PATCHOULI...smells like what?

   It often happens that while we're paying for our groceries the check-out person, usually young, exclaims that someone must have sprayed for bugs. The first few times the bug-spray thing happened we put our noses in the air trying to detect the smell of poison.  After many “smell of bug spray” incidents, we finally put it all together. It was the patchouli oil we were wearing that the cashier thought was bug spray.  Sad.

   An old friend once said that patchouli (pa CHEW lee) smelled like "ground-up old hippies".  Some say it smells like dirt.  Patchouli happens to be our favorite fragrance.  It is interesting to note that if an older person is at the cash register there will usually be a question about the good scent we're wearing.  The appeal of smells and the memories they invoke definitely vary from generation to generation but bug spray?

                           

   In the early 1800s colorful silks and shawls were shipped from the Orient to Europe and between every piece of fabric were layers of patchouli, Pogostemon cablin, a member of the mint family that would repel moths and overcome the musty smell that could occur from the long ocean trip. This scent became an indicator of authentic oriental goods but European merchants began to purchase the dried leaves and use them to scent their own products (early false advertisement).  Patchouli oil and incense became popular in the US in the 1970s with the counterculture movement, the hippie era, often used to cover the smell of marijuana. 

                    

          Patchouli’s woodsy, earthy fragrance is one of the most important perfumery plants.

   The oil is obtained by steam distillation after a controlled fermentation, producing thick, rich-brown oil. Ten years ago the price of one pound of patchouli essential oil from India was $50.00 in the US market.  Today the price is $160.00 for the same amount with prices varying widely depending on crop success as well as demand; it recently sky-rocketed to $200 a pound (that’s just 16 oz.!). 

                

 Patchouli is easy to grow and loves hot weather, afternoon shade, lots of water and light fertilizer.  This herb will not survive outside in cold weather but semi-woody cuttings root easily in fall or winter.

  

                     

   So if you want to have fun with young check-outers, or if you just really like the smell of dirt (we obviously do), tuck some patchouli leaves in your hair or dab a bit of the essential oil on your wrist.  Seriously, we think patchouli is grounding (there’s that dirt connection again) and natural…kinda’ like ground-up old hippies, and we’re not trying to cover up anything…anymore.          

Dirt Therapy

   Where have we been? Well, let’s see…lightning struck the Still room, no wait that was 2002…ahh, we went to Hawaii, no, that was a long time ago, er, aha! We moved? Not going to happen. The drought! That’s it, it didn’t rain and the pond dried up…no that was last summer. Would you believe the dog ate our notes? No dog. Guess it just comes down to the fact that we’ve been sick…down sick, both injured and sick. Now that’s the truth. We had the perfect storm this spring...all the baby plants were ready to get out of the greenhouse and one of us couldn’t walk and the other had a viral infection. Wish we’d just had a dog that ate our notes.

    Now for the good news! We’re back in the dirt and this is good, very good, probably even healing. John Wesley, trained as a cleric in the Church of England (mid 1700s), came to Georgia as a missionary to the Indians. He was greatly impressed with their good health and closely observed the use of “vegetable products” in the treatment of disease, returned to England and wrote a book entitled Primitive Physic Or An Easy Way to Treat Most Ordinary Diseases. The book was so popular in England that it was edited and reprinted 32 times and was in common use in the American Colonies as well.

                                    

Among the many diseases/cures named, Wesley addressed Consumption:

“Every morning cut up a little turf of fresh earth, and, lying down, breathe into the hole for a quarter of an hour.” Can you imagine lying face down on the ground for 15 full minutes while all your neighbors are calling 911? Times were different. But here’s the deal…Wesley was seeing the benefits of fresh dirt, maybe he’d even seen antibiotics at work before anyone knew about antibiotics.

    But back to here and now. In his book Spontaneous Happiness, Dr. Andrew Weil devotes a chapter to the healing effects of dirt, “Hands and Nose in Dirt”. It seems that the “hygiene hypothesis”-living in environments that are too clean- could be responsible for the sharp increase in asthma, allergies and depression. Most of us (especially young people with developing immune systems) don’t have a daily relationship with dirt anymore, depriving our immune systems of routine exposure to “harmless microorganisms such as soil bacteria”. This is oversimplification for sure but if the immune system doesn’t have regular stimulation, it doesn’t “learn” when to react and just begins to react to anything and everything.

    So…we’re back in the dirt. Hope you are too even if it is dirt from potting plants for the windowsill and refusing to squeaky-clean scrub vegetables from your garden!

   By the way, John Wesley also addresses “Falling of the Fundament” but rest easy, we’re not planning to elaborate on this treatment but will just say it involves brickdust.

We're talking Turmeric...AGAIN

Researchers studying the cause of major diseases have shifted focus…it is now all about inflammation. Multiple studies have shown that chronic inflammation can be responsible for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, and Type-2 diabetes. Turmeric, the yellow spice necessary for curried dishes, is a powerful anti-inflammatory.

How many times have we written about, admonished, cajoled, badgered, pleaded and shamed folks about using turmeric daily? Well, here we go again. This spice just may be the nectar of life, the fountain of youth, food of the gods. Too wordy? Turmeric’s active ingredient, curcumin,  may hold the key to staving off disease.

A recent issue of Men’s Health magazine calls turmeric an "immunity super booster".  The article mainly addresses studies of turmeric and prostate cancer but turmeric was also shown to be effective in blocking “the biological pathway needed for the development of melanoma and other cancers”.

Turmeric is grown and mostly consumed in India and records show that only 5 out of 100,000 Indian men develop prostate cancer annually, as opposed to 125 out of 100,000 men in the United States over the same period.

Arthritis and asthma, sinus problems and the healing of cuts and wounds are all inflammation related. It seems that the curcumin in turmeric changes the way our bodies produce prostaglandins that are responsible for inflammation: soreness, swelling, redness or pain.

We’re not doctors, we’re turmeric enthusiasts and have been benefiting from this spice for a number of years (and we thought we were just enjoying the freedom from achy joints!). Based on the current findings our enthusiasm is greatly increased. We’re even growing the plants! Check out turmeric.

Why not some Food among the Flowers?

Our grandparents did it! Heck, my grandmother kept a yard of chickens in the city limits of Atlanta in the 40s.   They knew the value of growing your own food; they’d been through the depression.

                                                         Flowering kale is delicious!

Have you ever really looked at a cabbage in the garden?  A beautiful foliage plant, a delicious source of nutrients for the table and it will just sit there in your garden beds until you’re ready to eat it.  We’re not talking about edible flowers here although we grow pansies in abundance for salad and jelly making (pansies contain rutin, a valuable nutrient found in all purple vegetables and fruits and guess what…it doesn’t matter if your pansies are white, yellow or purple, they all contain rutin!) and love sautéed daylily buds that once cooked, taste like asparagus. 

                                                  Pansies make beautiful and nutritious jelly.

   Garlic flowers in the middle of the garden.

Think real food like eggplant, a beautiful plant in flower and fruit right in the middle of the zinnias and marigolds.  Think okra, a tall background plant that provides food all the hot summer (needs little water) along with its lovely hibiscus flowers.    Why not border the flower garden with cabbage plants, parsley, and lettuce of all colors.  There’s nothing prettier than kale and yes, it is one of the most nutritious and delicious greens available and would make a beautiful “filler” around flowering plants.  Leaves of kale can be picked as wanted and it will just grow more.

               Various shades of green...lettuce makes a lovely filler in the garden and the kitchen!

Do you know how many colors are found in chard leaves?  About as many as are found in foliage plants like Joseph’s Coat or some varieties of coleus. Chard has beautiful, edible leaves that can grow among the bedding plants.  Lots of people grow Alliums for that spectacular ball/bloom.  Garlic flowers are both edible (delicious in salad or infused in vinegar) and a beautiful lavender color as a background plant.  Plant in fall and dig in the spring or plant in spring and dig the bulbs in fall or just leave the bulbs in the ground (making more bubils) and enjoy the wonderful flower ball in the summer.

Egyptian Onion will bloom and form small onion sets on top.  A real conversation piece amongst the Echinacea.

                                                          Echinacea purpurea...Purple Coneflower

We’ll plant carrots in February and defy you to find more beautiful foliage!  They will be harvested in late spring, making room for seasonal herb plants like basil.  If you’ve got room for a small trellis in the back of your flower bed and it’s February…plant SUGAR PEAS!  They are easy to grow, will grow straight up, have beautiful white “sweet pea” flowers and then you’ll have those wonderful snow peas/sugar peas to sauté in butter, eat raw while digging in the garden or add to stir fry.  Bonus…they will be finished by late spring so you can use the arbor for something else like green beans or cucumber.

Think pollinators!  All these plants attract bees, hummingbirds and butterflies which will pollinate vegetables and flowers.  African Blue Basil wants to be a very large, sprawling plant with a multitude of flowering spires attracting both bees and butterflies.  (Don’t forget, bumblebees are valuable pollinators too.)  We don’t want Sweet basil plants to flower because it cuts down on oil/flavor production within the plant; all its energy is used to make the flowers attractive to pollinators but this is not true with African Blue Basil…a beautiful and edible addition to a flower bed.

                          African Blue basil in the garden.  Note the tomato plant on the far left.

We’ll be growing more tomatillos this year, right in the flower beds because of the lovely little “lanterns” formed after small white flowers.  The lanterns actually enclose the fruit, tomatillo, the main ingredient of Salsa Verde…green salsa…easy to grow among flowering bedding plants.

                                  Tomatillos are carefree and very interesting in flower and fruit.

All the plants we’ve mentioned are annuals but if you’re like us you welcome perennials that just keep on “being there”; think horseradish, chives, parsley (biennial), oregano, thyme, stevia (the sweet herb), planted among the Gerbera Daisies and Asiatic Lilies.

                                                           Curly Parsley and English Thyme

Blueberries…not a more beautiful spring, summer or fall landscape plant known!  As long as you’ve got two varieties you’ll have blueberries for the table or freezer every summer.  As delicious and nutritious as blueberries are, the fall foliage is breath-taking.

You’ll notice we didn’t mention adding rosemary or lavender to your flower beds.  Both plants would be very unhappy with the water and fertilizer needed to keep flowering plants looking good, preferring a hot and dry location instead.  Some rosemary varieties are very large, landscape-worthy plants that will flower in the winter with various shades of blue, pink or white edible flowers. 

Large pots, treasures in the garden for food and flower, can host a gorgeous yellow squash or a tomato plant surrounded by sweet basil-companions in the garden and the kitchen.  Smaller pots or garden bowls can keep the lettuce, arugula, cress or spinach coming until the weather gets hot.

Trim, prune and stake the vegetable/herb plants, they can be as beautiful as any “flower”.   Maybe you can’t get away with keeping chickens in the city limits but you can grow some food!

              What could be prettier than peppers smack dab in the middle of the flower garden?

Rosemary is Blooming!

   It is a cold, windy, winter day in middle Georgia.  Ahhh the sound of Sweet Gum balls hitting the roof.  Since it is the first real threat of super cold for us (mid-February already!) many shrubs are budding/blooming early and just might get a little ticked off by a heavy frost.  Oh well, it didn’t rain last summer either so we’re just kinda’ surprised by anything that wants to bloom except…Rosemary!  Since Rosemary doesn’t care if it ever rains and insists on all the sunlight it can get, it has been very happy throughout the past summer and fall and is blooming now, right on time.

   We’re a little partial to rosemary, it was our first-ever herb.  Selma Erwin, our mentor and next door neighbor, presented us with a sprig of rosemary in 1971.  She said we could root it and grow a plant that would provide fragrance, medicine, insect repellant and food, plus it would be a beautiful landscape plant that honeybees love.

   Ms. Erwin’s rosemary is Rosmarinus officinalis.  She rooted easily and is still in our garden these 41 years later. Renamed by us, Ms. E is the mother of many with pale blue, almost white flowers and leaves so grey that it is often mistaken for lavender.

  R. officinalis

   Being “hooked” on rosemary, we now grow around 27 different varieties of rosemary.  How do you know they’re different varieties?  Flower color and growth habit differ and some are very similar.

   Want a large, fast growing upright variety?  Brite Star blooms with a deep blue flower and wants to be 5 feet tall.  Never a good idea to plant in an herb bed, this rosemary is a beautiful landscape addition.  Brite Star makes up our rosemary allee’ and you just gotta’ brush the dark green stems as you go by.

  Brite Star

   There’s even pink flowered rosemary (R. majorca).  Most rosemary varieties are fairly easy to root…not pink flowered.  A sprawling but small, greyish-leaf plant with small pink flowers, this rosemary is an oddity but not one of our favorites ‘cause she just seems a little ornery. We do have our prejudices and another variety we’re not too keen on has sprays of golden leaves mixed in with green leaves.  Looks a little sick to us but this is R. Golden Rain’s claim to fame.

  Golden rain

   White flowered rosemary is a hardy, upright, grey-green leaf plant with absolutely white flowers.  We haven’t found any rosemary as tall as Brite Star but white flowered comes close. 

 White

   Salem is a tall upright, dark green leaf rosemary with deep blue, almost purple flowers.  Collingwood Ingram is also dark green and wants to sprawl a bit but is a tall-sprawler with deep blue flowers. 

Collingwood-Ingram

Athens Blue Rosemary is a rather wispy leaf variety that would probably be the best bet to plant inside an herb garden but we have saved the best for last…possibly a new variety of rosemary born right here at Olive Forge!

 Olive Forge?

  Not officially named yet, this rosemary was found growing in a pot of R. Santa Barbara which is a birdnest/creeping variety with grey, short-leafed stems.  The new seedling is upright, sturdy stems, rather dark foliage and is short in stature. A real cross breed?  Who knows…could this become R. olive forge?  He he…we’re already calling it by that name.

A Coffee Substitute?

  We thought we could make it as good as Grandma’s.  Granted, Grandma didn’t make it from scratch; she used readymade Luzianne with chicory. According to Luzianne’s advertisement, “chicory unlocks the coffee flavor. It mellows the blend and removes the bitterness.” Really? 

   Our Southern ancestors enjoyed coffee and tea but found themselves totally without during the Civil War blockades.  We read about these struggles, fully aware of the caffeine withdrawal headaches they must have suffered.  Many substitutes were tried and we’ve tried them all.  These people were tough; we can be tough too…right?  Wrong.  Roasted acorn coffee had to be the nastiest thing known to man; barley coffee was not worth the trouble and chicory root coffee?  So bad...so bad.  How’d they do it?

  

     We grow chicory. It’s a beautiful plant with sky blue, daisy-like flowers. Forty years ago it lined the highway going into Asheville, NC. Chicory will grow in most any soil but is even more beautiful in good garden soil.

    Many grow chicory for the leaves, sometimes called Belgian Endive or for the blanched growing tips called chicons. The chicon is grown completely underground or indoors in the absence of sunlight in order to prevent the leaves from turning green or opening up. The plant has to be kept just below the soil surface as it grows, only showing the very tip of the leaves. The tender leaves are slightly bitter; the whiter the leaf, the less bitter the taste. This underground growing is way too much trouble for us, we enjoy the young leaves in a salad.

    Seems chicory has caused trouble in the past…In 1809 Congress was upset with President Jefferson when it was revealed that he was communicating with the much distrusted British Government. Note this was only 3 years before the War of 1812. 
   Further investigation revealed that communication with the Royal Agriculture Ministry was for the nonpolitical purpose of securing chicory seed for his old friend George Washington. The Congressional Record doesn’t state whether George wanted to grow chicory for a salad or for coffee. We’d advise him to go for the salad.

Pepper Jelly and the Scoville Heat Index

All I did was rinse out the container and the next time I took a bite of cookie my lips were on fire!  Our freezer is filled with chopped hot peppers ready for jelly making and I forgot that Caribbean Red Hot is just plain dangerous. But oh, the jelly makes it worth all the pain. 

   Needless to say, this jelly is a mixture of Caribbean and other hot peppers for fear that straight Caribbean jelly would be a weapon, not a food.  Now this year we have added Naga Jolokia, Ghost Pepper.  Any guesses why they call it ghost pepper? It is a lovely plant, dark green large leaves but there will be no pepper jelly made with this deadly pepper.

   Wilbur Scoville invented a system in the early 1900s to measure the heat index of peppers. New pepper discoveries have caused the list to grow in number, all to be rated against the standard-pure Capsaicin, the substance that makes hot peppers hot, which comes in at 16,000,000 Scoville Units. Ghost peppers register 1,041,000 S.U.  Caribbean Red Hot only registers 400,000. 

  

   We love Jalapeno poppers…sliced lengthwise, deseeded, stuffed with a cream cheese/herb mixture and baked…delicious.  We carefully removed seeds from each half, but the poppers were almost too hot to enjoy. NOW we learn that most of the capsaicin is concentrated in the veins of the peppers and to a lesser degree, in the seeds. Oh well, live and learn. Jalapenos register only 9,000 S.U.

     A friend brought seed for Chile de Arbol saying they were wonderful pan fried.  We asked if they were hot and the answer was just “of course”.  These peppers come in at 30,000.  Think we’ll stick to frying Jimmy Nardello peppers, an heirloom from Italy.  Looks just like a hot, hot pepper…long and twisty but has NO heat and is delicious pan fried or fresh from the garden.  

                                            ...Jimmy Nardello

   When peppers are dried they tend to increase in heat by about 10 times. 
    Think about it and be careful out there!

Grow Your Own Tea

Camellia sinensis     Tea Camellia

“Expect to pay lots more for tea this year.” So says commodities reporters. “Well duh” you say, “we’re paying more for everything, right?” But tea drinkers of the world, we have a problem. There are more people in the world now and more of these people are drinking tea and yet tea production is way down!
    It seems that many people are switching from other drinks to tea, recognizing the health benefits, but the major increase is due to the economic growth in China and India. The huge population and growing income level of these countries are making a major impact on the rise in world tea consumption. Prices ride on supply and demand and the supply is just not happening. India expects their tea supply to decrease by 20% due to adverse weather conditions which also increased pest damage. This will be a huge loss in world tea supplies and it is thought unlikely that other tea producing countries can make up the difference.
    But the good news is…you can grow tea in your own backyard! Yep, you can grow green tea, black tea and decaf tea outside in middle GA or in your sunroom if you live in a colder climate. You can even make Earl Grey tea if that’s your preference.

    All tea comes from the shrub, Camellia sinensis, and it is blooming right now in our garden, some grown from seed, some from cuttings. Our garden plants have thrived in the sun and even the drought conditions we’ve suffered this past summer. 
    Don’t expect a showy camellia flower from C. sinensis…the flowers are about the size of a silver dollar, white petals with a large yellow center and they hang all along the underside of the limb. There’s a pink flowered variety too but we haven’t seen it bloom.
Leaves can be picked and dried quickly for green tea; white tea comes from the tender top leaves; black tea is made by mounding the leaves, allowing them to sweat a while then drying. Don’t want the caffeine? Soak the tea leaves in tepid water and strain. Caffeine is water soluble and will wash away. Love Earl Grey? Add a few drops of the essential oil of Bergamot to a bag of green or black tea.
   Having your own Tea Plantation won’t solve the world tea crisis but I bet it will taste better than store bought!