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.