grow things. Since then, I’d always dreamed of a big garden. One with a maze of raised beds and archways, trellises and arbors, and gravel paths wide enough to pull a wagon for hauling bountiful harvests. A place to retreat to when I need a moment of solace. It would be the garden I would cherish the rest of my days.
Spring is for laying the foundation for a bountiful summer harvest. For sowing the seeds for a slower life. For taking time to appreciate all the waking days of spring has to offer. Lay the groundwork in your growing space with the following spring gardening tasks:
Each year, I document in a garden journal all the details about what I grew, harvested, and enjoyed most. I write down my failures and well as my successes. What I fell in love with and want to grow more of, as well as what doesn’t make the cut for the next growing year or doesn’t grow well on our property’s unique microclimate. Garden journaling is a calming therapeutic process that I truly enjoy.
Have you been thinking about growing a garden this year? Whether you are starting small with a kitchen herb garden or jumping in with both feet and building the vegetable or flower garden of your dreams, the time to start planning is now.
There is a bit of a shift in momentum here in our growing space and grow-along project. For weeks we were busy gathering supplies, sowing, and watching for seedlings to emerge. Taking them off heat, setting up shop lights and nursing our tiny little sprouts into full-fledged seedlings with multiple sets of true leaves. But now, our seedlings are off heat, robust, and it's time to take a deep breath and relax.
Grown, gathered and dried. Yesterday was for harvesting herbs from the garden. I do this every couple weeks throughout the summer. It’s a quiet, slow, fragrant task that I truly enjoy. Here are a couple tips to keep in mind when storing your kitchen herbs:
I have what is sometimes referred to as a pollinator garden. It is filled with colorful and fragrant flowers and herbs that attract and feed pollinators such as honey bees, native bees, moths and butterflies. When I harvest, I make sure to always leave plenty of blooms to keep them busy and happy. Yesterday, we watched countless butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, bees, robins, chickadees, and a pair of Stellar Jays visit our garden, so it’s working.
Belonging to the onion family, chive (Allium schoenoprasum) is a kitchen-friendly perennial herb with countless culinary uses. It has long, thin, green leaves that are grow 12 inches tall and are hollow and tubular in shape, growing in clumps. They grow lavender-colored blossoms that are also edible.
One of my favorite and a simple ways to use fresh chives is to make chive blossom compound butter. I grow common chives with delicate purple blossoms, but yours may be white, pink or even crimson. Any variety can be used for this recipe. Compound butter can be used to add a delicate buttery onion flavor and splash of color to fresh-baked bread, savory biscuits...
Foliage truly anchors an arrangement. It draws all the elements together, frames your focal flowers, fills in the gaps, hides mechanics, and often provides flutter AND fragrance all in one stem. Better yet, when you use culinary herbs as your foliage, you gift yourself (or the lucky recipient) something that’s not only beautiful but useful too. Here are my favorite culinary herbs to use as foliage:
I am a huge fan of lemon balm and am on a personal mission is to inspire everyone to grow and use it. A member of the Lamiaceae (mint) family, lemon balm has vibrant green heart-shaped leaves with toothed margins and a bright lemony scent and flavor.
Like many of you, my love affair with gardening began as a child. I have fond memories of my grandma walking me around her backyard, with my skinned knees and pigtails, showing me how beautiful it was to grow things. Since then, I’d always dreamed of a big garden. One with a maze of raised beds and archways, trellises and arbors, and gravel paths wide enough to pull a wagon for hauling bountiful harvests. A place to retreat to when I need a moment of solace. It would be the garden I would cherish the rest of my days.
Spring is for laying the foundation for a bountiful summer harvest. For sowing the seeds for a slower life. For taking time to appreciate all the waking days of spring has to offer. Lay the groundwork in your growing space with the following spring gardening tasks:
Each year, I document in a garden journal all the details about what I grew, harvested, and enjoyed most. I write down my failures and well as my successes. What I fell in love with and want to grow more of, as well as what doesn’t make the cut for the next growing year or doesn’t grow well on our property’s unique microclimate. Garden journaling is a calming therapeutic process that I truly enjoy.
Have you been thinking about growing a garden this year? Whether you are starting small with a kitchen herb garden or jumping in with both feet and building the vegetable or flower garden of your dreams, the time to start planning is now.
There is a bit of a shift in momentum here in our growing space and grow-along project. For weeks we were busy gathering supplies, sowing, and watching for seedlings to emerge. Taking them off heat, setting up shop lights and nursing our tiny little sprouts into full-fledged seedlings with multiple sets of true leaves. But now, our seedlings are off heat, robust, and it's time to take a deep breath and relax.
Grown, gathered and dried. Yesterday was for harvesting herbs from the garden. I do this every couple weeks throughout the summer. It’s a quiet, slow, fragrant task that I truly enjoy. Here are a couple tips to keep in mind when storing your kitchen herbs:
I have what is sometimes referred to as a pollinator garden. It is filled with colorful and fragrant flowers and herbs that attract and feed pollinators such as honey bees, native bees, moths and butterflies. When I harvest, I make sure to always leave plenty of blooms to keep them busy and happy. Yesterday, we watched countless butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, bees, robins, chickadees, and a pair of Stellar Jays visit our garden, so it’s working.
Belonging to the onion family, chive (Allium schoenoprasum) is a kitchen-friendly perennial herb with countless culinary uses. It has long, thin, green leaves that are grow 12 inches tall and are hollow and tubular in shape, growing in clumps. They grow lavender-colored blossoms that are also edible.
