Grow an Herbal Tea Garden

Clockwise from left: chamomile, lemon balm, scented geranium, yerba buena, bee balm

A cup of fragrant herb tea is a natural choice when you want to avoid caffeine. And best of all, you can grow a variety of wonderfully scented herbs in your garden or in containers.

Create an herbal tea garden and snip off a couple of fresh sprigs whenever you want a comforting cup of tea. You can also dry your herbs and keep them for winter use in airtight containers and to give as gifts. Your  garden will come alive with their spicy scents and with appreciative wildlife. Bees, hummingbirds and butterflies love the flowers of many herbs. It's a pleasure to rub the leaves and enjoy a whiff of all the different perfumes while working in the garden. Many will do well potted into containers for your porch or patio.

Some of my favorites are: lemon verbena, bee balm, chamomile, scented geraniums, catnip (aka, catmint), pineapple sage, and lemon balm. I recently found a lemon-scented catmint at a local nursery that I've added to my herb garden.

Hummingbirds and bees love the scarlet flowers of pineapple sage

Brewing Herbal Tea

To brew herb tea just add a few leaves or sprigs to your tea pot, or follow this basic method from Rodale’s Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs:

1. Use a non-metal tea pot to preserve the true flavors.

2. For hot tea use 2 tablespoons of fresh herbs or 1 tablespoon of dry per cup of water.

3. For iced tea use 3 tablespoons of fresh herbs or 2 tablespoon of dry per cup of water (to allow for ice cubes).

4. Bring water to a boil, then pour over the herbs in the tea pot; cover to steep.

5. Steep for at least 5 minutes, test for taste, steep longer if desired.

Serve with honey, lemon or orange slices, or sprigs of fresh herbs. I like to add a dab of honey to both hot and iced tea. For iced tea add the honey before chilling the tea so it will dissolve.

Brew Your Own Flavored Tea Drink

You can use your herbs for hot or iced tea. Brew them in combinations or try flavoring a cup of green tea with lemon verbena or bee balm. Iced green tea is really good flavored this way- have you noticed the trendy ice tea drinks sold in nice glass bottles? You can make your own, just flavor it with a bit of honey while it's still hot, chill it, and enjoy.

Teapot Therapy

The pleasant ritual of brewing tea and enjoying a couple of cups from my teapot is very soothing. If you don’t have a teapot you can brew your tea right in your cup, just cover it while it’s steeping and strain out the herbs by pouring it into another cup to drink. Then keep an eye out at garage sales or pottery sales for interesting teapots to collect and enjoy a daily herbal tea ritual.

Published on Eat Drink Better

Photos: Patricia Larenas, Urban Artichoke

Pickled Nasturtium Pods

I love nasturtiums not only for their vibrant bright colors and unusual saucer-like foliage, there is simply so much to love: they grow easily and reseed themselves every year, plus their leaves, flowers, and seed pods are all edible. I often sprinkle the flower petals on our salads to add gorgeous color and I’ve been adding the young leaves for a bit of peppery zest.

A nasturtium pod with a flower bud in the background

The green seed pods (pictured above) are crunchy and surprisingly peppery too- try one right off the plant, but you have been warned! You can find lots of recipes for pickling them to use in place of capers since this has been done for literally centuries.

I found a recipe in The Forgotten Art of Growing Gardening and Cooking with Herbs, by RichardM. Bacon, (Yankee INC,  1972). It’s a wonderful book I discovered recently at my local used bookstore, packed with useful information.

The instructions are minimal: in a quart jar combine 1 tablespoon salt, 2 cups wine vinegar, 1 clove of garlic. Fill with green nasturtium pods, seal, and store 1 month before using.

But I challenge anyone to find enough nasturtium pods to fill an entire quart jar- then to actually use them! So I found Linda Ziedrich's method much more doable. She 's the author of  The Joy of Pickling.

She combines 1/2 cup cider vinegar and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a small jar, stirs to dissolve the salt, and adds the green pods.  She has even added fresh pods to the jar throughout the growing season.  She doesn't refrigerate the jar, but personally, I'm cautious, so I'd refrigerate them just to be on the safe side.

Empress of India Nasturtium

Do you have a favorite nasturtium recipe? I'd like to know- I have lots of them growing!

This post was published on Eat Drink Better

Photos: Patricia Larenas, Urban Artichoke

Snails in Your Edibles - Bring Out the Copper

I refuse to use pesticides in my garden- it’s not worth the damage to the environment. But at this time of year when I’m planting the tender, defenseless seedlings that I carefully nurtured from precious seeds, I get desperate. Snails will mow down seedlings in the blink of an eye.

I’ve used Sluggo, which helps but is variable in effectiveness. The active ingredient is iron phosphate, safe for use around pets and wildlife and sanctioned for organic gardening, but using too much may cause phosphate build up in the soil. So I turned to my secret weapon: copper foil.

I’ve used small copper foil strips to protect young plants that I’m trying to establish in my garden until they have a chance to mature and can stand on their own against snails. It’s 100% effective in my experience.

But I hadn’t thought of wrapping my planting beds in the stuff - until I saw it in a slide show by Maureen Decombe of Green Willow Gardens.

My organic garden supply store, Common Ground in Palo Alto, has copper strips for sale to use as snail barriers - they are worth every penny! I bought 40 feet and immediately wrapped two of my front yard beds.

According to a University of California IntegratedPest Management (IPM) web page:

“It is believed that copper barriers are effective because the copper reacts with the slime that snails and slugs secrete, causing a disruption in their nervous system similar to an electric shock."

The copper barrier is supposed to be effective for several years, and can be refreshed with vinegar if it tarnishes. My copper, show in the photos, is 4 inches wide which is a good width for a snail barrier. 

I'll still go out and handpick them to keep them from eating the rest of my garden, but I'm enjoying this small victory!

This post was published on Eat Drink Better

Photos: Patricia Larenas, Urban Artichoke