Jim Long's Columns

Grow Your Own Pie This Year

2012-01-14T10:12:00.001-06:00

Add Some Berries to Your Garden

Blackberries begin ripening the first week of June.

There was a time when berry-picking was as ordinary as going to the grocery store is now. Come summer, families drove out into the countryside and picked blackberries along the roadside. People who had wild black raspberries or gooseberries, looked forward to picking fruit for pies, jams and canning. Now the roadsides are mowed and sprayed and most of the berries are gone. Store-bought berries, when available, are expensive and with few exceptions, shipped from South America. So why not grow your own berries?

Reaching into berry vines to pick isn't the painful thing it used to be, now with thornless vines.

The University of Arkansas has been developing hardy, thornless blackberry varieties for several decades and several licensed nurseries grow and sell them. These new strains of blackberries grow two to three times the size of wild ones and don’t carry the disease that many wild blackberries have. Wild blackberries are often deformed or shrivel before fully ripe from a berry disease. These new thornless varieties are resistant to those diseases. The thornless berries are big, the seeds are very small, the flavor is excellent and the vines are completely thornless. Add to that, they’re easy to grow. My favorites are ‘Arapaho’ and ‘Apache,’ both thornless berries that are great tasting.

Smooth vines, no thorns at all means no scratches, no pain when picking.

Both red and black raspberries do well all across the Ozarks region but don’t plant them together. Growers recommend keeping black and red raspberries at least 60 feet apart but both can certainly be grown on the same property. I keep my red raspberries in rows beside the blackberries and the black raspberries off to themselves. My favorite red raspberries are Heritage, which you mow down at the end of the year since they produce berries on new canes, and Lauren, which, for me, produces an early crop and another one in late summer.

Red raspberries produce for a month or more in summer. Some varieties produce 2 crops a year.

I’ve ordered berries from Pence Nurseries in northwest Arkansas many times over the years and they’re always very helpful in making recommendations. Find them here: www.alcasoft.com/pense/ They are a family business and you’ll need to call and leave a message that you want to order. They’re very prompt and will call you back at the end of the day to take your order. They sell grape, tayberry, gooseberries, currants, many varieties of black and red raspberries and several kinds of thornless blackberries.

The Pence family, from their website.

Berries require full to mostly-full sun, average garden soil and will benefit from being on a fence although it’s not necessary. Some, like Heritage red raspberries, often produce a few berries the first year but will produce a full crop the second year. Other berries produce a small crop the second year then are bountiful every year after that. Happy gardening!

Grow your own blackberry pie this year!

Homemade Crackers YouTube photoshoot

2011-12-20T20:11:00.003-06:00

The focus of the video is my Homemade Crackers and Easy Dips with Herbs books.

You've probably heard me mention before that we have aYouTube/longcreekherbs channel where we post videos of my recipes and books. Check it out if you haven't. Yesterday we filmed 2 more videos. That's the easy part, the editing and pasting it all together is the harder, and more creative part. Thankfully, my job is to stand in front of the camera and let David Selby and his associates do all the work. Here are some views of the photo shoot from yesterday. The end product will be 2 videos, one that will be about 3-4 minutes long, where I'm showing my friend, Makala, how I make cheddar crackers. The other is a 2 minute video telling what roses are good to eat and which ones to avoid. (There's more about the Herb of the Year and the Rose, official Herb of the Year for 2012, on my Herb of the Year blog, here). In a few weeks the videos will be up on our YouTube channel, but for not they're "in the can" awaiting the editing process.

Makala is the daughter of one of our employees, Neva Milke. Neva is one of the 2 ladies who answers phones when you call us to place an order. Makala first came to visit Long Creek Herb Farm when she was 4 years old, with 19 other vacation Bible schoolers. She was interested in herbs and gardening then, and her interests continue to grow. I invited her to be a part ofHomemade Crackers with Herbs video taping and she was fun to work with. Here are some scenes from the kitchen and the crew yesterday.

I took this photo, looking down into the kitchen from my upstairs office. You can see the kitchen counter all set with our working tools, David and Ben are getting the cameras and lights set up.

Everyone just discovered I was taking their pictures, too.

David does lots of film projects. He intends to make movies but for now, does a great job doing videos. Ben, to the left, grew up with David. Ben is in the Army Reserves and is currently attending Drury University School of Nursing. Makala, standing on set at the ready, is a second year student at College of the Ozarks.

It takes a lot of tinkering with lights, sound, cameras to get everything working right.
I could have slept another hour!

Out of camera view, on the sunporch, I had backups of the crackers, the baked crackers, the unbaked ones and the roses for the what roses to eat video that came next.

And here we are in front of the lights, almost ready for the rose video. Makala was patient and fun to work with. David and Ben were loads of fun and very professional. David's production company does an outstanding job. All the recipes for the crackers and dips came from my books.

I hope each and everyone a pleasant and peaceful holiday season.

Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh

2011-12-09T16:28:00.001-06:00

The 3 wise men brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

We’ve all seen those late night t.v. ads for, “Bring your old gold jewelry to sell - prices are the best in history.” The last I looked, gold was selling for $1724 per (Troy) ounce. I don’t really know what an ounce of gold looks like, but I know it’s a lot of money for not much to hold in your hand. Most everyone knows the story in the Bible of how the three wise men brought their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. We know what gold is, but few people know what the frankincense and myrrh are.

Frankincense tears.

Frankincense is from the Boswellia tree and comes from Somalia on the southern coastal area of Arabia. It was used in ancient times as an incense, for embalming and as a treatment for depression. People used it in temples, believing the smoke from the burning incense would carry their prayers Heavenward.

Myrrh "tears" meaning, drops of resin, caught from the tree after it has a cut in the bark.

Myrrh, a brown to red aromatic tree resin comes from Commiphora abyssinica (which is in the same overall plant family as the frankincense tree). It’s a scraggly bush-tree which grows in semi-desert regions of North Africa and near the Red Sea. It is considered a wound healer because of its strong antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. It has been used to treat wounds, bruises and bleeding as well as a treatment for swelling.

Frankincense and myrrh were once as valuable as gold.

Both frankincense and myrrh were burned, usually together, as incense and were deeply connected to holy places and worship. Even today in Catholic and Episcopal churches, you will find these two resins still burned as incense during special services. Back in Biblical times, these resins were extremely valuable, fully as expensive as gold. Harvested far from Jerusalem, they were brought on the spice routes over long distances on the backs of camels. Everyday people couldn’t afford to buy them. The specific healing properties of both made them even more desirable. For a mother who had recently given birth, the two resins were even more useful and valuable.

Our Frankincense and Myrrh Incense Kit in a Keepsake box.

We use frankincense and myrrh today in much the same way as they were used in Biblical times, in medicines, incense and aromatherapy. With better growing conditions and faster and less expensive shipping methods, they are no longer equal to the price of gold. You can buy these in today’s world, for just a dollar or two per ounce.

Both frankincense and myrrh are created when multiple cuts are made into the bark of each plant. As the sap oozes out it hardens into a hard resin. The resin is collected into bags and sold. The cutting process, of not done to excess, does not kill the tree or bush and can produce resin for many years. It's a slow process on plants that grow slowly in desert climates. The resins are harvested by hand, the same way they were 2,000 years ago.

Our Frankincense and Myrrh Incense Kit in a Keepsake box.

If you would like your own Frankincense and Myrrh Kit, you can order one from my website. It's on special this month. Each kit contains a bag of Frankincense and Myrrh, a charcoal disk for burning the incense, a special tile for the charcoal, instructions, all in a keepsake wooden treasure chest. Order two for $25 or one for $12.95 plus shipping.

Growing Up in a Country Store

2011-11-27T13:46:00.000-06:00

Colonial Bread is Good Bread, most stores had screen doors provided by Colonial Bread Company.

When people ask me where I grew up, I often tell them, “In the back of a country store.” While that is partly true, my parents didn’t simply begin in the store business when I was born. It wasn’t until I was about eleven when they bought the south grocery store (there were two stores at times) in Taberville, but the store came to define my childhood.

Mom and Dad early in their life.

My parents, Lloyd and Mada, had survived the Great Depression, an event and a time that profoundly defined the rest of their lives. They were married November 17, 1934, just weeks after my grandfather James Edward Harper unexpectedly passed away. Because of his death, they cancelled their plans for a simple church wedding and instead eloped, being married at the home of a pastor friend. Their first years together were spent trying to eke out a living on a rented farm outside Johnson City, MO near my grandparents Long. My parents describe those years as the lowest times of their lives. Crops failed, drought decreased the garden to a patch of turnips and the only livestock they had were a few chickens and some hogs. Mother always claimed all they had to eat were turnips and salt pork their first two years together, two foods she despised for the rest of her life.

My parents had run a store soon after starving out on the farm, in Iuka Springs, south of Johnson City, but not owning the building, had to move on when the owners sold the building. They moved to Tabverville, a slightly larger and more prosperous town than Johnson City - Taberville had 50 citizens, Johnson City had 12. My father drove a stock truck for awhile, hauling farmers’ grain and livestock to town. My mother taught school for a couple of years and did sewing for people. After I was born she stayed at home with me and sewed cloth toys and crocheting, items she sold through a shop in Nevada, MO. They rented out a bedroom to boarders from time to time, providing sleeping space and 2 meals a day for road construction crews. When the Taberville store business was offered to them by Roy Dody, who had been running it, they decided to go back into the grocery business. They borrowed money and opened the store.

My parents on the front porch of their store.

The store building was owned by the Taberville Masonic Lodge # 419. It was a two story brown brick building, the lodge hall in the second story, grocery store below. The walls were not insulated in any way, just brick, the ceilings high and the store was difficult to cool in summer and impossible to keep warm in winter. There was no indoor plumbing, no running water, and no well. Water for hand washing had to be carried in buckets from home, bathroom facilities was an outhouse next to the building that housed animal feed. The Masonic Lodge refused to modernize the building, would not agree to any changes nor the drilling of a well. Their stance was, “if you don’t like the building, we’ll rent it to someone else.” My parents put up with conditions that would today seem impossible to live with.

Customers monthly charges were kept in a register under the counter.

Taberville was surrounded on all sides by farms and farm families and everyone in the community came to the store on a regular basis. Because a store in those days was expected to stock just about anything a farm family might need, the list of items my parents stocked was extensive. Boots, socks, overhauls, children’s’ ladies’ and mens’ underwear, gloves, tires, animal feed, salt blocks, seasonal gift items, over-the-counter drugs and first-aid, along with fresh meat, cheese, bologna, watches, produce and canned goods. Stocking shelves was an endless activity, one I could barely stand to do. Because the floor was concrete and very difficult to keep clean with floor sweet, the shelves required constant dusting, another disagreeable job.

My father, mother and me at the front counter.

The store was also the main social gathering place in town. Everyone, regardless of age, passed through our store with regularity. Workers going to work in a nearby town stopped for supplies or a candy bar and cigarettes. School children stopped in on their way to and from school for school supplies or ice cream. Farmers, whose days were filled with the work of raising crops and tending animals, came to town in the evening. The wives, sometimes worn down by days of gardens, cooking for farm hands and canning, came, too. They’d come at dark, after their chores were done and often eat something in the store. My parents made sandwiches out of the deli case upon request. Some people were content with a bottle of pop and a candy bar, anything for a change of pace from their own cooking.

Every day, six days a week, my father opened the store at 7:00 a.m. My mother would finish up the breakfast dishes, do housework, then arrive at 8:00. Most days they would close the store at 6:30 in the evening, but on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights, they kept the store open until 9:00 p.m. for farmers who couldn’t get to town during daylight. Because people would predictably knock on our door at home on Sunday morning for some item they’d forgotten during the week and my father would obligingly open the store, he began keeping Sunday hours, as well, 8:00 to noon.

The front porch of the store had a long, wooden bench and a couple of nail kegs and in summer people would gather there to visit. Old men took up residence there on a daily basis, bored, just wanting someone to talk to. In the evening, because the store had no windows that opened for air, patrons and my parents sat outside on the porch, as well. But in winter, the spit and whittle bunch gathered around the old gas heating stove in the back of the store. Up front, near the cash register and counter upon which it sat, were 2 old wooden folding chairs and those were often occupied day and evening. Not by my parents but by people who just came to socialize. It was often a frustration to my parents that people would come and sit for hours at a time, taking up space and my parents patience and energy, and sometimes not buy anything but a ten cent bottle of pop.

There was no place to sit for my parents. The store’s concrete floor was painfully hard and they had to stand, eight, ten, twelve or more hours a day. There simply wasn’t room behind the counter for a chair or stool, and since the folding chairs were always occupied, my parents stood. On winter nights when it got dark at 5:30 and farmers and their wives came to town, the old chairs, pop cases on end, even the counter, had people sitting for hours at a time. My parents would stand and patiently listen to stories, carry groceries to peoples’ cars, socialize, all the while wishing people would go home so they could close. There are more nights that I can remember when people would stay, sitting, talking, long hours after closing time. My parents never said, “We’re closing now” as they thought that rude. Instead they stayed, feet and backs hurting, wishing for supper, anxious for bed.

As a young teenager I bored quickly of the life in the store. Sometimes I’d sit and listen to the older people tell stories but usually in wintertime I had homework to do. I hated homework but I hated going home to an empty house even more, so my habit was to sit in the back of the store on the piles of sacks of pecans that were waiting to be trucked away, and do my homework. I was within earshot of people and activity, but far enough away that I wasn’t distracted from my math and reading assignments.

In the summer my escape was delivering groceries on my bicycle. The little town of Taberville was made up mostly of retired farmers who had moved to town in their old age. There were a couple of families with kids but those were older than me, so I felt like the only kid in town. The older widow ladies would call the store and make an order for groceries and my mother would tell me who they were to be delivered to. There wasn’t any charge for the service but the treat for me was getting out of store duties and getting to visit with old ladies who liked flowers, remembered stories and who sometimes would feed me cookies or a piece of pie they had saved just for me. Delivering a bag of groceries two blocks away, by bike, would take me about two hours or longer, much to my mother’s displeasure.

My parents worked very hard running their store business. In the back of their minds, there was always the memory of the Depression days, of their first years of nearly starving and of having failed at farming. It caused them to be frugal in ways that seem silly today - saving aluminum pie pans, for instance. Or of sewing patches upon patches on bed sheets rather than buying new ones. I wore homemade shirts to school and by the time I was in high school, I was embarrassed when I would splurge and buy myself a new, not-made-at-home shirt with my own money, earned from summer jobs.

Mom and Dad, late in life, after retirement.

I learned my work ethic from my parents. In grade school I would buy penny candy from my father at his wholesale price of 60 cents for a box of 100 pieces, for which I charged my school mates a penny a piece, netting a profit of 40 cents. I mowed lawns for neighbors, I worked in the hay field for farmers, raking hay and bucking bales into the barn. I cooked in a local restaurant on weekends. I learned to work because that’s what my parents did, all day, every day. Even on holidays, work at home for them was the garden, canning and freezing, keeping some cattle or shetland ponies which they sold.

So that question, when it arrises of, “Where did you grow up? can pretty much be summed up, “In the back of an old country store.” It was a hard life, sometimes fun, rewarding in that it provided us with a living. It was a time and a place that no longer exists but remains part of may peoples’ history.

Joe Brinkman, Taberville Postmaster

2011-09-02T16:12:00.000-05:00

The Ozarks Herbalist column for The Ozarks Mountaineer
Jim Long

The Postmaster

I grew up in Taberville, Missouri, in the 1950s and ‘60s, a time when the rest of the world was awakening and modernizing. It was the early days of shopping malls, of ranch-style houses and color television. The fins on Chevrolets and Fords came and went, smoothing out to more sleek sky-rocketed models. It was a time when rock and roll replaced the Big Bands, when Elvis Presley pushed aside Lawrence Welk and t.v. dinners made cooking from scratch seem old-fashioned.

But our little town didn’t take much notice of any of that. What was happening in New York City or Los Angeles, Little Rock or Atlanta, had little bearing on our lives. The Civil Rights movement seemed far away, prejudice and bigotry wasn’t a local problem. Hippies may have demonstrated for peace somewhere, but it was only on television and didn’t exist anywhere within the borders of our lives.

The major conduit for information into and out of Taberville, was the Post Office. More correctly, the conduit was Joe Brinkman, the official Postmaster for 32 years, who, upon his retirement was forced to take 3 1/2 months of vacation time before he could receive his first retirement check. It was discovered by the Post Office officials that Joe had never taken a day off, not a sick day and not a single day of vacation in all of his years of service.

It’s reasonable to say that Joe Brinkman was dedicated to the Post Office and to his job. You could sit on the front porch of my father’s grocery store and set your watch by Joe’s daily routine. At five minutes before 7:00 a.m., Joe hoisted the American flag up the old Osage Orange flag pole. Sometimes, if the wind was blowing, the flag would catch on a limb of the catalpa tree as it was drawn upward and Joe would retrieve his cane fishing pole and knock it free. But always, the flag went up at five of the hour.

You would know it was twelve o’clock, too, because the door was locked for the fifteen minutes Joe went next door to eat lunch. And you could tell it was 12:15 when you heard the radio click on, signaling the Post Office was again open for business. At exactly 5:00 p.m., not a minute before nor one minute after, five days a week, the flag was lowered, carefully folded so as to not touch the ground and taken inside before the Post Office door was locked for the night. On Saturdays, the routine was the same except the closing hour was noon.

Everyone, all fifty three of us who lived within the city limits of Taberville, stepped through the Post Office door every day. If someone was ill, or infirm, a neighbor would ask Joe for their mail and drop it off on their way home. The important fact is, every bit of news that informed the citizens of the town, and every reply or inquiry they made regarding that information, went through Joe Brinkman’s careful hands.

The Post Office was a tiny shack, just six nine feet, tacked onto the south side of the old wooden garage where Joe fixed flat tires during the same hours the Post
office was open. The garage was ancient, and leaning precariously. Within its shamble of walls sat a Model A Ford, parked there when Joe replaced it with a shiny, newly used, 1951 Ford sedan. There didn’t seem to be a reason to sell the old Model A, and since it wasn’t still in use, became simply a fixture of the garage upon which spare tires were piled. In the back seat extra, new tire repair materials sat, along with new inner tubes and Monkey brand tire patches, covered with dust but at the ready when needed.

Joe Brinkman, bent over the tire, fixed flat tires as well as dispensing the mail.

What kept the whole building from falling over in a wind storm, wasn’t the Post Office which had been added as an after thought, but the catalpa tree that had grown up from under the concrete slab of the Post Office floor, some thirty or forty years before. The tree grew had grown so close to the building, on the outside wall of the Post Office, that it kept the Post Office’s walls from falling outward and by so doing, continued to prop up the larger garage.

To get into the Post Office you had to climb up two uneven steps, one was an old squared sandstone from the foundation of a much older building, the second step being the edge of the concrete slab that made the floor of the building. The old screen door, the only entry door into the room, had never been painted but had darkened to a coffee-colored patina by years of oil, DDT sprayed on the screens to kill flies, and tobacco juice spit that didn’t quite make it through the mostly opened door.

Anytime you went to the Post Office in the summer and there was a ball game somewhere, you would hear the radio as you approached the building, cranked up to a high decibel.  “There’s the windup....and the pitch!” the announcer said. You’d hear the roar of the crowd, then the announcer would announce, “Hit!” or “Strike!” Play by play, the ballgame was always on the radio and if you walked in while the ball was in play, or if the announcer was describing the position on the field or what an outfielder was doing, Joe would ignore you completely as if you were invisible. Joe was a diehard Cardinals fan, he’d whoop and yell when one of his players got a hit. He’d jump and down on his old nail keg stool with excitement when his team was winning. When there was a break for a commercial, or between plays, Joe would again be amicable to retrieving a patron’s mail.

Joe loved two things in life, baseball and tomato soup. More explicitly, he liked his wife, Myra’s tomato soup. He said more than once, when he died, he wanted it to be by drowning in a big bowl of Myra’s tomato soup. He also liked sitting on my father’s front store porch and listening to, and telling stories. He had worked as a farm laborer in his early years and he designated that time, and those stories in a predictable way.

Anytime one of Joe’s stories began, “I remember, up on the prairie...” it designated a story from his youth. The thousand acre virgin grassland Taberville Prairie lay just a mile to the north of Taberville, and the rolling hills that undulated southward into the Ozarks, began just past the Osage River to the south. Town sat almost on the riverbank, the dividing line between the prairie to the north and the river and hills to the south. Joe’s youth, and his best memories, came from the time he and his parents lived up on the prairie.

However, Joe’s stories weren’t confined to the prairie days, nor even to his tomato soup and baseball adventures. Joe had a particularly inquisitive mind, with lots of time on his hands since processing and sorting the mail, and stuffing it into the little wooden cubbyholes that made our Post Office efficient, didn’t really take much time out of each day. Therefore, when no ball game was on the radio, and no patrons were inside the building, Joe sat, staring at the rows and rows of little wooden cubbyholes, many filled with news from the outside world. Temptation would rear its head and Joe would read.

When you stepped through the door into the Post Office, you had to ask for your mail. Joe would retrieve it from your Post Office Box cubbyhole and hand it across the little counter to your waiting hands. But while he was reaching, he might mention, “I see your aunt has been back in Oregon again.” Or, “You have a birthday card here from your grandmother. How’s she doing? I remember her from years ago. Does she still have the old gray tomcat?”

The nail keg Joe sat on for all his years as Postmaster.

Yes sir, Joe kept tabs on everyone in town by reading their mail. Not just the post cards, either, but the letters that weren’t well sealed. The packages, too, if they weren’t wrapped well and could reveal a bit of their contents. “Tell your mother the new shoes she ordered are here,” Joe would say. “I always like those white summer shoes she buys.”

The fact that Joe read everyone’s mail wasn’t so bad, we all knew and expected it. What was bad was Joe didn’t just discuss your new shoes, or your application for a job with just you. No, he carried that information with him to the front porch of the store or even into the next town where he played pool with friends. If there was a lull in the conversation, he might toss out a bit of gossip. If you inquired how he knew, he’d always have a story ready for where he’d overheard the tidbit. Yet everyone knew, Joe read the population’s mail. The only way to be sure your outgoing mail wasn’t pilfered by Joe Brinkman, was to take it to someone outside of town and put it in their mailbox for the next town’s mail carrier to pick up.

The Post Office might have been automating in the cities, mail service might have been improving and modernizing, but in Taberville, in those years, you would walk in and have your mail recited to you and not even have to open the letter yourself. Joe Brinkman sat on his little nail keg stool and dispensed the news as well as the mail like the Oracle of Delphi, always there, always ready with the latest news and a word or bit of sage advice.

Rose Butter, from Fragrant Roses

2011-07-10T09:37:00.000-05:00

Both pretty, and food!

There are lots of kinds of roses that are also wonderful seasoning and decorative herbs. How do you know which ones to eat? (Click this link to see my YouTube video on eating roses: http://www.youtube.com/longcreekherbs).

1-Don't eat roses from a florist shop. Those have been highly sprayed with insecticides. Additionally, they have little fragrance, and thus, no flavor.

2-Don't eat roses from your own garden if you are using systemic fertilizers - those include insecticides that are taken up by the rose bush with the fertilizer, and dispersed throughout the leaves and flowers.

Other than that, if the roses are un-sprayed, and have good fragrance, they will also have good flavor and are good to eat.

Roses are related to apples and several other fruits, all edible plants.

Rose butter, made with very fragrant dark pink roses. It's delicious on any good bread!

An easy way to start eating roses is by making rose butter.

Start with a pound of unsalted butter (don't substitute margarine, use real butter for this, your taste buds will thank you). Let it come to room temperature or soften it slightly in the microwave but do not let it melt.

Gather a heaping cup full of fragrant rose petals in the morning, after the dew has evaporated but before the heat of the day. Why? Because the rose oils are strongest then and the flavor will be the best.

Chop up the rose petals, or put them in a blender and gently pulse-blend until the petals are finely chopped.

Combine the finely chopped rose petals and the butter and mix well. Form the butter into a mound, add whole, fresh rose petals to the outside, cover and refrigerate until ready to use. The flavors will be best after about 24 hours or overnight.

Food grade rose water is available in many whole foods stores.

Note, if you are using red rose petals, most red rose varieties have little flavor or fragrance ('Mr. Lincoln', a hybrid tea, is an exception, it has pretty good fragrance and flavor. But if you want rose butter and your roses aren't the tastiest, add 2 teaspoons of food grade rose water as you are mixing the rose petals into the butter.

Tomato Beds

2011-05-26T09:54:00.001-05:00

Yellow sticky traps catch aphids and flea beetles.

Ozarks Gardening; May 3, 2011
Jim Long

Preparing Tomato Beds

The past couple of springs I’ve written about new research on controlling tomato viruses, from Texas A & M University, and tried their recommended methods. It didn’t control all of the virus problems, thanks to an unusually wet, cool and humid spring we had last season, but I still saw considerable improvements, and will continue with their methods this year.

The methods I use for helping to control tomato virus (often called, “the wilt.”) are as follows. First, I incorporate agricultural cornmeal into the soil early in the year and again just before planting. Whether your local feed store calls it agricultural. cornmeal, or simply ground corn feed, it’s the same thing. Texas A & M has demonstrated that pulverized corn, with some cobs and husks, it’s worked into the soil and causes the growth of beneficial bacteria which attack tomato virus in the soil. I apply 2 lbs. of cornmeal and 1 lb. of dry molasses (which studies show helps the cornmeal work better) per 12 feet of tomato row, poured on top then mixed into the soil.

The second treatment I use, is to mulch the entire tomato bed immediately after the tomatoes are planted. Formerly I’d wait for several weeks to let the ground warm faster, but researchers have proven that putting mulch down immediately, eliminates the splash-up from the soil onto the leaves, and that is how the virus first gets on the lowest tomato leaves. The virus remains in the soil where tomatoes have grown before, and rain splashes the soil, and the virus, on to the lowest leaves of the tomato plants.

Third, I use homemade sticky traps, two for each tomato plant, to trap the aphids that settle in on the tomato plants. It is the aphids that spread the virus (the “wilt), from the bottom leaves upward, by their eating habits. My traps consist of yellow plastic cups, turned upside down and stuck onto 16 inch tall, broomstick-sized sticks, using a thumbtack. The sticks are pushed into the ground about a foot from the tomato plant. I coat the yellow plastic cup on the outside, with Tree Tanglefoot, a very sticky substance that doesn’t wash off. The aphids are attracted to the color yellow, they fly onto the cups and the Tanglefoot catches them. (Don't substitute something else, Tree Tanglefoot is the only thing that doesn't wash off and keeps catching plants. Here's the link to order Tree Tanglefoot).

And last, I begin spraying the plants with Neem oil spray about the second week after planting. Neem prevents the aphids from getting a good start, and kills the eggs and young aphids that can’t yet get to the sticky traps.

To summarize, work the cornmeal into the soil in March, and again in late April; mulch as soon as the plants are in the ground. Then put out yellow sticky traps, 2 for every plant, and within a week of planting, begin spraying the plants with Neem and continue the spraying every 10 days well into summer. This is the best method I’ve found for stopping the wilt and virus problems on tomatoes. (The alternative, which is what old-time tomato growers used, was to plant tomatoes in “new” soil, meaning areas which haven’t had tomatoes growing in them before. That helps cut down on the amount of wilt considerably).

Tree Tanglefoot is available in most garden stores and on-line. Agricultural cornmeal, or its equivalent, pulverized corn feed, is available at most area feed stores. If they don't’ have it, ask them to order it, it’s easily available from their wholesale supplier. Yellow plastic cups were difficult to find last year, so I used yellow, “water wings,” the flexible foam tubes kids use in swimming pools, cutting them up into 4 inch pieces and they worked as well as cups.

To see photos and links to more information, visit the Ozarks Gardening blog at ozarksgardening.blogspot.com. You can see what’s happening in my garden this week at jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com. Happy gardening!

Bacon, America's Olive Oil

2011-04-24T13:26:00.001-05:00

The Ozarks Herbalist column for
The Ozarks Mountaineer magazine
Jim Long, April 2011

Jim, riding a pet pig.

Bacon, the American Olive Oil

Bacon is a truly American food. While cured pork is eaten in other parts of the world, it is an American innovation that cures and smokes the bacon in the way we know it today.

The likely first introduction of pigs to the Americas dates to the Hernando de Soto expedition which arrived in Florida in 1539, and his ship records show pigs as part of the cargo. Bacon and ham, along with peanuts and tobacco were being exported back to England as early as about 1640.

It wasn’t long before tame hogs were escaping into the wild. The Foxfire books list wild boar hunting as a common rural activity as late as the 1960s. As the feral hogs spread, they acquired regional names. Edward Norris Wentworth, in his book, Pigs from Cave to Corn Belt, list these regional names: bristle bearer, wood wanderer, mountain liver, alligator, landpike, stump rooter and razorback, and hunting them in most Southern states has a long and proud tradition.

I met a man in Alabama a few years back whose hobby was hunting wild pigs using an atlatl, that ancient spear-throwing weapon used in many parts of the world in prehistory. Today we know that razorbacks or wild pigs are so prevalent in the Ozarks and south that the Conservation Department encourages hunting the critters the year around, and without limits.

During the War of 1812, there was a 21-year old young man named Samuel Wilson, from New Hampshire, who was the main pork packer for the army. The story goes that he was very popular with the troops because of his tireless work in providing them with good provisions and an always upbeat personality. Barrels of pork that were shipped to his receiving center were labeled, “to U.S.” Wilson, standing for “Uncle Sam Wilson.” The Uncle Sam name stuck and the legendary character of Uncle Sam was born, with a firm connection between army provisions and bacon.

It’s been said that the hardest thing for a vegetarian to resist is bacon. I learned back in the 1970s when a lot of my friends were vegetarian, not to fry bacon when any of them were around, because more than once, I caused someone to backslide into the world of eating meat with a simple slice of bacon.

There are two kinds of bacon in the U.S., wet-cured and dry-cured. The wet cure method is done by putting the slabs of bacon in a brine containing salt and seasonings for several days, then hanging the slabs to drain and dry, and then smoking them. Smoking over slow hardwood embers is the typical smoking method.

Dry curing is what farmers in the Ozarks typically did. My grandfather used a mixture of salt and seasonings and as soon as the bacon was cut from the freshly-butchered hog, the seasonings would be rubbed into the slab of bacon where it would lay in the smokehouse to drain and absorb the curing mixture. The bacon slab would then be hung up from the rafters where it would begin to dry. The slabs would have to be rubbed with more mixture several more times during the drying and curing process. Once the slabs of bacon quit draining and began to dry, a whitish covering called, “protein” would form on the outside and it was was a protective layer that protected the meat.

Typically now, when a packaging company dry cures bacon, it is also slow-smoked over hickory, maple or apple wood and kept at a constant temperature to age before being sold. A typical dry-cure seasoning includes salt and sugar, with twice as much salt as sugar (either white sugar or brown sugar), along with salt peter (saltpetre refers to: Potassium nitrate, or the mineral niter, the critical oxidizing component of gunpowder, and a food preservative ), and black pepper. Some recipes call for liquid or powdered smoke seasoning, as well. The bacon is rubbed about every day for a couple of weeks with more seasoning.

Bacon in America is cured, often smoked pork belly, while British bacon is made from the back, rather than the belly, cured in a brine but not smoked. Canadian Peameal Bacon is a pork loin cured in wet brine and then rolled in cornmeal and sold raw, but never smoked.

Fatback is the strip of fat from the top of the hog’s back, above the loin and commonly used in early American cooking. Green bacon is the British term for cured but unsmoked bacon, while guanciale is an Italian-style pork jowl, dry cured and unsmoked.

Irish bacon is similar to British bacon but generally used in boiled dishes. Pancetta is a dry-cured, unsmoked Italian bacon made from pork belly, but doesn’t taste like American bacon due to the different seasonings used.

It’s fallen out of fashion in today’s health-conscious world, to fry bacon and save the bacon grease. Bacon grease was long considered the equivalent of olive oil, in our country as it was more commonly used. We’ve replaced it with vegetable oils, either liquid or solid. However, you can’t make a good wilted lettuce salad with vegetable oil, no matter how hard you try. Here’s our family’s recipe (and probably yours, too), unchanged in many generations.

Wilted Lettuce Salad

Gather and clean a big bowl full of leaf lettuce. Black Seeded Simpson was my family’s favorite lettuce variety, but any spring leaf lettuce will work. Set it aside (or refrigerate) until a few minutes before you are ready to serve dinner.

About 5-7 minutes before serving time, fry 3 pieces of your favorite bacon until crisp in an iron skillet. Remove the bacon and drain. Keep low heat on under the skillet and add 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar and 2 tabslespoons sugar to the bacon grease, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Salt to taste. Finely chop a spring green onion into the hot dressing and crumble the 3 slices of crisp bacon.

Drizzle the hot bacon dressing over the bowl of lettuce, tossing to make sure the dressing is well mixed. The lettuce will wilt a bit. Serve immediately.

No matter how many artificial soy-based bacons come onto the market, no matter the bacon flavorings or bacon substitutes, nothing tastes the same as good old American bacon.

Farmers Markets in the Ozarks

2011-04-14T11:46:00.000-05:00

Ozarks Gardening, April 14, 2011

Jim Long

Farmer’s Markets

The popularity of shopping locally for local produce has increased in popularity in recent years. This year, with big increases in prices of food at the grocery store, will only increase the demand for locally grown vegetables and fruit. Not only do you get the freshest produce at a farmer’s market (picked just hours before you purchase it) but you support the local economy, as well. Isn’t it better to see your grocery money go to the farmer down the road, than to support large corporations in Peru, China or Central America?

Look at www.fruitstands.com/states/missouri for a complete listing in MO (although the website appears to need corrections and updates). The AR Dept. of Ag. has a website, “ArkansasGrown.org” but it’s also not up to date and somewhat hard to use. Here are some farmers markets around the area, with contact information (from those 2 websites) in case you want to sell your produce, or simply want to shop for good food. Most markets require a weekly or seasonal fee to sell, and you need to apply for booth space if you are a grower.

Homemade Goats Milk Soap

Springfield, MO Farmer’s Market is celebrating it’s 30th anniversary this year. You’ll find it on the corner of Glenstone and Battlefield, open Tues., Thurs. and Sat. (417) 887-4156. There’s also a market on Commercial St. in Springfield, open Sun., Wed. and Sat. 417-887-4156.

Ava, MO has a remarkably large market on the square on Saturdays and it’s a busy place for shoppers. Contact: Mary Bell (417) 796-2449.

Berryville, AR, Tues. 3-6 p.m. and Sat. mornings. Contact Linda Jones, linda_g92@yahoo.com. Eureka Springs, AR market is Tues. and Thurs. mornings; contact Katie Ambach; kate.ambach@gmail.com and www.carrollcountyfresh.org.

Fresh picked herbs and greens at good prices.

Hermann, MO Farmers Market is open Wed. & Sat. mornings in the First Bank Parking lot; contact Bob Kirchhofer, 573-486-2121. Kennett, MO’s Food Fair Market is open on Sat. until noon; contact Sylvas Pendleton (573) 888-9644.

This lady makes the BEST pepper jelly, for the Farmers Market in Fayetteville, AR. I wish I'd bought more than one jar.

Kimberling City’s market is on Friday mornings and the contact there is Joann Conner, 417-779-5725. The Lebanon Farmers Market of Laclede County (MO) is open May 20 thru Oct. 13 every Sat. morning, held at the Christian Life Fellowship Church. Contact person there is Judy Lambeth (573)765-3874.

Fun with Food is a project organized by the Iowa Extension Service and area youth.

Willow Springs, MO market opens May 20 on 812 E. Main; contact Elizabeth Boyle, 417-469-2454.

This enterprising young entrepreneur was making water yo-yos, demonstrating and selling them at the market.

An innovative farmers new market opens May 14 in Reeds Spring, MO and is open from 4 to 8 p.m. every Saturday. Evening farmers markets are very popular in many states, making it easy for families to shop. This market is held on the side of the main street through town with open air booth space for fresh produce and plant vendors, as well as space for musicians to play music, with old-time movies some evenings. For vendor information contact Flavie Mirat at Reeds Spring Pizza Co., 417-272-3507.

If you want the freshest produce, locally grown, you can’t beat shopping at your local farmers market. For more information, do a Google search for your town. You can what’s happening in my garden this week on my garden blog: jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com. Happy gardening!

Just Where IS the Ozarks, Anyway?

2011-01-09T16:07:00.002-06:00

I was in standing in line at the cash register in a restaurant in Columbia, Missouri recently, waiting to pay my ticket. I overheard the cashier comment, “We (meaning Columbia) are on the northern edge of the Ozarks.” The gentleman paying his ticket replied with, “Really. Just where are the Ozarks, anyway?”

I asked the cashier, when it was my turn at the register, how she determined Columbia to be part of the Ozarks. She explained when she moved to north Missouri she looked on a map to see if there was a mountain range in the area (of course, I’m thinking to myself, Look out the window lady, do you see any mountains in any direction?) She said when looking over the map, the nearest mountains she could see were the Ozarks Mountains, so she determined that Columbia was on the northern edge. I just smiled and left her to her ignorance of geography, choosing to not block the line of people waiting behind me with a geography lesson.

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2008 describes the Ozarks or Ozark Plateau as, “...an upland region, actually a dissected plateau (of about) 50,000 square miles, chiefly in S. Mo. and N. Ark., but partly in Oklahoma and Kansas, between the Arkansas and Missouri rivers; the Boston Mountains are the highest and most rugged section, with several peaks more than 2,000 feet high.”

Robert Flanders, Director of the Center for Ozarks Studies said in an article in the Ozarks Watch magazine, “I conclude that ‘Ozarks’ like ‘Great Plains,’ is a singular noun ending in ‘s’ (can one Ozark be found, anymore than one Great Plain?)” Therefore, where IS the Ozarks is correct, rather than where ARE the Ozarks.

I’ve had many battles with my book editors over the years when I list where I live, in my author material. When I insist that I live in the Ozarks Mountains, undereducated East Coast editors always cross out the ‘s’ and try to make it the Ozark Mountains. Explaining that Ozark is a town in Arkansas (and Missouri), but the region and the mountains are the Ozarks, falls on deaf ears; they have the red pencil and the last word.

There are several myths about where the name, Ozarks, originates. One version says it is from an Osage Indian word for bent river, although no corresponding Osage word has been found.

Donald Harrington, in his book, Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks has a description of the word originating from bois d'arc, the French name for the Osage orange tree. His story describes the fictitious Ingledew family learning how the Osage Indians used bois d'arc wood for making bows and ties the name of the wood, and the arch of the bow, to the origin of Ozarks.

The late Clay Anderson, former owner of The Ozarks Mountaineer magazine, wrote in his book, Ozarks, “There are a number of theories (about the origins) but the most plausible is that the name evolved from the French, aux arcs. Aux is a preposition meaning of, to, or from, while arcs signifies hills or bows. The pronunciation of aux arcs is roughly the same as Ozarks.”

The more likely origin of the name comes from the French who mapped the area in the late 1600s and early 1700s. After France gained control of the area (which we know later as the Louisiana Purchase), the French sent surveyors to explore their holdings.

The French cartographers entered the area where the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers join, and mapped the rivers for several hundred miles. They named the northernmost bend in the Arkansas River as the Aux Arcs, which translates to “top of the arc” or northernmost bend in the river. It was a significant landmark for early travelers and the phrase Aux Arcs, when spoken by non-French speakers evolved into what sounded like Ozarks (even though the “s” would be silent in French). That northernmost location was eventually simply deemed Aux Arcs, meaning beyond the last bend of the Arkansas River. Eventually the entire mountainous region above the last great bend in the Arkansas River was simply called, the Ozarks.

The Ozarks and the northern Missouri plains had been the homeland of the Great and Little Osage Indian tribes. When the government confiscated their land and moved them west into Indian Territory (later Oklahoma), other tribes were pushed by the government into the Missouri and Arkansas territories. Once those tribes were also pushed farther west the region was opened to white settlement and the new Ozarks immigrants were primarily Scotch, Irish, English and German people, many of whom had moved from Tennessee and before that, North Carolina.

The mountains of the Ozarks is an ancient chain of mountains, older and larger than the Rockies, but so worn down over time to appear now as eroded hills. The late Phil Sullivan, a friend who visited my farm many years ago, remarked how the Ozarks Mountains aren’t any smaller than those in his homeland of Upstate New York, but seemed so. He said, “The primary difference between roads in the Ozarks and the Adirondacs is that in the Ozarks, roads follow the mountain tops and you look down at the landscape. But in the Adirondacs, nearly all of the roads follow the valleys and you are always looking upward at the landscape, which makes them seem much larger.”

But ask any native of the region what is the origin of the name and you’ll get, “Doesn’t matter where it came from, it’s not just a place, anyway. It’s a culture, a feeling and it has no set borders.” I’ve heard that kind of description from a great many people over the years.

If you look at the entire map of the Ozarks Plateau, the mass of rock underlying the land, it is described as running all the way up to Booneville, Missouri. Maybe that cashier in the restaurant in Columbia, Missouri, wasn’t so far off after all.

As Clay Anderson so succinctly put it, “The geology, history, folklore and culture of the Ozarks are distinct, but the precise thing that makes the Ozarks unique remains nebulous. Most likely it has to do with the people, who shape the land and are shaped by it.”

Bessie the Returning Box Turtle

2010-07-16T15:48:00.000-05:00

(No, that's not me, above. But note, below, where the blue gazebo is today. That's the same spot that's pictured here. In front of my late friend, Donnie, is my late German shepherd, Pebbles.

The year was 1983 and my garden was in its early beginnings. Back then I had to borrow a tractor and remove a fence in order to plow the garden each spring. Over time I have turned the entire half acre into raised beds.

Raised beds allow specific areas to be adjusted for specific plants and they are also easier to tend. I can sit on the side of the bed and weed and it only requires a small, easily moved tiller to prepare the beds each spring, allowing for adjustments of compost and soil amendments required for each crop.

That year, in 1983, my friend, Donny came to visit, saying he needed to work off some depression. He was approaching the age of forty and hadn’t accomplished all he thought he should by that time. He wanted some work to do on the farm to take his mind off his worries.

Donny was one of those people who liked the idea of gardening more than the actual work of it. He liked to read theories and tomes about the garden and had been reading about, “French intensive” gardening. He was excited about the idea of double-digging beds, in which you remove the old top soil and combine it with soil from deeper underground. You would first dig down about twelve inches, put that aside, then systematically dig the next twelve inches and put that aside, as well. Next you would put the first soil back in the bottom of the bed and add the second batch on top, mixing it all up as you go with compost and soil amendments.

That’s probably useful for people who live in areas where there is soil. We have almost no soil in the Ozarks. What we do have is clay and rock, covered with a thin layer of so-called topsoil of about one inch. The idea of double-digging anything in my garden seemed completely ridiculous, but Donny was intent and so I pointed him to a spot where I was planning to build a raised bed.

Donny, not being accustomed to actual physical labor, spent parts of two days, digging out the first twelve inches of soil for a bed of about two feet by seven feet. On the evening of the second day of digging, Donny said he had discovered some eggs in the soil and wondered what they might be. I recognized them as turtle eggs, so after Donny had finished his double-digging project, he put the eggs back under the last inch of soil. In a few weeks, there were six baby box turtles emerging out of the bed and scurrying rapidly away.

Over time that bed has evolved. The double-digging left a lot of clay and rocks, so I put another layer of better soil on top. I surrounded the bed with rocks and eventually made the bed about fifteen inches tall with stacked rock sides. I discovered that every year, a turtle was laying her eggs in that same spot of soil and in mid summer, I saw more baby turtle falling out of the tall bed.

It was a mystery to me how the mother turtle managed to climb the sides of the rock wall into the bed each year. I never did actually see her do it, but I’d find her nestled down in the bed under the mulch, laying eggs. Then in a few weeks, the little turtles would jump, climb or fall out and go on their way. I decided to build some stairs for the turtle we dubbed, “Bessie.”

This year again, for the twenty sixth year, Bessie appeared in the bed and nestled herself under the mulch. Box turtles are territorial and don’t range far beyond where they were born. It’s claimed that box turtles can live for twenty to forty years from people who have marked their backyard turtles.

Box turtles are on the decline nationwide. The loss of habitat, wide freeways and fast traffic has caused the numbers to decline rapidly. Turtles haven’t adapted well to the changes in modern life.

People often mistakenly think they are “saving” box turtles by picking them up on the road and taking them home. Because they are fiercely territorial, putting a turtle in an unfamiliar location may mean it will have to compete with other turtles in that area. Or it may not find enough food and will starve. The better thing to do is note the direction the turtle is headed, and carry it off the road and to the other side where it can go on it’s way naturally.

That's the Bessie bed, above with the fisherboy looking down into the goldfish pond. It doesn't look it, but the bed is 16 inches tall, stacked rock, so Bessie as she's getting older, really does need steps!

Each season we look forward to Bessie’s return and glad she uses the stairs in her older years. One evening recently, after observing Bessie in the “Donny” bed, I found her swimming in a little pool nearby. She had walked into, or fallen into the pool. The rock edges were preventing her from getting out and her leg was wrapped up in a piece of string that was attached to a little floating pool toy. Had I not found her, she would likely have drowned. I pulled her out of the water, removed the string that was caught on her leg and sent her on her way. I thought I saw her turn her head to say thanks just before she disappeared under the foliage.

Butterflies in the Garden

2010-06-29T16:33:00.000-05:00

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long

Butterflies in the Garden

Our open house for readers of this column last week was a huge success. I was pleasantly surprised to have visitors come, just to visit my garden and talk plants from as far away as Wichita, Kansas, Oklahoma, Joplin and St. Louis. Thank you, it was a pleasure to meet and visit with so many of you who read my columns, blog and books.

Butterfly season is upon is. The monarchs returned weeks ago, about the time the butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) started flowering. Tourists were out with their pocket knives and trowels along the roadsides, trying to dig up a piece of the brilliant orange-flowered plants. (Plants don’t transplant well when in bloom and besides, the root of butterfly weeds go down sixteen to eighteen inches between the rocks).

I hosted a group of visitors in my garden last summer and as I toured them through the herbs, I stopped beside a big clump of fennel to point out a caterpillar. Just as I pointed, a woman spoke up and said, “Oh I hate those nasty things. I keep a can of kerosene in the garden and a pair of gloves beside it. Every time I see one of those black, green and yellow stripped devils, I put on my gloves and toss them into the kerosene and watch them die.”

I noticed the gaping, open mouths of others in the group but before I could respond to the lady, she pointed in the air and said, as if on cue, “Ohhh, look at the butterfly. I just love butterflies, I wish I had them in my garden.”

When she finally quit chattering, I again pointed at the stripped caterpillar on the fennel. “Ma'am,” I said, “see the butterfly? See the caterpillar? They are one and the same thing.”

She gasped, and literally went pale. She had never made the connection between the stripped caterpillar and the black swallowtail butterfly, and promised she would never hunt them down and douse them with kerosene again.

The black swallowtail butterfly is one of the larger and more beautiful of our summer butterflies. Granted, the caterpillar will eat a leaf of fennel, or of dill, or even a leaf or two of parsley. But they never eat an entire plant, nor do they even harm the plant as far as I can tell. And the benefit you get from having another pollinator in the garden is worth a leaf or two. You’ll find swallowtails on many flowers, including zinnias, sweet peas, daisies and more. When they visit those flowers, they are sipping the nectar and in turn, pollinating the flowers. Butterflies are a benefit as well as one of the most decorative things you can have in the garden. Let them be, don’t spray to get rid of the caterpillars, they truly do no harm. And the beauty they add to a summer morning is a bonus.

Basil, America's Most Popular Herb

2010-06-18T10:26:00.000-05:00

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long

America’s Most Popular Herb

Twice in the past dozen years I’ve conducted a nationwide survey of retail nurseries and wholesale plant and seed companies, asking what the ten most popular herbs were, by sales. Twelve years ago, in writing the herb chapter for the Ball Red Book, basil was at the top of the list of most popular, and best selling herbs. The second survey, two years ago, revealed the number one herb was still basil. Those surveys resulted in my little book, Growing and Using the Ten Most Popular Herbs (available on my website: www.LongCreekHerbs.com). Some of the other herbs had changed places in the ratings, but basil, year in and year out, remains the most popular herb in the United States.

I’ve been harvesting basil nearly every day for meals for several weeks. The basils I’m growing this year are: Genovese, sweet, Thai, lemon, lime, boxwood, spicy globe, clove (also known as Indian sacred), green pepper, Greek columnar, and a couple more I can’t remember. Whether you’re growing one or one hundred basils, it’s important to start clipping them back now.

If you don’t keep basil harvested the leaf flavor changes from sweetly basil, to somewhat bitter. The goal of most basils, from the time you plant them until frost kills them to the ground, is to bloom. Some kinds bloom in late summer, but most begin “thinking” about blooming about now. Their strength starts going into producing large leaves that can support flowering and ultimately, seed production. To prevent that, and get the most use and best flavor from your basil plants, it is important to keep the plant clipped. Think of it as a hedge. If you are just picking a leaf now and then, afraid you will hurt the plant, change your thinking. The more you harvest basil, the faster it puts out new leaves with the best flavor. Don’t be afraid to harvest sprigs, even limbs, it’s not hurting the plant. But if you let the basil just grow and grow, you are probably going to be dissatisfied with the flavor of the leaves. (This is true of most herbs, the best flavors are in the new leaf growth and the more the plant is clipped and harvested, the better the flavor).

My lettuce quit producing about ten days ago and bolted (gone to seed). I pulled all but the red varieties, which can take more hot weather, and put the rest in the compost. Instead of lettuce on my daily sandwiches I pick several basil leaves. I like to make basil salad, which consists of a bowl full of mixed basil leaf varieties, a handful of halved cherry tomatoes, and a couple of teaspoons of balsamic vinegar, all tossed together.

The Springfield Herb Club came yesterday for what has become their annual visit to the garden and one of the appetizers I served was stuffed cherry tomatoes. These are easy to make and just about everyone likes them and asks for more. Use either large cherry or small Roma tomatoes, halved, seeds removed and dried inside with a paper towel. Set aside and mix the following: 8 oz. softened cream cheese, 2 French marigold blossoms, chopped (petals only, no green parts) and a tablespoon of chopped, fresh basil leaves. Add 1 tablespoon chopped pecans and mix together. Stuff the tomato halves with the cream cheese mixture and refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

Our open house to visit the garden is Saturday, June 26. Call 417-779-5450 if you plan to come; you’ll need directions and we’d like to know in advance how many to expect. See what’s happening in the garden this week at jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com. Questions or comments always welcome at Longcreekherbs@yahoo.com. Happy gardening!

Read the Label

2010-05-27T14:33:00.002-05:00

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long

Read the Label!

Besides writing and gardening, my main occupation is curing people’s nail fungus problems. If you garden or injure your nails, you will most likely get nail fungus. Years ago I created a formula that gets rid of this problem for most people. That is, if they read the directions. I ship my product all over the world and for the people who read the directions, it works. But I never cease to be amazed at the number of people who won’t take the time to read my very simple instructions.

This is true for pesticide labels, as well, people just don’t take the time to read the directions. In the last few years, pesticide companies have added more and more information to their product packaging, to the point that many bottles come with pages to read. Worse, you have to read much of the material before you ever find, the actual directions for using the product.

You know from reading me over the years here that I always recommend using non-chemical controls for garden insects if at all possible. I strongly believe that if you put something on your vegetable crop, you are going to eat it, eventually. I’m not totally opposed to using pesticides when absolutely necessary, but if there is any other means of controlling the bugs, I will.

Reading the label is important in products like carbaryl, which you will know by the name of Sevin. Some gardeners look to Sevin for solving all their bug problems, even though it kills the beneficial ones that often can control the pests. Just spraying to get rid of a pest, doesn’t mean you are being safe. The directions have some specific instructions for the length of time from spray to harvesting the vegetable (it’s called the PHI, or pre-harvest interval).

The amount of time you should wait between spraying a crop and harvesting, or PHI is only one day for asparagus, but it is 14 days on turnips and mustard. The PHI for tomatoes and eggplant is different than for something like potato beetles or corn. (And one pesticide often only works on some pests, not all of them).

The other issue when using chemical insecticides is the amount to use. I’ve heard people describe using a pesticide and not being sure they used enough, so they simply added a few more tablespoons of the concentrate, “just to be sure.” That’s dangerous for a number of reasons, and the most obvious one would be the time between spraying and safely eating the vegetable would be greatly extended. If you double or triple the amount of chemical you are using, you are making the crop less safe for you to consume. (Using more than the recommended rate also guarantees you are killing off bees and other beneficials that pollinate your crop; without pollination, there would be no crop).

If you can pick off potato beetles and smash them with your foot instead of spraying, you’ve saved money (potato beetles seldom do serious harm to potatoes). If you can pick off a tomato worm instead of spraying the whole patch, you’ve saved money and made your tomato crop safer to eat. Use as little chemicals as you can because in the long run you are going to eat whatever you put in your garden. And most important, read the directions, it’s there for a purpose.

Every summer I get lots of requests from people who would like to come and visit my garden to see what strange and unusual things I grow. We occasionally accept specific groups by advance reservation, but this year we have an open house day, just for readers of this column. If you would like to visit and talk gardening, we will be open for you on Friday, June 26. There’s no charge to visit that day, all we ask is that you call 417-779-5450 and let us know you are coming (and to get directions because you will need them).

To see what’s happening in my garden this week: jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com. Questions and comments always welcome through my website: www.LongCreekHerbs.com. Happy gardening!

Safer Lawns

2010-04-02T11:12:00.000-05:00

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long

Safer Lawns

According to the National Garden Bureau, there is an expected seven million first time gardeners this year. That’s a lot of new folks thinking about growing their own food, and I think that’s a good thing. I hope it will mean, also, people who grow their own gardens, in their own backyards, will consider the implications of the chemicals they put on their lawns and plants.

Dr. June Irwin, a doctor in Hudson, Quebec, has been on a campaign in her town for almost 20 years to reduce and eliminate lawn chemicals on residents’ lawns. Why? Because babies, children and pets, all play on, roll through, eat and sleep on lawns, and many of those chemicals are not safe for skin contact. Additionally, lots of the chemicals that are sprayed on so-called, “perfect” lawns and golf courses, wind up in the water supply. There’s a lot of evidence, according to Dr. Irwin, that many kinds of cancer and diseases can be traced to these chemicals in local water supplies. (Plus fish die offs and grotesquely-formed fish in streams below gold courses, apparently has a direct connection to chemical run-off from the courses).

A new feature-length, award-winning documentary called A Chemical Reaction tells how Paul Tukey, author of The Organic Lawn Care Manual and founder of http://www.SafeLawns.org, discovered June Irwin's story as he campaigned on behalf of a kinder, earth-friendly method of maintaining lawns.

Tukey documents Dr. Irwin’s efforts to remove the chemicals in her town, making it safer for children, pets and the town’s water supply. What Dr. Irwin accomplished was her town, Hudson, Quebec, became the first town in North America to ban all lawn chemicals. The town was subsequently sued by the world’s largest lawn care company, but the town won all court challenges all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court in 2001. Today, lawn chemicals are now banned in more than half of Canada and are not sold in Home Depot and other major retail chains in that country. (The same lawn chemicals are still sold in the U.S., however).

This new documentary, A Chemical Reaction, is available on DVD for $19.95 each from http://www.safelawns.org/chemical-reaction.

You may not have noticed after your lawn was treated for “weeds” and lawn insects, that lots of your songbirds were dead in the street. You may not even care, but the people whose water supply is downstream from you, may care.

Don’t pound on me saying I’m anti-chemical. I’m not. I am, however, concerned about the enormous amounts of needless chemicals people put on their lawns, and the effects those chemicals have, for wildlife, children, pets and the rising incidence of cancer and other diseases. There are safe, effective alternatives to dangerous chemicals for the lawn. Consider looking into safer ways of having an attractive lawn instead of blindly dumping chemicals you are afraid to touch or breathe.

To read more about the effects of atrazine and other chemicals on lawns, the proof in the demise of frogs in our streams, check out Grumpy Gardener's blog post. Surely we can do something good to stop this ongoing problem, besides just sitting by and waiting while our wildlife dies and our population's cancer rate grows.

Late Winter Snowstorm

2010-01-09T19:05:00.000-06:00

The Ozarks Herbalist; for The Ozarks Mountaineer magazine.
Jim Long

Early Spring Snowstorm

For many years I made annual trips to Tennessee, buying landscape plants from the wholesale nurseries there. It was a trip I looked forward to, driving a truck across Arkansas and Tennessee to the Warren County and McMinnville nurseries. I’d choose the plants I would use for the season in my landscape work and take a bit of time to visit the countryside around central Tennessee.

One year, in preparing for this annual trip, I waited a bit late. It was March, the weather had warmed, the jonquils were in bloom in drifts along the side of the house. It felt solidly like spring.

I had two half grown calves at the time, which required a five gallon bucket of water twice a day. I had two goats to milk, a dozen chickens to feed and water, along with six geese, a dog and cat. In order to be gone the six days it would take for the trip, I had asked a friend to house sit.

He, being a vegetarian, would bring his own food, so I intentionally used up the groceries in the house, not wanting to leave a stray ham bone or a pound of hamburger around in his way. I purposely didn’t buy groceries of any kind, not bread nor milk or even potatoes. The friend would live on rice and beans, tofu, soy milk.

Since warm weather seemed to be firmly settled in, I hadn’t cut any wood, either, which was my only source of heat. I was down to nine sticks of wood and it wasn’t even necessary to have the woodstove fired up at night.

I remember the afternoon well. It was in the 70s and I was shirtless, working outside making some repairs on the wellhouse. The radio was on, the music keeping me company. At noon newstime I listened to the weatherman who said, “Storm warnings and possibilites of heavy snow for Stone and Taney Counties in Missouri.” I laughed. In fact, I swore at the weatherman. “Look outside you moron,” I remember saying out loud. “It’s 70 degrees. Snow? Are you crazy? I already have early garden planted!”

I finished my outdoor chores and went inside to pack. I had at that time, a little 1976 hatchback car, bought cheap, which would take me to town where I kept my truck at work. I continued to enjoy the warm afternoon, even taking a shower outdoors, just to show that it was, indeed, springtime.

Around 4:00 p.m., huge snow flakes began to fall. Then clusters of flakes. Of course the ground was warm, so nothing was sticking, but the snowshower picked up. Again I laughed and went back to my preparations for the trip.

By ten o’clock that night, the ground was covered with snow and it was still snowing. The beds of jonquils and tulips were nowhere to be seen, their heads bent beneath the heavy snow. Still, I went to bed confident that I’d arise to melting snow and head off for my Tennessee trip.

But morning brought new surprises. The first thing I noticed was the house was cold. Since I was nearly out of wood, I had not been having a fire in the wood stove. I then noticed I had no electricity, so there was no radio to hear what was happening in the rest of the world. Outside, I could see that in level places, there was more than a foot of snow, with drifts where the wind had blown over night.

I checked the telephone and found it to be dead, as well. It wasn’t until I heard the dead silence on the phone line that I realized I might be in a difficult situtation. Never before in all the years I’d lived on the farm, remote, far from town, had I ever allowed myself to be out of food. But this time, with my housesitter friend coming, bringing his own supplies, I’d seen no need to stock up. I looked around at what there was to eat.

I’d spent part of the previous summer, canning, so there were a dozen jars of grape jelly. Half a dozen plum jams, eighteen jars of sweet pickles and two jars of pickled hot peppers sat on the shelf. Candied violet blossoms were there and a half dozen jars of tomato preserves, too.

That was it for food. No bread. No meat. No vegetables. Only pickles and jelly and jam, but no bread nor peanut butter. Well, I could surely miss a couple of meals without much difficulty, I thought to myself.

Then it began to occur to me that the two five gallon buckets of water I carried for the calves, and the bucketful for the chickens and goats, couldn’t be gotten, because the well had an electric pump. No electricity, no water. In fact, knowing there was no water on hand, I was immediately thirsty. I ate some grape jelly and a few old, stale crackers, making myself even more thirsty.

I could gather snow and melt it, I thought. But I didn’t have enough wood, and the snow on the ground was now at the fourteen inch level, in big drifts. I didn’t have a chainsaw at the time, nor even a wood cutting saw. I began to panic.

Each day I would use a little of the wood, and melt enough snow to keep the animals alive. If pressed to it, they could eat snow, like I was doing. I gathered broken limbs and kept a small fire in the stove, realizing that if I didn’t, the water pipes would freeze and I would have additional problems, even if the electricity did come back.

One day passed, then two, then three and four. On the fourth day, I was getting really hungry. I’d eaten jam and pickles until I couldn’t stand to eat any more. I’d eaten snow until my tongue was numb and yet I was still thirsty. I’d tried driving my little car but got only a few feet before the depth of the snow lifted the poor little thing so high the wheels were off the ground. Shoveling the heavy, wet snow, was useless as it would take miles of shoveling, up several steep hills, to make any difference.

Finally in mid afternoon of the fourth day, I decided I absolutely had to see people, to know how extensive the storm was, and to get food. My nearest neighbor was two miles away and I hiked slowly through the drifts in the woods, falling over limbs and rocks hidden by the snow. The neighbor and his wife lived closer to the highway and had a four wheel drive pickup. The neighbor drove me to town, where I bought four large grocery sacks of food. I bought a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, five pounds of potatoes, lots and lots of canned goods.

The neighbor drove me as far as he could, but the rural roads hadn’t been cleared, so I still had about a mile to hike through the high snow, through the hills and woods, over barbed wire fences and through piles of broken trees. My brown paper grocery bags soon got wet, I dropped potatoes and canned goods through the woods, making several trips back and forth to carry home all that I had bought. But that night I ate well after draging home a few more broken branches to burn in the stove. I lit candles and ate close to the wood stove.

The next day the electricity came back on. By mid day, the telephone was reconnected. The following day the snow melted rapidly as the weather warmed back into the upper 60s. The jonquils and tulips began to slowly raise their heads and soon the world was back to normal. Never since, in the 29 years that have followed, have I allowed my pantry to become bare. One never knows when a 70 degree day might turn into a fourteen inch snowfall!

Changing Climate Affects Our Gardens

2009-12-21T14:31:00.002-06:00

Ozarks Gardening
Copyright© 2009, Jim Long

Mistletoe has always seemed like a southern plant to me. It grows high up in the limbs of trees, usually in oaks and elms. I used to drive down into South-Central Arkansas to collect mistletoe to give to friends at Christmas. The assumption has always been that the climate here is too cold for this semi-parasitic plant to exist. The seeds are carried by birds which leave bird droppings on tree branches, and the mistletoe grows where it’s planted.

Just recently I discovered several bunches of mistletoe growing on the Arkansas-Missouri border. I’ve tromped through the woods in that area for three decades and have never seen any evidence of the plant until this year.

When I moved to the farm thirty years ago, I wasn’t able to grow figs or muscadines in my garden and now I grow both, in several varieties. And back then, when I moved to the farm, there weren’t armadillos to contend with, either. They first arrived at my place in 1991 and since that time, have traveled northward, the entire length of the state of Missouri and I’ve heard reports from friends in Des Moines, Iowa, who’ve seen armadillos there in the past two seasons.

Certainly there are those who refuse to believe our planet is warming nor that our milder seasons are anything other than a cycle. It becomes more difficult to accept that view when I have personally witnessed radical changes in my own garden. I’ve moved from a Zone 6 gardener to a Zone 7a, which is significant in when and what I plant.

I observe cause and effect. We pollute more, faster, than any civilization in the earth’s history. We burn tires, trees, coal, fuel of all kinds and it all goes into the atmosphere. It doesn’t just disappear, it has an effect, on weather, on water sources and on what we breathe and eat.

For the first time ever, fire ants were found in Missouri this year. We’ve long believed those nasty little critters couldn’t survive our winters. We’d had regulations that prohibited plants with soil that wasn’t treated to kill fire ants, from being brought into the state. Oddly enough, it wasn’t infected plant soil that brought the destructive ants in. Instead, they hitched a ride in large bales of hay that were brought into the state for feed after last year’s ice storm. Once they arrived, the ants began colonizing areas, reproducing and making livestock and humans quite uncomfortable with their stings. It’s unlikely the ants will decide to move south. Once they are in an area, they will spread just like the armadillos have.

Like it or not, as gardeners we have to change some of the ways we garden. Planting early, using two crops a year of some things, being more vigilant for new insects and using better, safer controls of those, are all ways we will have to change.

Growing your own vegetables can be frustrating, sometimes challenging but always rewarding. Read what’s happening in my garden this week at http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com. Happy gardening!

Long Family's History Through Quilts

2009-11-17T12:56:00.006-06:00

Quilted Lives
Written for The Ozarks Mountaineer magazine
Copyright© 2009, Jim Long

In the way that e-mail and Facebook connect people today, the quilt once served the purpose for socializing in a community. Church women held weekly quilting get-togethers, either in the back of the church, or in someone’s home.

Making a quilt took a commitment of time and ideas. Either stretched on a quilt stretcher, or rolled on a wooden roller, ladies would sit around the quilt and sew. Individuals worked in small areas, sewing the pieces into blocks, the blocks into a quilt top. Every week the quilt slowly came together, piece by piece until it was whole, while the participants visited, gossiped and kept up on each other’s lives. News of the day, politics, problems in the community, errant children and misbehaving husbands, were all fair game around the quilt.

The quilt symbolized the fabric of the community, each person adding their own stitches and personality. And the quilt served as a love offering, for the person it was being made for, or for an auction to benefit some person, institution or event.

As the last person in my family line, I have inherited several quilts - quilts which tell the story of our family. Each quilt holds the hopes and dreams of a generation, and more, of the community from which it came.

The oldest quilt I have is one made by my great-grandmother Sumpter. She and my great grandfather came to St. Clair County by covered wagon soon after the Civil War, traveling from Sumpter County, Tennessee, to Johnson City, Missouri. That quilt, made by great grandmother Sumpter, was wrapped around a bowl given to the couple as a wedding present, and which remains with the quilt, still. Imagine the stories that quilt could tell, having been wrapped around my ancestors as they traveled away from the chaos of the remnants of War, to new territory in Missouri. The quilt has been well protected through the passing generations and is remarkable in its preservation.

The second quilt I have inherited is the wedding quilt made for my parents by the women of the Upper Monegaw community. The quilt is dated and signed, “Upper Monegaw Friends, 1933.” Having been finished right before my parents married in 1934, it contains the signatures of ninety people, embroidered into each block of the quilt. It reads like a census of the community, a tapestry of one little moment in time.

Reading through the list of names on the quilt, I recognize neighbors of my grandparents Long and great grandparents’ Sumpter. I see cousins, uncles and aunts, great grandparents, I recognize names of families who migrated West when the Longs moved from Pennsylvania, into Indiana, Iowa, Kansas and finally, Missouri. I find the names of families whose lives have been woven together over generations. The Hagens, the Shorts, the Bishops, Fosters, Sewards, Carrols, Wiecherts, Culbertsons, Sumpters and Longs, all tied together by place, kinship, and this quilt.

The third quilt I have is the baby quilt, misnamed because it is a full bed-size quilt, that the ladies of the Taberville Methodist Church made for my mother before I was born. It, too, has been preserved and passed down to me.

And the final and last quilt I have in my possession, is the wedding quilt the ladies of the Taberville Community Center made for my wife and me when we were married. Because my then wife was from Texas, they thoughtfully chose a Texas Star quilt pattern, and presented it to us at the wedding reception in my parents home in 1968.

Those quilts all trace my family’s history, from the early beginnings of a young couple fleeing the devastation after the Civil War, through my parents’ marriage, my birth and my marriage all those years ago. The quilts were treasured and protected through one hundred thirty nine years of my family’s history. They have wrapped newly weds, protected dishes, covered babies, been the pride of new homes and embodied the hopes and dreams of four generations of families.

It is both a blessing to have such treasures, and it is an immense burden, as well. Even though the quilts are all in excellent condition for their age, I wouldn’t use them for everyday use. They’re too big to display, and being the end of the line in my family, the only one left who they mean anything to, I have to decide what should happen to them in the future.

The families of the Upper Monegaw community are gone, all of the names on the wedding quilt are now merely names on tombstones. The quilts were made with love, neighbor to neighbor. Somewhere in the stitches are the stories of the community, of the families who made the quilts. Somewhere in the ancient fabric, the long journey of the wagon going north resides. And yet, what happens to the quilts in the future remains uncertain. What does one do when the weight of previous generations comes down to quilts in a closet?

A snapshot of a community, 1933, Johnson City, Missouri
Here are the names of the people who signed, and helped make the wedding quilt for my parents, Lloyd W. and Mada M. Long. The names are listed according to how the participants signed the quilt, including their punctuation and the dates they signed the quilt before it was embroidered. It’s interesting to note that some who signed, put a period after their name. Several men signed the quilt, with others signing each of their children’s names, their wives or mothers doing the embroidery on the quilt. Not only is the list a snapshot of the community at the time, it is also a listing of all of my living relatives still in that community.

Mrs. Luella Carroll
Gladys Seward
Herbert D. Foster
Earnest & Flossie Foster
Chas. Dines
Mrs. Maggie O Hagen
Mr. Ormond R Hagen
Mr & Mrs Guss Wiechert, Mar 1933
George W. Thompson
Alice Dines
Linn Crowder
Orlando Donnel Feb 21/1933
Wendell Haye
Pauline Carroll
Emma Bishop
Ruby V. Ginter
Katherine & Hazel Short
Phayne Bishop
George Fredrick Hagan
Kenneth Chiles
Laverne Chiles
Ormond Leroy Hagan
Arline Hays
Ester Smith
Dorthy Smith
Ferne Bishop
Edward Chiles
Inez Lorene Hagan
Nolan Culbertson
Lena Smith
Leonard Wiechert
Grandma Long
Beulah Long
Jim Long
Tildie Long
Mrs. Chas. Lillard.
Helen Enson
Mrs James
Cleta Lillard
Coriss Lillard
C C Oetley
Zoe Ginter
Arthur Hays
Mrs. Hays
Milton Shepard
Rosalie Shepard
Dorthea Ridgeway
Vilolet Hunsucker
“Lest Ye Forget” Avery Hunsucker
Myrtle E. Thompson
Everleigh Crowder
Ermine L Wain
Alvin Long
W T Ridgeway
Bernice Shepard
Jessie Montonya Jr
Violet Wiechert
Raymond Smith
Elmer Allen
Elmore Shepard
Cora Inskeep
Alfred Raymon Hagan
Ruby Dorrel, Feb. 21/1933
LIzzie C. Gunter
Leonard Dorrel, Feb. 21/1933
Burt Long
Joel Foster
Roseanna Dorrel, Feb 21/1933
Loyel Smith
Howard Inskeep
Lecil Inskeep
Mrs. Elizabeth Carroll
Lenn & Luther Crowder
Kenneth Short
Lavon Lillard
H.A. Long Family
Clarence Long
Charlie Long
Carlene Long
L. W. Long
Joyce Everett
Alberta Everett
Mary Gates
Nancy Gates
James Gates
To Miss Mada from Upper Monegaw Friends, 1933

Basil Season

2009-07-27T10:59:00.001-05:00

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long
August is Basil Season

I am just back from the annual International Herb Association conference, held this year at the Huntsville, Alabama Botanic Garden. One of our speakers at the conference was Dr. Mentreddy, who’s the head of research of basil at the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University in Huntsville. His research focuses on the highest concentrations of oils useful in preventing or treating diabetes and colon cancer. He is trialing 87 varieties of basil. The total number of basil varieties world wide is 150, therefore comparison studies of 87 varieties is a significant.

Dr. Mentreddy explained that two of the best basils (meaning highest is useful oils for medicinal purposes) so far are Indian holy basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum sny. sanctum) and one called, Ocimum selloi, the variety I grow that is commonly called, Green Pepper Basil. Mine came from Oaxaca, Mexico while Dr. Mentreddy’s sample came from Uruguay. (I passed my green pepper basil along to Nichols Garden Seed in Oregon and they are the only sellers of that basil as far as I know, You can contact them by visiting my website, www.LongCreekHerbs.com and clicking on, “Looking for Plants?”)

Basil comes into its own in July and August. If you are a first time basil grower, you may not have realized yet how important it is to consistently harvest basil. Leave it alone and it either goes to seed or gets bitter. I often see first time gardeners plant one lonely little basil plant and feel they need to baby it and not pick too much. It becomes a, “precious little plant” and the gardener is just glad to see it grow, but afraid to actually use more than a leaf or two.

Take your scissors and prune basil like it’s a hedge. The more you prune, every week to ten days, the more leaves it produces and the better the flavor. Quit shearing it and you’ll have bitter leaves due to the concentration of basil oils.

I like to chop basil leaves into salads. I use basil leaves instead of lettuce on sandwiches. And I make pesto often. I put a big, double handful of basil leaves - any kind, into the food processor. I add some nuts, pine nuts, almonds, pecans, it doesn’t matter which, and some grated parmesan cheese and a clove or two of garlic. To that I add about a tablespoon of olive oil then pulse blend the whole thing until I have a coarse paste. This will keep in the refrigerator for about six or seven days. I use it over fresh pasta, in summer cold tomato soups, spread on crackers or I slather some under the skin of chicken breasts before grilling or broiling them.

Summer is the basil season. I only grow 12 varieties, nothing close to the 87 of Dr. Mentreddy, but I am certain I enjoy mine every bit as much as he does in his research.

To see photos of the International Herb Association conference, Huntsville Botanic Garden and my garden, too, visit my blog: http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com. Happy gardening!

Summer Peaches

2009-06-28T11:04:00.001-05:00

When I was five, the lady next door passed away. Her relatives took what they wanted from the house, but set her old cast iron cook stove outdoors under an old peach tree and the house set abandoned for years. That ancient stove became a playhouse for me and my six year old neighbor, Betty. The lot was securely fenced and my mother could watch us from our kitchen window.

That year my mother cleaned out her spice cabinets because of pantry moths, and put the tins of herbs and spices outside. I knew many of the spices because of their fragrance and considered these tins of seasonings a rare find for our make believe kitchen in the neighbor’s yard.

I carted the spices next door and arranged them in the warming oven above the cook top. Since both of us children were just beginning to read, it didn’t occur to us to use alphabetic order, but instead, we put them in the order of our favorite smells and the foods we would make believe we were using them in.

I liked cinnamon, so that was first, followed by stick cinnamon, allspice and cloves. Nutmeg followed, then mint leaves, oregano, marjoram and thyme. Parsley had no smell at all, nor did the bay leaf, and neither Betty nor I liked the smells of fennel, fenugreek or celery seed, so those were relegated to the last place on the shelf.

I had watched my mother make pickles that year and Betty and I found an old crock in the left over household items and pushed it up beside the stove. The peach tree over the stove was full of still green, late summer peaches and we began picking them for our pickle crock. We added rainwater to the crock as the peaches filled the space, much like my mother had done when making her delicious seven day sweet cucumber pickles earlier that year.

After what I determined to be enough time for the “pickles” to be ready, Betty and I decided to can the pickles, just as both of our mothers had done with their pickles. Fortunately, the old garden shed not far from the antique stove had boxes of old, blue canning jars and lots of zinc canning lids. We chose pint sized jars, which were easier for our small hands than the quart and half gallon jars were.

On our “canning” day, we put the fruit jars in the oven to sterilize them. Never mind there was no fire in the stove, this was make believe. We “baked” the jars and used big, fuzzy leaves of the mullein plant for our hot pads to remove the jars and set them on the stove. We then filled each jar with our peaches from the old stone crock, adding the make believe brine, as well. Then to each jar I added a pinch of allspice, one of cinnamon, one of cloves, and then, because Betty thought it looked nice, we added a bay leaf and a stick of cinnamon. We screwed on the lids and set them in rows across the top of the cast iron stove.

Mother, who was certainly watching the two busy children out the window came over to investigate. “Look Mother, we’ve made pickled peaches!” I said with excitement. I removed the lid of one jar for her to smell the wonderful, spicy fragrance.

Mother looked over our work and said, “You two have really worked hard. These are beautiful pickles and you’ve filled each jar to the top.” Then she said, “You realize, don’t you, these are not to be eaten?”

Oh, yes, we knew that, we were just playing make believe. We were going to turn our attention from our kitchen to making it a restaurant and serve even more things. Since we were the only children our age in our little town, the restaurant clientele would be our pets and Betty’s dolls.

I think back to that summer and what pleasure we got from Mom’s discarded herb and spice tins. I learned since that cleaning out the spice cabinet is a good thing to do once a year. Herbs like parsley, celery leaves, bay and chives, lose three fourths of their flavor after about nine months. Stronger spices like cinnamon, cloves and allspice, are good for about eighteen months. Refreshing the jars of all those things on a regular basis insures their best flavors. But one summer, with old spices, two small children had a great deal of fun, thanks to my mother’s housecleaning of her spice cabinet.

Readers questions and comments are always welcome at Longcreekherbs@yahoo.com. Visit Jim’s blog to see what he grows: http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com.

Fairy Hats, Fairy Corners

2009-06-11T23:00:00.000-05:00

My grandfather plowed his garden each spring with a team of horses and a plow. Walking behind the team, he’d guide them as they slowly turned over the sandy soil of his west central Missouri farm.

He had grown up using the moldboard plow and as long as he gardened, he never used anything else to turn the soil. My grandpa was born in a sod house in what became the state of Kansas and lived there with his family until he was about 10 years old.

My ancestors moved West with the expansion of the country, arriving in the Virginia territory in 1647, from England. As the family grew and sons moved off to start their own farms, each new homestead followed many of the habits and customs of the family. They planted corn and grew gardens, and they passed along the customs of their ancestors. One of those early English customs they brought with them was to leave the corners of the garden untended, for “the wee folks.”

I remember asking my grandfather the year before my grandmother died when I was five, just why he didn’t plow the corners of the garden. Granddad blushed and looked embarrassed. He hesitated, then simply said, “The team can’t turn a square corner and the plow won’t reach there.”

It made sense because I had watched him plow the garden and it was true the horses couldn’t reach the corners. And because the corners were never plowed, certain plants always grew there.

You’d see larkspurs and poppies, hollyhocks, four o’clocks, bachelor’s buttons, coreopsis, winter onion, catnip, horehound and many others. And once I started watching Grandpa & Grandma’s garden corners, I soon realized that most farms in our area had the same kind of corners with the same plants growing in them.

It was only when I moved to southern Missouri as an adult that I learned there was more to the story. One day I was visiting with a pharmacist-apothecary friend about plants and gardens and mentioned how my grandfather used to leave the corners of the garden.

My friend smiled and said, “Yes. Fairy gardens.”

“Excuse me?” I said. “I don’t know what you mean.”
He explained that it’s a custom across the Ozarks and used to be common across much of the Midwest. English, Irish, Scottish and other immigrants brought the custom from the old country of leaving the corners of the garden for the fairies. It was believed that the fairies needed a place to live, a place that was safe from the family dog and somewhere to rest in the heat of the day.

People thought that it was the fairies who tended the plants and encouraged them. They were the ones who called in the butterflies and bees when it was time to pollinate the flowers.
The fairies lived on nectar from the flowers, they drank dewdrops from the lady’s mantle “cups” (the leaves, which are bowl shaped and which collect dew in early morning; that dew,because of the reflectiveness of the leaves, looks like diamonds in early morning).
It was the fairies who taught the pole beans which way to twine up the strings, and they were the ones who showed the sunflowers which direction to look each morning before the sun came up. And you know the fairies have been working during the night, because the next morning, you find their little caps, where they forgot them, on top of the perennial onion flowers.

It all made sense to me when my pharmacist friend explained the customs he had grown up with. I realized why my grandfather had looked so embarrassed at my question when I was five. He’d simply been embarrassed to try to explain something he didn’t totally believe, but still practiced because it was family custom. Such “oddities,” as he termed them, always embarrassed him.

What the fairy corners accomplish is providing a place for beneficial insects. Lady bugs, beneficial wasps that attack aphids on tomatoes, praying mantis, which lay their eggs to over-winter on old plant stalks, all of those rely on the fairy corners for space.

I continue to observe this custom that came down to me through our family by leaving fairy corners in my own garden. I no longer plow my garden because I switched to raised beds twenty five years ago and have gravel pathways between them. But I have found that having a fairy corner is helpful for many reasons.

First, it’s attractive. The poppies, larkspur, hollyhocks and other flowers give a continuing splash of color for the first two months of the garden season. The plants reseed themselves, requiring little care and come up each spring at the right time (which is helpful for anyone who has had difficulty getting poppies to grow and bloom).

Next, it is on those perpetual plants where I find the praying mantis nests each year. It’s where the lady bugs hatch out and spread into the garden and where birds and garden spiders hang out, keeping balance in the garden. Tachinid flies, that are parasites on other insects, along with ground beetle, lacewings and other beneficial insects find comfort and safety in the fairy corner, as well.

The fairy corners provide a reliable display of flowers each spring. There’s a balance between the taller and the shorter plants and because they grow where the seeds drop, there is no transplant shock. And the fairy corner also gives a permanent space for the cool season herbs to reseed themselves, always coming up at the right time. It was in these corners that my grandmother grew dill, and it was where the catnip and horehound, both perennials, also grew.
Some of these plants sprout and begin growing in late fall or early winter, while others, such as dill, cilantro and poppies, will emerge from the ground in January or February. And because you won’t be disturbing the soil or the bed where they are growing, will grow on in their natural cycle and bloom better than when planted at your convenience rather than theirs.

If you would like to have a fairy garden, here’s how to begin. Find a corner of the garden that can be left alone. No plowing or digging is done after the first planting. I sometimes mulch mine to hold moisture, but even then I use only a light mulch in order that the seeds that fall from the plants can find the soil.

In the fall of the year, after a couple of good frosts, begin scattering seed into lightly raked or loosened soil, then rake the area lightly again after planting so that the seeds are nearly covered. It takes about two years or longer to get a fairy corner established, simply because some plants such as hollyhocks, bloom the second year after planting. But others, like poppies and larkspurs, bloom the spring after a fall planting.

You can simply put seed of all of any or all of the following mixture into a bowl and stir them together before planting. This will give you a better fairy garden then trying to plant individual plants in tight little rows. (Fairies don’t like rows, they like “relaxed” plantings. And if you plant in rows, I promise you, they'll mix them up). Choose from these, or mix them all, for a well rounded fairy corner:
Larkspur, doubles, singles, mixed colors
Poppies, any of the annuals, such as Icelandic, old fashioned bread poppies and others.
Hollyhocks, any of the old fashioned heirloom varieties.
Four o’clocks
Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena) which was first grown in England around 1570 and has folk names like “Jack in Prison” and “Love entangle.”
Dill
Bachelor’s buttons
Sweet rocket, Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis), which attracts several beneficial insects including Japanese beetle parasites
Golden marguerite (Anthemis tinctoria) which attracts lacewings, hoverflies, tachinids and others.
Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa), which attracts butterflies
Bee balm (Monarda sp.), which attracts butterflies, beneficial wasps and others

The fairy corner will create a haven for beneficial insects as well as attracting butterflies and birds. By planting your mixture of seeds, some in the fall, some in the spring, you will soon be providing space for the fairies, and the beneficial insects and your garden will thrive. The splash of color will attract your neighbors to look over the fence, and soon your fairy garden will be perpetually taking care of itself. Add a birdbath (the fairies like that, too), and your fairy corner will be following a tradition that’s been passed down through many generations of gardens.

Watch for fairy hats on your onion blossoms, you'll discover the fairies do a great job of tending the garden while you sleep, but they are awfully forgetful where they leave their hats.

Happy gardening!

Fairy Hats, Fairy Corners

2009-06-11T21:36:00.006-05:00

Don't Mow Bulb Foliage

2009-05-16T16:35:00.002-05:00

Ozarks Gardening May 15, 2009
Jim Long

Don’t Mow the Bulb Foliage!

I’ve noticed as I get older I like mowing the lawn more than I did just a few years ago. Evidently getting older causes me to find the lawnmower increasingly appealing. Over the past thirty years on my farm I have pushed the boundaries of mowing farther and farther into the woods. I blaze trails between the walnut trees with the mower, I’ve opened up little meadows where new stands of wildflowers have sprung up. And over the years I’ve also noticed in local retirement areas, when men retire from a lifetime of corporate work, they turn to the lawnmower for something they can still control. Apparently no longer responsible for lots of employees, no longer looking after the day to day working structure, it is to the lawn the retirees turn. It’s their new territory, their new domain and they can totally dominate the greenery with a powerful lawnmower. That’s just my observation and I think I may be fitting into that category myself.

One of the pitfalls of being lord over a patch of green lawn is an inclination to mow everything down that doesn’t seem essential. Recently I’ve been noticing lots of retirement age men on riding lawnmowers, mowing down the irises, the yellowing daffodil leaves and the aging tulip tops. To someone who is used to overseeing the structure of a business, it probably seems logical that since the flowers have bloomed on those plants, then it’s time to get rid of the leftovers and move on to other things.

The fact is, those yellowing tulip leaves, the frazzled and not very attractive daffodil foliage, actually serve an important purpose. Think of it this way - spring bulbs have just one chance to have a meal. The foliage after blooming is there because the bulbs need to store up enough strength for ten months until it’s time to bloom again. If the foliage is cut back shortly after blooming, year after year, the bulbs will quit producing flowers. Leave the foliage alone until it turns brown and shrivels up. Once the foliage is dead, the bulbs have stored up enough energy for next year and you can mow down whatever is left of the tops. But avoid the urge to mow the foliage while it is still partly green and give the bulbs a chance to have their last meal of the year.

Right now, while you can still see where your bulbs are, and as they leaves die down, is a great time to divide the bulbs. Tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and similar spring bulbs, all benefit greatly by being dug up and divided every three or four years. Mix in some bone meal or bulb fertilizer in the soil and spread the bulbs farther apart. You’ll have considerably more blooms in the coming years by doing so.

Iris, on the other hand, should be dug and divided in late August or September. You can tie a ribbon on the colors you want to move, but let the foliage grow all summer long. Then divide the clumps, laying them shallowly in the soil, adding bone meal, late in the summer. But don’t mow iris leaves now, it practically ensures sparse blooming next season.
Readers have asked so here’s the formula once again for stopping the bothersome bugs that riddle the leaves on hollyhocks and keep them from blooming well. Start spraying now, repeating weekly as the hollyhocks put up shoots and begin to bloom. Don’t spray in the heat of the day (which is true of most any kind of spraying).

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
1 Tablespoon canola oil or horticultural oil
1/2 teaspoon of dish soap
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 gallon water

Mix the ingredients, pour into a sprayer, shake thoroughly, and spray the tops and bottoms of the hollyhock leaves.
Check what’s happening in my garden this week at http://jimlongsgarden.blogspot.com/. Happy gardening!

A Gardener's Loss - Update

2008-11-30T10:21:00.014-06:00

Update on my gardening friend, Ester, 12-6-08. She's holding up pretty well, missing lots of things from the house, of course. She lost all her houseplants including a very elegant aloe plant she'd had for 20 years. A few fans of this blog have sent contributions to the account (listed below). Any help, especially contributions of checks, going for building materials, are all greatly appreciated by the family. Thank you for thinking of them during this cold winter season. Jim

Ester Shouse is a lifelong friend and an avid gardener. Her late husband, Roy, took me fishing, taught me how to hunt for ducks, and many other outdoor things, when my father didn't have the time when I was a kid. I grew up with Ester and Roy's 9 children, we swam together, fished and hunted together. The kids, 7 of them still living, are all grown, some with children of their own. But Ester's house has remained the central part of this large family's world. Three of the boys, Richard, the oldest, Roy Jr. and Fred, the youngest, all lived at home and drove back and forth to Lees Summit, MO to work.

Ester, now 80, told me last year she had to slow down somewhat with her gardening. She had planted 500 cabbage plants and 200 tomato plants each spring for the past 50 years but this past year she had cut back to only 200 cabbages and 100 tomato plants. "I just can't do that much any more," she said. And nearly all of the produce, plus corn, beans, peas and other things, was all canned, or frozen for their 5 large deep freezes. That, plus the several deer, fish, squirrels and ducks the boys got, was a major part of their food.

I spent a great deal of time in my growing up years at the Shouse's house. When I turned 16 and bought my first 1950 Chevy car (bought with the $75 I'd made raising pigs when I was 13), I would often stop by Ester's house late at night before heading home from a date. There was always something cooking in a pot on the stove and I knew I was welcome to have some. It was Ester who taught me to eat hot peppers and it is to her I give credit to my love for those. My own mother made great chili, but it was Ester's chili that brought tears to my eyes and sweat to my brow. Whatever their household had, it was happily shared and I was always treated like one of the family.

A few days before Thanksgiving in the middle of the night, Ester's house burned. She was upstairs in her bedroom. A grandson, Byron (just back from Iraq) and his wife, Vickie were in another bedroom and Ester's sons, Richard, and Fred were sleeping in their bedroom. Roy Jr. was downstairs sleeping on the couch and it was he who yelled out the alarm that the house was burning.

All got out alive, thankfully. Roy escaped with his billfold and jeans, but suffered serious smoke inhalation and he was airlifted to a hospital in Kansas City. Byron and Vickie didn't even have time to get their clothes, nor did Fred or Richard. Car keys, false teeth, glasses, clothes, all were left behind because the house went up in just mere seconds. Ester's hair was singed, but suffered no physical injuries.

I'm posting some photos here, of Ester and son, Richard, in front of what was left of their old and very modest house. There's a photo of some of the boys sifting through the debris to find anything like car keys or coins. I took a photo of the canning - Ester had canned 157 quarts of tomatoes during the summer and I have no idea how much sauerkraut. The canning sets eerily on some newly built metal shelves that Fred had installed last year in the basement.

If anyone reading this post feels moved to help, the address follows at the bottom of this posting. They don't need clothes or household items, neighbors have been bringing those. Co-w0rkers where Richard, Roy and Fred work took up a collection and bought boots, jeans, etc. What they will need most is cash, to try and rebuild a house for Ester. It won't be the old two story place where everyone congregated, but it also won't have stairs where Ester might fall (she's fallen twice in the past year and broken the same arm, falling down some rickety old stairs from the kitchen). A new house will be built. Pete is a carpenter and cabinet maker; Roy and Fred are welders; all of the boys are hard working and so labor will not be a problem. But buying the materials will be a challenge. There was no insurance on the house.

Somehow out of the ashes another house will arise. This is an amazing family, a family I have been a part of for my lifetime. Not just connected by gardening, but in so many other ways, too. If you want to help, there's an account set up in Ester Shouse's name at the Security Bank of Rich Hill, at Rockville (MO), 320 West Osage Ave., Rockville, MO 64780. (You can barely find Rockville on a map of Missouri; it's in West Central Missouri, near Nevada, Appleton City and Clinton, Missouri. It's a tiny village of about 200 people, a very poor area. Once a thriving town with a railroad and a farming economy, there's not much left any more).

Thank you for any help you can give. Know that your gift is a welcome and badly needed donation to a gardening family who have lost everything and have to start over from scratch.

Chili Suppers at a One Room School

2008-11-23T17:54:00.001-06:00

The Ozarks Herbalist
for The Ozarks Mountaineer
Jim Long

Chili Suppers

It’s funny how the smell of something can bring back a memory long forgotten. You can pass by a person while walking down the street and catch a whiff of perfume or cologne and immediately flash back to the memory of your first date in high school, long ago.

The smell of chili powder does that for me, not remind me of a date, but of an event and a time in my life. One whiff and I’m reminded of the chili suppers at Taberville School. The P.T.A., an acronym for the Parents and Teachers Association, which predates the P.T.O., would hold chili suppers in the winter months to raise money for the school. Profits went to buy maintenance items like chalk, toilet tissue, floor sweep for the wood floors and coal or wood for the stove.

In my memory, chili suppers were always on Friday nights. We kids would have to finish our lessons and homework early in order to clean the room before we left for home. The blackboards had to be washed, floors swept and trash cans emptied and their contents burned behind the school house.

The envied job to get on that afternoon was dusting the blackboard erasers. There was always a race to see who could get their hand up first to volunteer for dusting the erasers, and everyone else wanted to go along to help. For some reason it was always a two person job, which was strange because we only had about ten erasers. First, you’d have to wash the blackboards with water from the well outside. Then you’d work on the erasers.

The job of dusting the erasers consisted of carrying them out in a bucket, then spending several minutes on each eraser, pounding two against each other, then one by one on the back of the school house. It was a dusty job, but made more pleasant because you were out of sight of the teacher, and you were outdoors.

The teacher was usually so occupied with overseeing the floor cleaning and straightening up, she would forget about the eraser cleaners and you could count on being outdoors, goofing off for a half hour or more.

After the kids went home at 3:00 p.m., the teacher checked over the room one more time. She’d put away all of her desk supplies and check to see each student had not left anything out on their desk. By that time, the first of the P.T.A. ladies would be arriving and start putting out the tables for cooking and serving.

The school owned a double burner hot plate and the ladies got to work making the chili. Other women unloaded the pies and cakes from their cars and placed them on a cloth covered table.
First, coarsely ground meat, ordered from Motts Locker in Rockville was started browning in big kettles. Just as soon as the meat began to brown, packages of chili seasoning went in, along with lots of chopped onions. The ladies stirred with big wooden spoons as the meat browned, the smells quickly filling the building.

Another pot of vegetable soup would begin to simmer. Most of the ingredients for that had been prepared ahead of time. Celery, onions and potatoes would be added, along with well water and the whole thing brought to a slow simmer to be ready for serving for those who didn’t want chili.

All afternoon people stopped by with donations of pies and cakes. Big bowls of crackers were laid out and a block of cheese cut up. Onions were sliced in thin slices, bottles of catsup and vinegar were placed on the serving line.

I loved the chili suppers because it was always fun for me to see how the school house had been transformed from the everyday drab smells of coal, floor sweep, white paste and children, into a makeshift kitchen of interesting smells.

When people began arriving about 6:00, the first smells they encountered before even entering the school house would be the coffee, freshly brewed, and the spicy chili. Then as you walked in the door of cloakroom, you’d notice cigar smoke, a pipe or two and whiffs of after shave and perfume. But above it all, the smell of freshly made chili predominated.

Chili suppers always included entertainment of some sort. Small children recited poems or stories they’d written. One of the parents would play the piano while the children performed a musical number, usually a song memorized from one of the old song books in the library cabinet. Sometimes a local fiddle or guitar player would play or sing.

But the real reason for being there was to make a donation to the P.T.A. by buying a bowl of chili and a piece of pie or cake. Soft drinks or coffee were sold for 5¢ and the adults visited with each other while they ate.

Kids, of course, ate fast, then went outdoors to play. The one outdoor light was a hundred watt light bulb above the building’s only door. Under that light, kids played games on the old concrete porch. The older men, after eating, went outside to sit on the porch, or lean on their cars and smoke.

That smell, of chili powder, reminds me of all of that, every time I open a package of chili seasoning. I can see the faces of the P.T.A. ladies as they stirred the pots of browning meat. I remember the smell of the school room, of the pies and cigar smoke. That’s what comfort food is, I suppose, a dish that evokes not just the smell and taste of the ingredients, but a time and place when that smell predominated, when you were happy and comfortable. One whiff of chili seasoning and I’m back in the third grade, excited about going to the chili supper at our school.

Tomato Diseases

2008-10-23T23:14:00.001-05:00

Ozarks Gardening
Jim Long

Tomato Problems and Some Solutions

It’s been a banner year for diseases on everything from tomatoes and roses to peppers and fruit. All of the excess moisture has cultivated fungal problems in the soil, on the leaves and on fruit such as plums and peaches. Readers who normally don’t have such problems on these crops in a normal year, say they have had lots of problems this season.

On tomatoes, as I’ve written before, tomato verticillium wilt begins in early spring, but is spread rapidly by aphids. I’ve described in this column and on my garden blog how I control the aphids, which slows down or stops the progression of this most common tomato disease.

Verticillium wilt causes the leaves to turn yellow and dry up, starting at the bottom of the plant and working upward. It’s caused by a soil-bourne fungus and can affect many different vegetables, and can stay in the soil for many years. It’s why crop rotation is important, meaning not growing tomatoes and peppers in the same soil bed for more than four or five years. Verticillium wilt inhibits the plants ability to take in water and nutrients, which eventually kills the plant.

There are some treatments that seem to help tomatoes, at the same time helping other soil borne fungal problems. This treatment is reported to help black spot on roses as well as damping off of plant seedlings early in the year and is beneficial for some kinds of lawn grass fungal problems, as well. What’s the magic formula? Just good old cornmeal.

Researchers at Texas A & M Research Station in Stephenville, Texas noticed that a peanut crop planted following a crop of corn didn’t suffer the expected fungal diseases they usually encounter with that crop. Additional research showed that cornmeal contains beneficial organisms that are as effective, possibly more, as are chemical fungicides. Evidently cornmeal attracts a member of the Trichoderma fungus family, which is a beneficial fungus that kills off disease causing fungi in the soil.

According to their research, and others who have used this method, you should work 2 pounds of cornmeal into the soil for every 10 ft. by 10 ft. area, then water well (or, in the Ozarks, wait two days before it rains again). There’s considerable discussion on the web about whether you should use horticultural cornmeal or food grade cornmeal from the grocery store.

The differences are these: Food grade cornmeal from the grocery store is only the interior, starchy part of the corn kernel, without the hard, outer shell. It’s slightly more expensive and some sources say it just doesn’t work as well as horticultural cornmeal.

Horticultural cornmeal is cheaper to buy, can be found in feed stores and any other stores that sell soil amendments and garden supplies, and includes the entire corn kernel. People who have used this say the addition of one or two pounds of dry molasses (available at feed stores) per 100 square feet area works even better.

So here’s what I plan to do in my tomato and pepper beds this fall and winter. After frost and after I’ve removed all the dead plant debris, I’m plan to scatter horticultural cornmeal and some dry molasses on the soil and till it in. Then during the winter, I’m going to use Alden Hembree’s tomato disease control method (which I believe came from garden guru, Jerry Baker): Mix 1 tablespoon of shampoo and 1 tablespoon of Clorox into 1 gallon of water. Mix and spray the soil of your tomato bed monthly until spring planting time.

Next spring, when I’m ready to till up the tomato beds once more before planting, I plan to spread more horticultural cornmeal and dry molasses on the soil just before turning it over. I’m also going to use that method around my roses that suffer from fungal diseases and see if it helps. If Texas A & M says it works as good or better than chemical controls, I’m all for it. (Most sources say one application per year is enough, but that a second application isn’t harmful).

Both methods hold great promise and lots of people swear they work, so I’m going to use both and see what happens. One benefit of the cornmeal addition is that it adds a bit of nutrients to the so, as does the addition of dry molasses.

Cornmeal also works to eliminate algae in water and speeds up the decomposition in compost piles. Just don’t confuse horticultural cornmeal with corn gluten meal. Corn gluten meal is used as a weed control and prevents weed seeds from germinating and is a different product altogether.

Growing Gourds

2008-09-13T15:41:00.008-05:00

Growing Gourds

I don’t know if anyone has ever actually figured out why people like to grow gourds. In the thousands of years of human culture, the gourd has been not just beneficial but necessary. Big, round gourds served as bowls and storage containers, not unlike the plastic storage boxes we get from discount stores today. Smaller gourds, the kinds with handles, were used as dippers, spoons and ladles. Remains of gourd dishes and tools have been found in archeological sites that date back thousands of years. The gourd accompanied humans around the world as dish, carryall and vegetable.

My parents grew what used to be called, “Guinea beans,” in the seed catalogs. They are long, slender gourds that are harvested when 15 to 18 inches long, sliced, battered and fried much like eggplant, okra or green tomatoes. I grow them every year as well, and it’s one of my favorite summer vegetables. The name comes from their being native to the island of New Guinea, where they are also worn as clothing.

Even now, in West Papua, New Guinea where I traveled a few years back, natives still wear the koteka, or penis sheath, a gourd worn for modesty by men in the interior regions of the island, and it’s the same gourd I grew up with as Guinea bean. (Different tribal groups grow different varieties of gourd; Lagenaria siceria is one, while Nepenthes mirabilis is another; not all varieties are edible). Gourd pieces are carved and beaded for jewelry while others are used for canteens and medicine bottles. While I was in New Guinea I traded for some gourd seed, which I received, packaged in another gourd. (Pictured are men from the Dhani tribe).

There is a fascination in our own culture today for growing gourds even though they are no longer necessary in our everyday life. Gourd conferences in Missouri, Ohio and other states, attract thousands of visitors who come to see objects made from gourds. (See the American Gourd Society for more information). Everything from bird houses to works of art are on display, and generally for sale and there are several gourd societies that offer newsletters and trade gourd seed among it’s members.

Possibly it’s the fact that a gourd is a near permanent object that accounts for the fascination. With a pumpkin, you can carve it or eat it, but otherwise there’s not much else you can do with it. With a gourd, once it’s grown and seasoned, it becomes almost like carved wood and can last for centuries if not broken. When I was a child I had a dipper gourd that had a perfect square knot in its long handle. The owner, my next door neighbor, had trained the gourd into that shape and used the gourd on her back porch as a wren house. When she passed away and her family disposed of her possessions, they threw the gourd birdhouse in the trash where I retrieved it.

Gourds are remarkable in how long the seed remain viable. Three years ago a friend brought some decorative gourds to me that I’d never seen before. These had yellow handles with green bottoms, not warty but more with horns. Odd looking things and I kept them on the dining room table in a bowl for about a year. They wound up on the back porch where they remained for nearly two years, where it’s hot in summer and freezes frequently in winter. This spring when I ran across the gourds, I figured the seed were no longer any good. I tossed the gourds out the back door onto the septic tank mound where there are several kinds of decorative grasses and forgot about them.

To my surprise, a plant sprung up. I’d planted pumpkins in the area in the spring and assumed the additional vine was another pumpkin. But long about mid summer I noticed I had lots of the yellow and green horned gourds hanging off of the quince bush, dangling from the variegated cane and several hung like Christmas ornaments from the dwarf cherry tree. Not only had the seed been good all that time, but the gourds had come true to seed and had not crossed with anything else.

Gourds are just one more of the crops that make gardening fun. Happy gardening!

Za'atar, Both a Spice Blend and a Plant

2008-08-07T17:19:00.003-05:00

One of the important seasonings of the world, and one which is almost unknown in the West, is za’atar. Za’atar is both a plant, (Origanum maru), and a spice blend known by the same name and used in Middle Eastern foods. It’s used as both a condiment and a cooking ingredient in Armenia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, the Palestinian territories, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. It is often eaten for breakfast with a yogurt cheese and bread in Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria and is used in hummus, dips, soups and mixed with olive oil for dipping flatbread. The Lebanese believe za’atar gives strength and clears the mind, therefore before leaving home on testing days, school children are encouraged to eat a piece of flatbread spread with a mixture of za'atar and olive oil.

The recipe for za’atar spice blend varies with the region you’re visiting and is usually prepared using ground dried thyme, the za’atar oregano and marjoram then mixed with toasted sesame seeds and salt. Recipes from some areas include the addition of winter savory, cumin and coriander and sometimes fennel seed. A Lebanese version of Za'atar contains sumac berries, and has a distinctive dark red color and this one is my favorite.

The plant za’atar is a pungent tasting oregano with gray-green leaves and native to the Middle East. It grows to about 24 inches tall, although mine after two years of growing barely reached 12 inches. It’s easily winter hardy as far north as Zone 6, and probably hardy beyond that. It spreads from the roots although slower than many of the other Origanum varieties. Grow it just as you would any other oregano or marjoram, in full sun, with well drained soil and lightly mulched to keep out weeds. I grow mine in a raised bed between the rosemary and the Mexican oregano.

Sumac, virtually the same one we find growing wild in the Ozarks is a common ingredient in many Middle Eastern dishes. Ours, Rhus glabra, grows from southern Canada all the way southward into Texas and across much of the middle part of the U.S. The red berries are easy to identify and can be gathered from late summer to frost, dried and stored for use later. (This is not poison sumac, which is Rhus vernix and found growing in swamps and has white berries. They are different plants. The culinary sumac has red berries and grows along roadsides, fence rows and the edges of well drained fields).

Sumac berries, besides being used in cooking Middle Eastern dishes, make an excellent “lemonade” by boiling the berries after removing them from the stems, straining then sweetening with honey or sugar. I add cracked coriander and apple juice to the sumac berry tea and use it as a refreshing beverage for party get togethers in the fall.
Sumac, by the way, is correctly pronounced, “shu-mack.” A member in the audience once when Mark Twain was lecturing and had mentioned sumac berries, asked Twain, knowing he was a careful wordsmith, if it was proper to pronounce the word, “shu-mack” since it was spelled with an “s-u,” and were there other words in the English language where that rule applied.
“I’m not sure” he replied, and the audience laughed at his quick wit.
To make your own za’atar mixture for winter use, here’s a simple recipe, similar to the one used in Lebanon and Syria. Store it in a jar in the refrigerator, or freeze it. Then to use, mix a tablespoon of za’atar with 2 tablespoons of good olive oil in a dish and serve with warm flat bread, dipping pieces of the bread into the mixture.

You can also make za’atar chicken in the oven if you would like to taste a dish cooked with the spice.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Spread cut up chicken pieces in a baking dish. Add the freshly squeezed juice of a lemon over the chicken, then pour 3 tablespoons of olive oil over and 1 tablespoon, or more, za’atar, mixing the chicken pieces in the pan to coat all sides with the ingredients. Add 2 or 3 whole garlic cloves and bake the chicken until done, about 40 minutes.

Za’atar Mixture #1

2 tablespoons minced fresh thyme leaves
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, freshly toasted*
2 teaspoons ground sumac**
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

**It’s important to make sure the sumac seeds are dried first as it will make the grinding easier. Grind the seeds completely to a powder in a blender. Then add the minced thyme leaves and toasted sesame seeds and salt. Store in airtight container in the refrigerator. (If using dried thyme leaves you won’t need to store the mixture in the refrigerator, just use 1 tablespoon dried as a substitute for the 2 tablespoons of fresh. However fresh tastes better).

*About using sesame seeds: you can buy toasted sesame seeds in many international markets but you will have a better tasting spice blend if you toast the sesame seeds yourself. Generally the already toasted ones taste a bit rancid, having been on the shelf for awhile.
To toast sesame seeds, start with a small skillet and heat it, without oil. Add the seeds and shake or stir the seeds so they don’t burn, but moving them around until they are toasted well. Cool completely before adding to the remaining ingredients.

Since we grow our own za’atar we use that, but you can substitute any favorite dried oregano in the following recipe.

Za’atar Mixture #2

4 tablespoons dried za’atar or oregano leaves
4 tablespoons sesame seeds, freshly toasted
2 tablespoons ground sumac
1 tablespoon dried thyme leaves
2 teaspoons coarse or kosher salt

Combine ingredients in a blender and pulse blend until everything is a coarse powder (be sure to grind the sumac berries completely to a powder first). Mix well and store in airtight container in the pantry.

Heirloom Herbs

2008-05-11T16:50:00.004-05:00

This column appears in the summer 2008 issue of The Heirloom Gardener magazine.
The Heirloom Herbalist
Copyright 2008, Jim Long

Heirloom Herbs

Herbs, unlike vegetables and fruits, have not changed a great deal over the centuries. The food crops, those plants which produce the bulk of our human diet, have been crossed, selected and hybridized, to produce larger yields or bigger fruits, many times at the loss of flavor.

The rose, which I consider first a fragrance and flavor herb, and second a landscape plant, is just one example of what happens when a plant is overly manipulated. This fragrant flowered plant which is used in many cultures of the world as a seasoning herb in ice cream, milk shakes, cakes and other desserts, has been hybridized to the point of being no more useful than plastic flowers. While it’s pretty in the landscape, the modern rose has lost almost all of its usefulness.

Recently I attended the Garden Writers of America annual conference in Oklahoma City, where several rose companies displayed their newest rose introductions for the garden writers to see. At one of the trade show booths I asked the rose grower what his roses tasted like and which ones had the best fragrance. He looked at me as if I’d just announced I’d married a Martian.

“Taste? You can’t eat a rose,” he said.

Of course I took the challenge, explaining I had written a book about that very subject. I sniffed the various roses on display and chose a pink one that had a hint of fragrance. I plucked a flower and ate it and suggested the rose grower do the same. With little fragrance, there was also not much flavor. While the roses were beautiful to look at, were continuous bloomers all season and didn’t require sprays or special care, they might as well have been artificial. Why grow a rose if it has no fragrance or flavor? Those are the very reasons the plant was domesticated in the first place, centuries ago!

The more standard herbs, those like rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil, sage, hyssop and others, have not changed over time. Certainly a few varieties have been selected for specific reasons. ‘Hill Hardy’ rosemary, for example, came about as a seedling found growing on an old farmstead in Texas by Madalene Hill many years ago. It was a natural cross, or a seedling of one, that had shown some specific qualities of being extra-hardy in Texas, was found blooming in January with beautiful blue blossoms.

Oregano is another example of a plant that remains unchanged over time. There are many varieties of oregano, and most of the ones you will find for sale are named by the region where they were discovered. Origanum dictamus, commonly named “Dittany of Crete” comes from Crete, while Sicilian (O. x majoricum) is a cross of oregano and marjoram that was originally found growing in Sicily centuries ago. Origanum vulgare, a wild oregano that came first from Italy, likely transported by immigrants centuries ago, at some point crossed with O. hirtum and was found growing wild in the mountains of Greece and goes by the name of ‘Greek Mountain’ oregano.

Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) is an herb that is seldom used today, but was one of the important herbs in biblical times. You will find it referred to by Moses when he commanded the elders of Israel to take bundles of hyssop, dip them in the sacrificial lamb’s blood and sprinkle it upon the doors of their houses before Passover.

Hyssop was also used in preparations for cleansing rituals, as well as medicinally for sore throats and improving digestion. The plant remains just as it was two thousand years ago, possessing the same bitter oils that gave it the unique flavor and fragrance as in the distant past.

The Greeks and Romans spread many of the herbs from the Mediterranean in their travels and conquests. Later the trade between the so-called New World and the Old, saw plants being shipped between the continents, with European herbs being introduced into the Americas, and American herbs collected and sent back to Europe.

A large number of the hundreds of herbs grown today, are the basic, heirloom herbs that could be found centuries ago. Many of them have remained unchanged for a thousand years or more.
That means when you smell or taste the leaves from lemon verbena or lemongrass, you know that someone living centuries ago, smelled and tasted the exact things you are experiencing today. When a chef, writing in a cookbook in the 1700s included French tarragon in a recipe, you know you can reproduce that same dish, with the exact flavors he did, because French tarragon is an herb that is unchanged.

How do these herbs come down to us in this unchanged state? Many, like French tarragon, rosemary, thyme and others, are propagated almost exclusively by cuttings. Starts of those plants would have been brought to this country as cuttings or dug plants from Europe and passed along from one generation to the next. Some, like peppermint and French tarragon do not produce seed and must be propagated by division or cutting.

It’s satisfying to know, I think, when you taste lemon thyme (Thymus citriodorus), Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens), garden sage (Salvia officinalis) or any of a thousand other herbs, that their flavors remain unchanged throughout the centuries. Nearly all of them taste and smell exactly the way they did a millennia ago and are true heirlooms of the plant world.

Questions and comments always welcome through Jim’s website: www.LongCreekHerbs.com.

World's Hottest Pepper

2008-04-14T18:34:00.001-05:00

Saga Jalokia, Bhut Jalokia, Naga Jalokia

This is my Ozarks Gardening newspaper column for this week. It appears in newspapers across the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks. Copyright, Jim Long, 2008

No More Elephants in Your Garden!

Much like clothes and technology, plant fads sweep through the market. Some new plant comes along and everyone wants one. Think back to the so-called “mosquito plant” of a decade ago. Promoters claimed it would repel mosquitoes by simply planting a few around your deck or patio. It didn’t. Or the sweet-leaf plant (stevia) that everyone wanted. It actually does what it claims - sweeten foods without adding calories.

Two or three years back, the hot new plant was Salvia divinorum, or diviner’s sage. Supposedly used by shamans in Central America to see visions, it was soon being sold as a “drug for a legal high.” (It was quickly discovered the hallucinogenic properties weren’t that interesting and caused severe headaches, unpleasant side effects and occasional insanity by the user; several states have outlawed it's growing and sale).

About five years ago there were rumors circulating in plant forums on the internet of a new ghost chili that reportedly topped one million Scoville Heat Units (SHUs). Previously the hottest chili on record, according to the Guiness World Records, had been the Savina habanero, rated at 570,000 SHUs. Later debate over whether the record was set with the raw pepper, or with the pepper oil has challenged the world record, however, and the pepper is now accepted as between 300,000 and 579,000 SHUs. (For comparison, the standard jalapeno rates at between 5,000 and 8,500 SHUs; the Savina comes in at 65 times as hot as a standard cayenne).

This so-called “new” pepper, comes from northeastern Assam, India, near the Equator where all of the hottest peppers originate around the globe and is also known by the names, “ghost chile,” and Bhut Jolokia. The University of Mexico has been testing this new pepper and was able to prove in 2007 that this was, indeed, the world’s hottest pepper. (In India, according to my friend Puneet, from New Delhi, this pepper is called "tatayyia mirch," which translated from Hindi, is "wasp chili," because he said, it is like having a very big wasp sting your tongue).

Why, you might wonder, would someone want to grow a hot pepper that is so hot no one can eat it without mixing it with a lot of other foods? When asked that question of the growers in India, we were told, besides eating the peppers, they are also ground up and made into a spray which is applied around crops and gardens to keep elephants out.

So there you are. If you want to be on the cutting edge with the most sought after plant this year, and be able to keep elephants out of your garden, too, you might want to plant some Naga Jolokia peppers. Be forewarned, however, the seeds are rare and those selling them are charging as much as $5 per seed with a minimum of ten seeds.

I’ll be letting you know here if this pepper really does keep elephants out of my garden. Since I’ve not had a problem with elephants before, I’m guessing the plant will do exactly what it claims!

Happy gardening! Questions or comments always welcome at Longcreekherbs@yahoo.com and through my website at www.Longcreekherbs.com.

Save Gas, Plant Vegetables

2008-03-29T18:05:00.003-05:00

Jim Long
Ozarks Gardening column, week of 3-31-08

Save Gas, Grow Vegetables!

Rising gas prices combined with increased food costs and a fluctuating economy are the likely causes of a significant new trend developing in the gardening market. As reported in the 2008 Early Spring Gardening Trends Research Report just released by the Garden Writers Association, more consumers plan to purchase vegetable and fruit plants as part of their early spring gardening purchases.

In a national survey conducted last month, consumers were asked what types of garden-related purchases they expect to make for spring. Lawn and grass purchases take the lead (54%), followed by vegetable or fruit plants (39%), annual flowers (38%), trees and shrubs (35%), and perennial flowers (31%). When asked the same question this time last year, vegetable and fruit plants were fourth on the list of priorities for consumer spending. Perennial flowers which held the number two position in consumer spending in 2007 are in fifth place for 2008.

This means lots of people recognize running to the grocery store for a pound of potatoes or a couple of tomatoes, doesn’t make good sense when gas prices hover in the three dollar range. Driving a few blocks, or a few miles, just because you need a cucumber and a head of lettuce for dinner can easily be delayed if you have those growing on your patio or in your back yard. Saving a trip to the store means saving on gas money.

How much does it cost to grow your own tomatoes? Just a few dollars if you buy the plants, even less if you start your own seed. For less than $2, you can buy a packet of bean seed and produce enough beans to feed your family for several meals. Add some inexpensive lettuce seed, a few onion plants, a few rows of corn and a few other vegetables and you can grow several weeks of groceries for less than the cost of a tank of gas.

Even though it is too early to plant annual, tender plants, such as peppers and tomatoes outdoors in the garden, it is a perfect time for planting these seed crops: Lettuce, late onions, spinach, carrots, radishes marigold seed, cilantro and dill and a second planting of peas can go in the ground now. Plants such as cabbage, kale, kohlrabi and rosemary, can all be planted now, as well. Home grown vegetables taste better, save you money on gas and make you glad you grew them.

To see what’s growing in my garden this week, visit my blog: http://jimlongsgardentalk.blogspot.com/ Questions and comments always welcome at longcreekherbs@yahoo.com. Happy gardening!

See Us in Nature's Garden magazine

2008-02-15T10:23:00.001-06:00

We are pleased to mention we are in the Spring Issue of Nature's Garden magazine, on the newstands now. The magazine folks, James Baggett, editor, Marty Ross, writer, Jay Wilde, photographer, and Jarret Einck, layout designer, did an excellent job and were a delight to work with. They gave us 8 pages, wonderful photos and make the garden and me (and Molly twice) look great.

Garden Dreams Do Come True, 2003

2007-12-22T14:10:00.001-06:00

My gardens were featured in the June, 2003 Southern Living magazine. It was the second time we'd been featured in that magazine. Why have I been willing, even eager, to get such publicity over the years, you may wonder?

It all leads back to the first day of May, 1979, the day I moved to the farm that became Long Creek Herb Farm. That time, my two daughters, ages 4 and 5, were with me for their regular weekend visit. The three of us planted peas, late in the season for our area, but we planted with a lot of hope for my first garden in this location. My daughters were very close to me, and I to them. They were my life. That was one of the last times I saw my daughters.

They disappeared from my life, and from the Ozarks. My ex-wife took them out of state and kept them hidden from me by remarrying and changing her name and moving several times. Those events led to difficult years for me, years that I wasn’t sure I could survive without my children. The garden, though, was comforting and healing and I threw myself into my work.

Over the years I tried various unsuccessful methods for finding my children. Without money, the legal system was useless. Legal Aid wouldn't get involved in custody issues back in those days. I struggled, trying to find some way to locate my children and to have contact with them.

I tried everything I could think of and eventually I settled on the idea that publicity and writing might be the answer. I started writing books, magazine articles, newspaper columns. I sought publicity and found it, through a wide range of feature articles in national magazines and on syndicated television shows. Friends accused me of being a publicity hound. I was. I hoped that one day, one or both of my children might see an article about me in my garden, or see me on television and remember that day when they helped me plant peas, and want to contact me.

In June, twenty five years after losing my daughters, my dreams came true. My oldest daughter, now 29 and living in Chicago, saw the Southern Living article. In it she saw one of my books, Making Herbal Dream Pillows, featured, went to her local bookstore and bought the book. Upon opening it, she read the dedication, which said, "..and to Lori and Traci, who are always in my dreams." The book was written many years ago, so she saw that I had, indeed, wanted them in my life all of these years.

Lori contacted me and we began eagerly communicating by phone and email. In August I drove to Chicago to see her, a long awaited reunion, and to meet my grandson, now three years old. We spent many hours over several days catching up on each other’s lives. My younger daughter, also contacted me during that time by email.

There is no making up for the lost years, but out of those times some very good things have come about. That first garden we planted together did grow, and continues to do so today. The loss of my daughters prompted me to write and polish my gardens, always planting new hope. My grandmother's advice of, "Do what you love most and the rest will take care of itself," proved to be true. I love gardening and writing, both of which led me to establish my business, which in turn, led me back to my children.

My dream of finding my daughters some day, really has come true and I just wanted to share it with you, my readers. Thank you!

Dream Pillows Soothe Nightmares of War

2007-08-27T22:55:00.000-05:00

The voice on the other end of the phone I’d just answered said, “Hello. I’m Mary. I’m a member of a motorcycle gang, and I want to order some dream pillow materials.”

The caller went on to tell me that her group consisted of several men who had served in Vietnam in the 1960s. Her husband, she said, suf-fered from persistent nightmares from that war and seldom slept through the night without waking in terror. Mary had bought my book, Making Herbal Dream Pillows, at a bookstore, found my website listed and had ordered a dream pillow from my company. “I wanted one from the source,” she said with a laugh.

I was imagining a motorcycle gang, dressed in their leathers, riding the roads on big Harleys, sleeping on the side of the road, roaring through dusty desert towns. How could a sweet little dream pillow fit into that scene?

Without hesitation, Mary began to describe the events that led up to her phone call. She’d ordered the Restful Sleep Pillow, willing to try anything that might help her hus-
band sleep, placed the tiny pillow in-side his pillowcase as they camped, and didn’t tell him. Since the pillows are intentionally made to have a very subtle fragrance, he wasn’t tipped off to its presence.

The first morning after the dream pillow was placed, she said he came to the campfire seeming very relaxed and mentioned that he’d slept through the night. Nothing more was said.
After the second night, she said her husband came to the morning campfire and, as he visited with fel-low road hogs, said, “I’ve slept two nights in a row without nightmares. This fresh air is really good for sleeping!” Mary kept quiet, happy to be seeing results, but not yet certain of the source.

More mornings followed without comment, then on the fifth day her husband said out loud that he’d been almost a week without a flashback nightmare and didn’t know why. Mary sheepishly said it was the dream pil-low she had placed in his pillowcase five nights before. He didn’t believe it, and Mary said, “I’ll prove it,” and dragged his pillow out of their tent. She directed him to fish around in the pillowcase and bring out whatev-er he found as their friends watched.

He was dumbfounded. “I have no idea what this is,” he said, “but it’s amazing and it works, so keep it in the pillowcase.”

The reason for Mary’s call was to say that the six other Vietnam veter-ans in the group all wanted their own dream pillow, and she needed to order materials to make dream pillows as they traveled across the country.

My Restful Sleep Pillow recipe is good for soothing nightmares of all types, and it’s fairly simple to make. But remember, never use any oil, fragrance or essential oil in a dream blend — they make for a very unpredictable dream blend. Always wash the cloth you make the pillow from, as the dye and sizing can cause headaches or nightmares. Finally, use the best, well-dried herbs and flowers (not ones that have been stored with other fragrances).

Restful Sleep Pillow (from my book, Making Herbal Dream Pillows, Storey Publishing, $14.95, available from http://www.Long CreekHerbs.com).

1 tablespoon rose petals (any color as long as they ‘re fragrant and not chemically treated)
1 teaspoon mugwort
1 teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon hops (broken up a bit with your fingers)
Fabric
Thread
Fiberfill

Mix herbs together. Sew previously washed cloth to make a 5-by-5-inch pillow, into which you’ll place some fiberfill, herb mixture and a bit more fiberfill, and sew the pillow closed. To use, simply place the pillow any-where inside your pillowcase — it doesn’t matter where since most people move their heads around during sleep anyway.

Jim Long is a contributing editor to The Herb Companion magazine.

On the Road Again

2007-08-27T17:00:00.000-05:00

I visit a lot of gardens each year, finding something new, something interesting in each one. I see the garden as an expression of the soul of the gardener, just as if it were a painting or a musical composition.

Usually I drive when I visit a garden, allowing me to take in farmer’s markets and roadside stands along the way. I often begin these trips with Willy Nelson’s, “On the Road Again” on my iPod. Sometimes, if it’s going to be a long drive, I’ll stick in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road into the tape player.

Kerouac’s vision, fifty years after publication of his classic novel, still calls out to look around yourself, stay open to new experiences, question the ways that convention pushes us, and to look for a higher meaning in every experience.

It was on just such a trip recently, with Willy Nelson’s mellow voice singing background to my travels, that I encountered an enchanting garden. I’d driven north to Des Moines, an eight hour drive from my Ozarks home, to spend time with Cathy Wilkinson Barash, my edible flower writer friend. She had procured tickets to one of the political debate watch parties, and being a political person myself, could not miss the opportunity to listen to people who might one day be President.

Cathy lives in one of Des Moines many older but turning chic neighborhoods where young families and rising business owners all know each other and visit as they walk their dogs each day. Cathy has become well known, not just because she encourages herb growing in people’s side yards, or shares her recipes, but because she walks the blocks daily with either her neighbor’s dog on a leash, or a parrot on her shoulder, or sometimes both.

Cathy is a cat person, having three, and none of them enjoy being on a leash or going for walks. So Cathy joins her neighbors, two houses down, and takes their pets on her walks.

On the first morning of my visit, my friend suggested I accompany her, “to pick up the parrot.” Unsure what was about to transpire, but remembering Kerouac's advice, I eagerly went along to see what new adventure awaited.

From the sidewalk, looking in, I was astonished at the garden before us. There was a very large house, built on a very small city lot, which meant there had been almost no yard from the very beginning. But in that space, had it been lawn instead of garden, one could have mowed it all in three minutes, the owners had constructed a paradise of plants that towered over us.

The owners, Ton and David, of the famous fifth generation Dutch Stam Chocolaterie family, http://www.stamchocolate.com/ had built a labyrinth of raised beds, with tiny, narrow brick walkways between. There were little hidden pools with moving water, a scaled down table and chairs for two set amidst the tomato vines, just in the right spot for a bit of morning tea.

What was most remarkable, more than the tiny size of the garden, compared to the amount of plants, was how everything was trained upward. Twig trellises (said to have been inspired by my Bentwood Trellis books http://www.longcreekherbs.com/books.shtml gave support for tomatoes that rose upward for eight feet or more. Midlevel of the tomatoes, were cucumbers, sorting their way into sunlight. You could, and we did, reach into the twig arbors and pick tomatoes, and cucumbers, from the same square foot of space.

Around the edges of the beds were bountiful, prolific basils, beans, thymes, rosemaries, all scattered in whatever inches of space the sunlight allowed. This was a garden that rose upward, in many levels, ignoring the actual square footage beneath.

Encountering that delightful garden reminded me of Kerouac’s philosophy, and the coinage of the word “beat” that inspired a generation of my peers, of saturating yourself in an experience to the point of exhaustion, and still wanting more. The tiny garden I encountered was too big to take in, to complex to photograph, and yet the experience was all encompassing.

Kerouac still speaks to us, fifty years after the publication of On the Road, to look at your garden in a new way. If you can’t spread out, then spread up. If you don’t have enough trellises, use hoola hoops. And as he told his friends, “always, always, make it new.”

The River

2007-04-08T10:28:00.000-05:00

The River

Some of my most satisfying moments of childhood were those spent on the Osage River. I made a committment each spring to put out trot lines to catch fish, and that meant checking the lines before heading off to school, and later, before leaving for whatever summer job I had at the time.

Not being an early morning person by nature, once stirred from bed, I slowly awakened during the pre-dawn walk down the hill, past the old Methodist church and into the ancient woods beneath the bluffs. By the time dawn light was beginning, I would have tromped groggily through weeds wet with dew, across the sticky, muddy river’s bank and launched myself into the old wooden rowboat that my father kept tied there to an old willow tree. An old gunny sack, when I remembered it, would protect me from the dew-soaked boat seat, as I plunked myself down and began to row upstream.

Dawn on the river was having entered an enchanted landscape. There was no sound other than the water lapping against the side of the boat and the rivulets of water that drained from the oars when I held them still. Fog, always present in early morning in summer, acted as a baffle, not just muting but negating even the loudest of far away sounds.

Early morning there on the river could have been anywhere on earth. The density of the fog not only kept out sound, it blocked the view, as well. In the boat, at dawn, you could see the water, and fog, but not the far shore, not the line of trees that stretched along the banks from Kansas to the west, back east, halfway across Missouri. Neither bluff nor tree, not a cow nor horse, intruded on the dawn’s view.

But the river, some days, could be the Nile in Egypt, with herds of hippopotamus floating quietly along the banks. Banks of papyrus grew nearby, palm trees towered overhead. On other days, it was the mighty Amazon, with lions and giraffes nearby, waiting for a drink. Crocodiles floated just under the surface, pirahanas swam beneath the water and monkeys swung from vines, tree to tree.

But one didn’t need to imagine, one had to only look. The boat, on the perpetually moving water, was a magical place. Suspended in time, protected from noise and sound, the magic of the river could stand alone, otherworldly and serene, without having to become something it was not.

As the dawn’s light brightened, the rowing of the boat would startle an occasional shikepoke, those small, blue herons that gave a shriek as they launched themselves from an old snag sticking out of the bank. Occasionally a fish would leap out of the water, falling back with a loud plop as it broke the water’s surface. From time to time, a drum fish would bump the underside of the boat. Mornings, drum didn’t make it’s typical drumming sound on the bottom of the boat, but in the evening, one or two or more of those fish would be constant companions to boaters, sounding as if they were grinding their teeth beneath the boat. Known as “drumming” it’s what gives the fish its name. Over time, on the river, you start to look forward to the drumming noise, as if it were background music to your own activities.

Sometimes I went to the river with my friend, Frank, a retired old fellow in his 70s or beyond. To me, in my teens, Frank was ancient if not worldly. He’d worked all his life at odd jobs, carpentry, building fences, digging cellars, had traveled very little except for a frightening trip overseas in the war. Frank was a simple old fellow, needing little beyond a daily supply of hand-rolled cigarettes and a constant supply of beer - except when he was on the river; those times, he didn’t drink, or at least not as much. While the river looked placid and peaceful, over the years it had killed more than once when men had misjudged it.

Frank, like me, even though we decades apart in age, was so moved by the river some mornings, that he was completely silent. We both sat reverently quiet, letting the slow, steady current of the river move us to the center of the river, where we drifted in stillness. Sometimes Frank grew so quiet I thought he had gone to sleep. If I spoke, Frank would clear his throat and come back to the present in a way that let me realize he was simply absorbing the stillness. As a teenager, it wasn't easy to be quiet, but I learned from Frank that to be still, is to see the world around you.

For me being on the river was like being in church, better actually. You couldn’t help but sit in awe, in the presence of something so great, so big, so powerful that one’s only response had to be respect and submission. The river was like a sleeping god, peaceful and benevolent when pacified, but a terrible beast when aroused from its nap.

What could rouse the river was rain. You would know a day ahead, or even two, when the river was going to become enraged. News, spread by gossip, later by radio, when eastern Kansas received storms. When Kansas received rain, it’s primary drainage area was into the Marais de Cygne River, a name left by the French back when there were French forts in the area, built for trade with the Great and Little Osage Indian tribes.

During the influence of this region by France, they named rivers, left their names on fur trading forts like Fort Carondolet, near Schell City and Fort Manoa, which later became the town of Taberville, where I grew up. But later residents renamed the river, Osage, to commemorate the Osage Indians who had occupied the region. So then, as now, the Marais de Cygne River turns into the Osage once it crosses into Missouri. And with the name change, so does its personality. From merely a big creek in Kansas, as it comes into Missouri it gains a split personality, at times placid, and at others, raging and snorting like a bull that has broken free of its pasture.

When news of the river’s rising would come down the river ahead of flooding, fishermen would remove their trotlines they'd stretched from bank to bank. Limb lines, too, were taken down from tree limbs that hung out over the river. The thirty or forty feet long hoop nets, illegal for fishing but necessary for fishermen’s livelihood, were lifted out and folded away safely in the woods or taken home for repairs.

Boats were pulled up on the bank, or tied high up on a tree. But even then, when the river became angry, churning and boiling, it sometimes took boats hostage, breaking them free from their chains. After rains upriver, the water might raise a foot an hour for a day or more.

You could tell easily whether the river was rising or falling by the position of the debris floating down river. When the river became really angry and vengeful, enormous trees would be ripped from river banks and pulled into the current. Trees fifty, eighty or more feet tall, became gigantic missiles, ripping and tearing anything in sight as they were tossed and turned in the boiling current. Those times, when there was a constant highway of dead branches, gigantic trees, old logs, bottles, fence posts, railroad ties, parts of old buildings, the rising water would keep them in the middle of the river. Boats, caught in tree branches were tossed like toys in the center’s current. But when the river level had crested, and began to wane, the debris would be floating on the edges of the current, drifting to the side, eventually settling along the banks, being left hanging in tree tops on the river’s edges or left deposited in farmer’s bottom land fields. Roads that were impassible during the flood, would be left strewn with the detritus of the Kansas landscape, brought downriver by the river's fury.

Those times, when the river became a vengeful beast, our town was surrounded by water. First the road from the north would flood and school children would have to be rowed across by boat to catch the bus. The mail carrier would come to the north water’s edge and honk until the postmaster heard him, and would walk the block and a half to his boat, row across and bring the mail back.

Bread and milk, too, came by boat during those times. The bridge across the river, a block south of town, flooded soon after the north road, and that sealed off our little town completely from the outside world. Telephone lines would be underwater but the electric lines generally remained above the flood plane. We became an island, isolated, peaceful, cut off, but content. In those times, people would walk to the water’s edge, to the backwater on the north and marvel at the way the water could rise before our eyes. Or townsfolk would walk south, toward the bridge and admire the strength and power of the angry waters as it tossed trees and logs like toothpicks in a bowl.

But dawn on the river, when it was placid, was the place where I came to realize there was a world beyond. Floating, when the river was at peace, unable to see beyond the fog and yet drift on a stream that went across our entire state, made me realize that no matter how peaceful my life was, there was more. Those sleepy walks down the muddy river bank to the boat, with the dawn breaking over the river as I floated and rowed, made me see the world as bigger than my own rowboat. The river is what gave value and meaning to where I lived, and yet propelled me beyond to larger rivers and bigger boats. Those days of childhood on the river remain with me to this day and sometimes I close my eyes and go back and relive the timelessness of the river’s journey and how it formed who I am today.

The Violet Season

2007-04-08T10:17:00.000-05:00

The Violet Season

In the South, spring is the season for Confederate violets, those little gray, native violets that grow in the woods. The story is these little violets blanket the graves of lost Confederate soldiers who were never identified after the War. The fact is, this little violet, (Viola sororia ‘Confederate’), is actually light blue, but the color blue, even after a century and a half, still isn’t a favorite color down South, so they call it, “the gray” violet.
Violets are a weed to some gardeners and a joy to others. In the Ozarks, the showy birdsfoot violet (Viola pedata) grows in fields, along old highway embankments and on rocky outcroppings, in the sun.
But the other violets, the blue, white, yellow and purple ones, prefer semi-shade and will thrive in perennial flower beds and under trees. In fact, if you are a morel mushroom hunter, you will doubtlessly encounter violets on your walks in the woods.
The Missouri and Arkansas woods has a substantial variety of violets, from light blue to yellow, on to purple and deep blue. Given filtered sunlight, they bloom profusely, yet if you plant them in dense shade, they will likely not bloom at all.
The simple little violet is an excellent ground cover for those shady places in the lawn that won’t grow anything else. You can plant them around the bases of lawn trees, or along pathways that trail out of your yard into the woods.
An added advantage is that violets are edible. The leaves always go into my first pot of cooked spring greens and I’ve made quiches with the leaves, too. (A pot of cooked violet leaves by itself is a bit of a laxative). The flowers can be candied, or turned into violet jelly, either the canned or frozen jelly. You’ll find the jelly has a pleasant, subtle, floral flavor. The flowers can also be used to make vinegars and violet honey.
The scent of the violet is as fascinating as it is elusive. The violet, with its delightful smell, can only be smelled about one time in an hour. The flower has ionone in its essential oil, which temporarily dulls your sense of smell after you have first sniffed it. That first smell is delicious, the second sniff gives you no obvious scent at all!
I have a patch of violets in my Ozarks native medicinals garden that grows next to the blue cohosh and the goldenseal. That particular one is a variety called, “Freckles” and is a pale blue with darker blue dots. In another part of the yard I have a deep maroon one called, “Robes Pierre” and it blooms a little later. What is great about these little plants is how they thrive in poor soil, stay a robust, dark green even in the heat of summer, and require nothing of me beyond admiration. They are the perfect groundcover and make themselves at home around rocks near my tiny water pool.
They do, however, throw their seeds freely after blooming and I usually have a few to dig out and move to the roadside. Some violet varieties spread by underground runners, as well, and quickly make themselves at home. But violets aren’t tenacious and as bothersome as plants like Johnson grass or Bermuda. They remain one of the joys of roadside and woodland wildflowers in springtime.
Happy gardening! Comments and questions always welcome at www.Longcreekherbs.com.

Make a Cooking Wreath

2007-03-13T11:26:00.000-05:00

Making a Cooking Wreath
Copyright© Jim Long, 2007

I started making these tiny wreaths many years ago as little thank you gifts to give during the Holidays. I’d package the little circle of herbs in nice tissue paper, with a ribbon and recipe card attached, and present them to friends.

I’ve used this method to teach kids about the uses of herbs in my garden, but soon learned that adults enjoy making them as much as children do.

The wreath is tiny, about 5 inches in diameter. Why make them so small? Primarily because they are meant to be seasoning for a pot of soup, added near the end of cooking for the best flavor. if you made the wreath larger, it would be too much seasoning for a regular stew pot.

Any of the seasoning herbs can be used. It’s best to use long-stemmed ones, to make it easier and more fun to do the weaving. I often construct the wreath for a specific kind of soup. For example, if I am going to attach a recipe for chicken soup, I would choose from the following list of herbs for the wreath:

Rosemary
Thyme
Celeriac leaves
Sage
Garlic chives
Garlic leaves
Sweet marjoram
Small lovage leaves
Parsley
Lavender
Lemongrass
Winter savory
Lemon basil

But if I am going to attach a recipe for a beef or pork based soup when I give the wreath as a gift, I might choose from this list:

Rosemary
Chervil
Thyme
Savory
Onion leaves
Chives
Garlic chives
Tarragon
Oregano
Basil
Hyssop
Bay
Small hot peppers

A vegetarian-based recipe could draw from any of the herbs on either list.

To begin the wreath, gather together your ingredients. You will need about six sprigs of herbs in varying lengths. Longer pieces can be woven into the wreath easier than shorter ones. You will probably also want three or four shorter pieces to add into the wreath for bulk and variety.

Choose a sprig of rosemary or similar woody, long-stemmed herb, about 12-14 inches long. Simply bend it into a loop that is about four inches across, twisting the ends around each other. You don’t need to tie it in place, simply hold it together with your thumb and finger, then add another long-stemmed herb, twisting it over and around the first one and overlapping the ends of the first.

Continue adding additional sprigs, a piece of sage, some thyme, onion leaves, garlic chives and others, until your wreath looks full.

Keep in mind, when the wreath dries, it will shrink, so add enough herbs to look still look full after the wreath has dried.

I like to add a long leaf, such as an onion top from winter onions, or a leaf of lemongrass at the very last. I wrap it around, spiraling it like a ribbon all the way around to secure all of the herbs and give it a finished look. The two ends of the leaf can be tucked under some of the other herbs and any loose ends can be trimmed off with pruners.

You may also want to tuck in a nice, small red pepper or a sprig of golden marjoram for some color. Chive flowers dry well, as do garlic chive blossoms, oregano flowers and others. Tuck the stem into the wreath so it is secure.

Now you are ready to dry your wreath. You can simply put it in a dark, dry place, like a pantry or a cabinet. Even the oven, without heat, works well. It’s important to dry your wreath out of the light in order to keep the color and flavor of your herbs. I generally dry mine in a food dehydrator, which has a temperature control and remains dark inside. If I use basil or parsley in my wreath, I will dry it on a low setting to keep those herb’s good green color.

Don’t, however, dry the wreath in the microwave! That’s the worst way to dry any herb, simply because the microwaving process vaporizes the essential oils in the plant. Have you ever noticed how good the smell of the microwave is after microwaving an herb? That’s because the oils that give the herbs their flavor and fragrance, are now in the air, having been removed in the microwave.

Also, hanging the wreath in the kitchen isn’t a good way for drying, either. Light and cooking odors will diminish your wreath’s flavor and color. The best way is either in a dark space, or in a food dehydrator.

Once your herb cooking wreath is completely dry, you are ready to attach a ribbon or string (which should be removed before cooking), with a recipe card for using the wreath. You may want to wrap it in tissue paper to keep it nice, or store it in a plastic sandwich bag. Store it in an airtight container, out of light, until ready to use or give away.

Here’s an example of my recipe card that I attach when giving the wreath as a little gift:

This is a cooking wreath from my garden. It contains the right amount of herbs to season a pot of soup. Here’s a simple recipe, or use the wreath with your own favorite soup recipe.
Wintertime Chicken Soup

2 chicken breasts, cut in pieces
1 stalk of celery, diced
1/2 cup diced onion
2 carrots, peeled, diced
Optional: rice or pasta
The entire cooking wreath
Dash salt and pepper, to taste

Bring 2 1/2 quarts of water to a boil and add the chicken and vegetables. Cook until the chicken is tender, about 20 minutes. Add the optional rice or pasta and reduce heat to a simmer, cooking 10-15 minutes. When you add the rice/pasta, also remove the ribbon from the cooking wreath and add it to the pot of simmering soup. Simmer until done and serve.

A vegetarian friend would receive this recipe card attach to their cooking wreath:

Bring 2 1/2 quarts of water to a boil. Add an assortment of your favorite diced vegetables, such as celery, carrots, a turnip, some cabbage, onion and garlic. Simmer until tender, about 20 minutes. Add 1/2 cup pasta or rice and simmer until nearly tender. Add the cooking wreath (with the ribbon removed) and simmer for another 10 minutes. Remove the wreath and serve.

Effects of Dream Pillows on Teenagers

2007-03-13T11:19:00.000-05:00

The Effects of Herbs on Teenage Boys

Recently a friend of mine who’s a psychologist at a treatment facility for juveniles, asked me to speak about being a writer on career day. I didn’t think kids would be very interested in my own life choices, but I agreed to go.

The treatment facility, a kind of hospital, accepts kids from the ages of six to seventeen, who have been abused, most often sexually abused. They also do some treatment of kids with drug problems, but a high percentage of the kids are there for physical abuse.

I went, prepared with some examples of my books, thoughts on how one’s life choices matter, ideas on how when you are young, you can do or be anything you choose, if you only have the information to help you choose. I also took along a few herbs clippings from my garden, tucked away at the bottom of my box, just in case I fell flat with everything else I was going to talk about.

My first group was nine boys, ranging in age from thirteen to sixteen. They had heard all of the life choice stories before, having been in the facility, and in counseling, for many months. One boy folded himself up in his chair with his knees drawn up to his chin, pulled his t-shirt over his head and proceeded to doze off. Another put his head down on his desk, another was drawing. They were polite, a few asked questions, but I was not rapidly winning them over. Most were likely wondering why they’d come to “the writer guy’s class” instead of down the hall, where the uniformed Army fellow, just back from Iraq, was speaking about his life choices.

There were two boys, about fourteen, sitting with their chins on my desk where I was speaking. When I took a breath from a story I was telling, one of them reached into my little box and pointed at the rosemary sprig I’d brought and said, “So why did you bring rosemary?”

He really caught me off guard. I stalled. Why had I brought the rosemary? Did I expect kids who’d been beaten, or kicked around, to know or even care what rosemary was? Before I could answer the boy’s question, he said, “My grandma grows rosemary. We use it to cook with. Can I touch it? I like the smell.”

I handed him the rosemary and he inhaled the fragrance. “Taste it,” I said. “You probably will remember what it tastes like.”

The boy sitting near the end of the desk with his feet drawn up on his chair and his chin on his knees, with the t-shirt pulled up over his head, peeked an eye through the top of the shirt to see if the boy would actually taste the plant.

The boy tasted a leaf, and smiled. “I remember this taste,” he said, obviously remembering something pleasant from home.

From the back of the room, the kid drawing said, “You can actually EAT that? Gimmie. I want to taste it, too!” “ What else is in your box?” someone said across the room.

Within seconds, the tide had turned. The room was mine in a way I couldn’t have imagined minutes earlier. I laid out the herbs I’d brought: rosemary, mint, lavender, some thyme and basil. Immediately one of the boys focused on mint and said his mother grew it. Another said he knew lavender because his mother always put some in a little bag under his pillow so he could sleep at night.

I brought out the dream pillows I’d brought and one of the boys immediately understood how useful they were at helping ease restless sleep. The room was fully awake, each and every boy was asking questions.

I’d not seen the obvious connection between having been abused and being in that treatment center, and not being able to sleep. I thought back to when I was fourteen myself, and was molested by a teacher who I trusted, and how much difficulty I’d had sleeping. I remembered the nightmares, the fear, the inability to tell anyone, or the power to confront the teacher. Yes, back then, a dream pillow that quieted my nightmares would have been profoundly helpful. So I switched gears, and gave a shortened version of the dream pillow program I often give to adults.

The kids responded. They all had sleep problems, they all wanted a dream pillow. I promised I would find a way to get them a dream pillow. For my next session in the afternoon, I gave only a brief nod to the career subject and concentrated instead on herbs and dream pillows. The second group of boys all responded as enthusiastically as the first.

What was amazing to me was that a bunch of teenage boys, all of whom had huge issues in their lives to deal with, knew about, and were strongly interested in herbs. Not only were they interested, many of them could identify one herb from another. The counselors who sat in on the sessions seemed impressed and encouraged me to come back for sessions on just the sleep herbs subject. Some of them asked questions about their own stress-related sleep problems.
I initially had to convince the treatment supervisors of the kids’ interests. I had to show that the herbs I used couldn’t be used “for any other purposes” or had any harmful effects. They weren’t hallucinogens, couldn’t be smoked, weren’t worth trading or selling. And lastly, that they might have some beneficial effect on the kids’ sleeping. With that out of the way, we scheduled a day to come back and talk to the kids in a longer session.

Not only did I go back and give the dream pillow program, I took along the herbs and made dream pillows. The boys chose between a pillow that would ease their nightmares and give them a good night’s sleep, and one which would let them dream and they would remember the dream. The group was about equally divided between the two. One of the boys who’d been in my earlier short class, said he had used the pillow I had given him but he didn’t have any dreams and I reminded him that it was the mix that gives good sleep without any nightmares. He was satisfied that the nightmares had disappeared and asked if he could now have one that let him remember his dreams as he was sleeping much better.

The usefulness of herbs for people in crisis ever cease to amaze me. Sometimes I’m caught off guard, surprised by how far reaching these fascinating plants can be. Who would have imagined that a group of abused teenage boys would respond so excitedly and warmly to a box of assorted herbs? But then, when I was that age, I know I would have, so I guess it shouldn’t be such a surprise to me now.

Questions and comments always welcome through Jim’s website: http://www.Longcreekherbs.com.

Dogwoods in Danger

2007-02-16T17:30:00.000-06:00

From "The Ozarks Herbalist" column,
in The Ozarks Mountaineer magazine http://www.ozarksmountaineer.com
Copyright© Jim Long 2007

Dogwoods in Danger

Over the past quarter century I’ve watched as people discover our Ozarks and move here to retire. Land has been cheap, taxes low, cost of living less than just about anywhere in the U.S. More often than not, the folks who move here from farther north buy a piece of land without paying much attention to it, possibly only viewing it from their car, or maybe walking a few feet on the land and seeing it as just “brush” to be disposed of.

Their first act generally is to hire a bulldozer and “clear” the land to make room for their retirement home. Seldom do these folks recognize that what they’ve bought is a piece of forest that has an ecosystem, a balance of plants and animals that depend upon each other for their survival.

Not just deer, rabbits and squirrels inhabit the property, but lizards, turtles, butterflies, moths, chipmunks, occasionally even bears and foxes may depend on that piece of real estate for their lives.

Why would it matter, you may wonder? Can’t those animals just move on down the road and find another place to live? In the past, they had to, and did. But eventually, as the Ozarks forests become cattle pasture and housing developments, wildlife will run out of somewhere to run to.

Many animals are territorial and must have space of their own, or they die, because their neighbors won’t tolerate too many of their kind in one area. Some, like the indigenous box turtle, return to the same spot where they were born, to lay their eggs each year.

A female box turtle has been returning to my garden each year for the past twenty years to lay her eggs in the same 3 x 5 foot raised bed in my garden. I see her every fall, laying eggs, and every spring, I watch the tiny quarter-sized baby turtles as they tumble out of the raised bed and try to find their way in the world. What happens to those turtles if you bulldoze their nursery? Since box turtles are said to mate for life, and are very territorial, they have to fight other turtles for a new place to exist.

But even more than the animals, it’s actually the dogwood, our Missouri state tree, that I am most concerned most about. They are on the decline all across the Ozarks region.

My parents and I used to drive from central Missouri down to the Ozarks nearly every spring, to see the dogwoods when they were in bloom. They were everywhere, making the understory of the forests come alive with the billions of blossoms. People would line the roads, taking photos, artists painting, people gawking at the billowing white petals of our State tree.

Churche congregations are often as guilty as developers at how they treat the land. They buy a piece of land for building a church to worship and what is the first thing they do? They bulldoze the land, clear it, so they can put up a building. Do they plant back native plants, the very plants the Creator put there? I’ve never, ever seen a congretation that did that. Instead, they plant a few Japanese yews, or some Chinese junipers and call it landscaping. These nonnative plants require maintenance, watering, mulching. You would think that church congregations, of all people on earth, would honor the environment that God created and want native plants, the ones that don’t require artificial fertilizers and maintenance to survive. Sadly, though, natural beauty, the very thing that brings people to our land, isn’t in fashion any longer.

I publish an estimate in my newspaper column each year of the number of dogwoods across the Ozarks that I believe have been destroyed by development. Not that anyone actually sets out to destroy dogwoods intentionally. Instead, developers want to clear the land of trees so they can build as many houses on the land as possible and the easiest way to do that is just bulldoze everything that’s there. My estimates are just a guess, nothing scientific, but so far no one has proven me wrong. This past year, my estimate is that 250,000 dogwood trees have been destroyed by development across the Ozarks. This includes smaller and larger dogwood trees, those that would have bloomed this spring, and those that aren’t big enough to bloom until next year. (Many friends tell me my estimates are way too low).

How many dogwood trees are planted back? Not many. Some go into yards here and there. The Conservation Department furnishes bundles of dogwood trees at very little cost for wildlife conservation, but by and large, dogwood trees are disappearing faster than they can be planted back. In a decade, the only dogwoods you will see blooming in the spring will be the ones scattered about lawns in cities and whatever is left in the deepest parts of the National Forests after logging has been completed.

Dogwoods are easy to grow. They do best in partial shade, although they will survive in full sun but will suffer occasional sun scalding of the leaves in full sunlight. By their nature they are understory trees, found beneath taller forest trees, so they do well at the edges of timber and beneath taller trees.

Dogwoods set their buds the year before and ice and cold do not harm the dogwood buds. Even covered with ice crystals, the charming white blossom sleeps inside. When the weather begins to warm in March, the buds grow and begin to open and by April, the tree will be in full bloom.
Dogwood trees are hardy, easy to grow, require virtually no care and will bloom in about three to four years after planting. (To speed up blooming, you can dig in two cups of high nitrogen fertilizer or good organic compost around the roots in mid summer).

When you do plant dogwoods, the one thing you should absolutely do is protect the trunk of the tree. The fastest way to kill a dogwood is to ding it with the lawnmower, or gouge it’s trunk with the weed eater. That small act of damaging the bark of the trunk, allows a tree borer to enter. Once that happens, the borer sets to work drilling holes and within a year or two, the tree is dead. The simple act of mulching or putting a protective border around your tree to keep the lawnmower and weed eater away, will keep away damage from the trunk and your tree will live for decades.

And in return for you simple efforts, you will be gifted with a mass of blooming year after year that few other trees in the forest can match.

As our Ozarks dogwoods decline year in and year out, it’s important to replace them at every opportunity. Please, won’t you plant some dogwood trees this spring?

Jim Long http://www.Longcreekherbs.com

Amazing Crows

2007-02-16T17:23:00.000-06:00

From "The Ozarks Herbalist" coulumn
in The Ozarks Mountaineer (http://www.ozarksmountaineer.com)
Copyright© 2007, Jim Long

Amazing Crows

Sometimes I take my laptop computer with me, and drive to the lake to write. The lapping of the waves, the quiet spaces, are inspiring to me.

One day as I was staring out at the whitecaps on the water as a strong wind was blowing, I noticed four crows assembled on a dead tree that was laying out from the shore, in the water.
The old tree had only two or three limbs sticking out a couple of feet above the water. The crows appeared to be having a discussion, turning this way and that, making short caws toward each other. Finally one of the crows hopped past the others, along the old tree trunk. He kept hopping until he was on the very tip of the limb. The others watched in silence.

Suddenly the crow leaped off the end of the limb with his wings spread. The wind, was brisk, and as I watched, the most amazing thing happened.

The airborne crow simply hung suspended in the air, about three feet above the water, about two feet from the end of the limb. He didn’t move, nor flap his wings. The strong wind made the perfect lift, just like speed causes upward lift on an airplane and he hung there, motionless, for about two minutes.

The other crows were having a fit, cawing and jumping around and so he flapped his wings a couple of times and returned to the tree trunk.

Then another crow took his place, jumping from the end branch and he hanging there, suspended, motionless for about three minutes this time. Then the next crow took that one’s place.

Over the next fifteen minutes, the crows took turns, one at a time, leaping off the end of the limb and hanging suspended in the airlift of the wind, motionless. It was a game and the crows were obviously having a great time. Over and over again, each one took a turn and the others seemed to cheer their companion on, and received the same cheering when it was their turn. Finally a car drove past and they flew on to another adventure.

I love crows. They are so amazingly intelligent and can learn to use tools, such as a straw to stick into an ant hill to draw out the ants. Or standing on one end of a beverage can to tip it their way in order to drink what’s inside. A National Geographic photographer recorded on film some years ago, a group of crows that took turns laying on their backs and sliding down a slick, snow covered hillside. Crows, it seems, have the ability and intelligence, to have fun.
Nearly every morning I begin my day by soaking in my outdoor hot tub outside my bedroom door. Nearly submerged there, like a hunter in a duck blind, I can watch as the crows disperse over their territory before sunrise.

Crows gather at night in large colonies for protection. They’re a very communal bird and are said to mate for life.

Just as the sun begins to lighten the eastern sky, the emissary crows (that’s what I call them) leave the flock and disperse, one about every half mile. As soon as one is on its post, you’ll hear it call. It’s kind of an, “I’m here, on duty, looking for food, guarding the territory.”

Another will call, then another. From my submerged spot in the hot tub, I can hear crows, one by one, respond in all directions, from across the lake, from the other side of the hill. One flock covers several miles.

Once posted, they begin to look for food, and to look for predators, as well. If an owl is anywhere to be seen, one of the emissaries lets out the alarm and other crows come and surround it, tormenting it until it moves on elsewhere. Hawks, too, are unwelcome in the crow’s territory and get bothered until they move on.

But crows also seem to have a respect for hawks. Sometimes you will see them torment the hawk to drive it away. But I’ve also watched crows and hawks having what appears to be a game. The hawk can easily get away from the crows, simply because it can fly higher and dive quicker than a crow. But they will glide and parry like two planes, rolling over and over, diving, flying on updrafts until one or the other gets tired and moves on to the work of finding a meal.

Crows have a vast language of communication. I’ve learned to recognize the difference from a crow that’s found food, from one that has forgotten to report in from his station. When one gets busy or forgets, the nearest emissaries repeat their calls several times. If the forgetful one doesn’t respond, several come to check out the problem. If they find the crow was ignoring them, an argument ensues. Or sometimes the one who has been silent suddenly realizes he’s neglecting his duty and responds with a call that resembles, “Yes, yes, I’m here, quit yelling at me.”

My father once told me that he had a pet crow when he was a child. He said that crows could be taught to speak human words and I’ve heard from others that this bird can learn to mimic other sounds. My father’s pet crow was a constant companion anytime he was outside on the farm. Then one day, when my grandfather was plowing the garden and the crow was following along behind the horse and plow, eating bugs, he ate a millipede. My father said the crow made odd noises, then died a few minutes later. Evidently crows in the wild know better than to eat millipedes.

Many people don’t like crows and believe they are harmful or bothersome. I enjoy having them around and every time I watch them, I feel I learn something new. And, if you watch them long enough, you will get to see them playing games, drinking from beverage cans (they like beer) and generally acting like a bunch of clowns.

http://www.longcreekherbs.com

Sarah, the 3-Year Old Gardener

2007-01-27T11:03:00.001-06:00

Jim Long

Sarah’s Garden
A year ago I was just out of the hospital after receiving a new kidney. It was February, the time when I traditionally plant potatoes, peas, onions, poppies and cilantro. Out of the hospital but not yet able to travel, I was staying with my cousins, Bill and Laveta, in Kansas City.
My room looked out upon their back yard and over into their neighbors’ yard. The winter was mild and I was feeling the need to garden again.
One day I noticed a bit of earth that had been dug up in the neighbors’ back yard. This was not the red clay, rocky soil of my Ozarks, but the black, rich soil of the area where the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails once commenced.
I mentioned the digging to my cousins, saying the neighbor must be anxious for the garden season to begin.
“Oh, no,” Bill said. “That’s Sarah, our neighbor’s granddaughter. She goes outside and digs every time they let her out to play.”
When I inquired about Sarah age, I was completely unprepared for Bill’s answer.
“She’s just three,” he said.
I learned Sarah loves to dig in the earth. Not just a little dab here and a jab there, like you would expect a three year old to do. This was a systematic turning over of the soil, from one corner, extending out across the bed. She had borrowed her grandfather’s hand trowel, and every day, her favorite pastime was to dig and pretend she was planting flowers.
As I healed, Bill drove me back and forth, so I could go home for brief periods, between doctor’s appointments. I began to look forward to seeing Sarah’s progress. The first thing I would do after settling in, was to look out the window to check on Sarah’s project.
Eventually, Sarah had shallowly tilled an area about three feet wide and eight feet long. The spot looked, from my vantage point at least, like it was ready to plant.
Bill and Laveta told me the grandparents weren’t always pleased Sarah got so dirty each day. They wished she didn’t dig in the ground so much. But they also said she pretended to scatter imaginary seed, then she would carry water in her little play bucket and water them. Sarah knew already, what it took to make a garden grow.
I expressed my hope the grandparents would buy her real seed and give her the opportunity to garden. I thought back to my own first garden, at age five, and how grateful I remain, to my parents for letting me make all the mistakes a five year old can make in a garden.
I remembered how I got to choose the seed, and to plant them in my own little space. I thought back to how I planted everything too closely, in order to plant everything I’d wanted to grow. I recalled how the weeds grew and how hot and miserable it was using my toy hoe in July. But I also relived in my memory how my mother had prominently displayed every radish, every sprig of dill, every little pea or mint leaf I had grown that first year.
After my last appointment at the hospital in early May, I looked out my cousins’ window to check on Sarah’s garden. It was completely tilled, and fenced with four feet high chicken wire. I asked Bill if Sarah had gotten to plant her garden. He said he didn’t think so. The grandfather had fenced the garden to plant tomatoes so Sarah’s play garden had been replaced.
I felt bad for Sarah. I wanted to take her seed packets and tell her to dig up another patch. I wanted to encourage her to not give up gardening, but instead, to find another place to plant. I hoped Sarah’s grandparents let her help plant the tomatoes and would encourage her budding love for gardening.
Watching Sarah’s determination, week after week in cold weather, seeing her determined progress, was inspirational for me. If a three year old could garden, given her limitations, surely I could do no less. And as spring came and I healed, I thought of Sarah many times as I began to garden again.

Three Exciting New Herbs to Grow

2006-08-22T21:04:00.000-05:00

For State by State Gardening magazine
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

If you drive through any small town across America you will find either, or both, Mexican and a variety of Asian restaurants. Where once it was only burgers and pizza, or fried chicken and mashed potatoes, now you have choices of Indian, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, Guatemalan or Mexican restaurants.

Each of these ethnic foods have a different set of flavors, of traditional herbs that are used for seasoning. Where our grandma used only a few herbs - sage, rosemary, thyme, maybe some horseradish, foods today rely on a completely new set of flavors.

Even the "all you can eat" Chinese buffet, does not rely on parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme for its flavors.

There are lots of new and exciting plants coming in to the marketplace that are of interest to the home gardener. Eating habits have changed and when food fashions change and restaurants begin offering new flavors, gardeners want to grow those seasoning plants in their own gardens. What that means for gardeners is that we are developing a taste for interesting, new flavors that do not include the older, more ordinary European herbs we were used to. Instead, these flavorful ethnic foods rely on herbs such as curry leaf, cilantro, kaiffir lime leaf, lemongrass, cumin, cardamom, a vast range of basils, fiery peppers and herbs that grow in the water garden.

Nurseries and garden centers follow trends and begin offering plants their customers request. Ten years ago lots of garden centers weren't offering herbs at all and now just about all of them have a section on herbs, simply because their customers asked for those plants. Here are three new herbs you might like to grow this coming season, with sources for where to find them.

1 - Green Pepper Basil (Ocimum selloi). This very attractive and unusual herb was first collected by Dr. Dennis Breedlove in Chiapas, Mexico, a dozen or so years ago. Records of its use date back to the Aztecs, who used the plant for medicine as well as seasoning. Several characteristics makes this basil unique. First, it's a robust, dark green with shiny leaves and will withstand cooler temperatures than other basils. It blooms continuously throughout the summer and fall with attractive lavender to purple flower spikes, and unlike other basils, the blooming and seed setting do not stop leaf production. (Most basils require some pruning to keep up good leaf production).

Second, the flavor is a pleasant combination of both sweet, bell pepper, and spicy basil. It's delicious in a variety of dishes, including corn soup and stir fried dishes. As an added bonus, the plant is an attractive landscape or patio plant and holds up well in hot weather. From my experience in growing green pepper basil, it also doesn't easily cross with other basils. I generally grow about eight varieties together in my herb bed. This is a very good addition to your herb garden! Source (plants): Nichols Garden Nursery, 800-422-3985 and www.nicholsgardennursery.com.

2- Vietnamese Cilantro, also known as Vietnames coriander and Ra Rom (Polygonum odoratum). You either love cilantro or you hate it. Admittedly it's an acquired taste, but if you enjoy salsa and chips, or any number of Asian or Mexican foods, cilantro is a necessary ingredient and this is an excellent, and easy, cilantro to grow. The standard cilantro (Coriandrum sativum) is a cool season plant, thriving in weather that's too cool for growing most garden plants. Try and grow this standard cilantro between May and September in the South and you will fail, which is why this new herb is so important. It loves Southern summers! The hotter the weather, the more humidity, the happier this plant becomes. The flavor has a lemon, coriander, curry taste and fragrance. In its native Vietnam, it grows in the marshes and my friends who grow it commercially for the restaurant trade, grow it in low, hot, humid greenhouses all summer long.

Vietnamese cilantro requires full sun and lots of moisture. In fact, it will grow in a partially submerged pot at the edge of a water garden, or in regular garden soil if kept consistently damp. However, there is one caution about eating this herb. It's necessary to keep the plant harvested regularly as the young leaves and shoots have the best flavor. If you allow the plant to ramble, then when you taste the leaves, the flavor is quite different and not totally pleasant. Like most herbs, the more you harvest the plant, the better the flavor! Use the leaves of this plant in the same way you use any other variety of cilantro. I like it in a salsa of ripe peaches or mangoes, some lime juice, a jalapeno pepper chopped, a bit of green onion and two or three leaves of Vietnamese cilantro chopped. Mixed and served with chips, it's a great afternoon appetizer. Source (plants): Richters Herbs, 1-905-640-6677 and at www.richters.com.

3- Kaffir lime (Citrus hystrix) is another interesting new plant to grow. If you like to cook Asian dishes, there is no really good substitute for the flavor of this plant. Kaffir lime is a necessary ingredient in Tom Yum soup (meaning hot and sour) and Tom Kha Kai (Tom means soup, in Thai). It's a citrus and should be grown like any dwarf orange or lemon and is easily started from seed or cutting. Be prepared for thorns, like other citrus plants. Easily grown in containers indoors or on the patio, the desirable part of this plant are its shiny, dark green, hour-glass shaped leaves. In Thai dishes one or two leaves are simply torn up and dropped into a dish as it cooks, or in some recipes the leaf is rolled up tight and sliced very thin and added to Thai salads. The leaves have a very pleasant, lime fragrance and flavor. Give the plant full sun in summer and bring it indoors in winter. It's an easy and attractive plant for the patio. Source: Seed available from Baker Creek Seed, P.O. Box 70, Mansfield, MO 65704; 417-924-1222 or www.rareseeds.com, and plants from Nichols Garden Nursery, 800-422-3985 or www.nicholsgardennursery.com.

If you are an adventurous cook and like experimenting with new flavors, you will enjoy these new herbs and they will be an excellent addition to your herb garden.

Jim long has written over 20 books on herbs and gardening. You can find more plant information, recipes and views of his garden on his website at www.Longcreekherbs.com.

Dill - It's Not Just Pickles!

2006-08-22T21:01:00.000-05:00

For State by State Gardening magazine
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

When you mention the word, "dill" most people think immediately of dill pickles. And while it's true, a cucumber in vinegar without dill is just a sour cucumber, dill is good for so many things beyond making pickles. You may have noticed that dill is used by florists for that fluffy, airy filler in summer bouquets. And that dill flowers, on their substantial stems, hold up really well as a cut flower and are sold through wholesale florist supply houses.

When I was in India doing research for a writing project, I was surprised to find dill being used in a variety of dishes. I had always associated dill with northern European foods, but it's a staple of Indian foods, although you're not likely to find a dill pickle in that country. There is is also considered a mildly medicinal herb, used as an aid for digestion and for preventing flatulence.

There are several kinds of dill and each one grows a bit differently and has different uses. For example, if you are growing dill for bouquets, the variety, 'Vierling' is the best to grow. It offers a striking combination of steel blue foliage and brilliant chartreuse blooms. It has very strong stems , grows three to four feet tall, and blooms early.

But if you want more leaves than flowers, the variety, 'Fernleaf' is a better choice. It has compact plants with multiple branches. It's shorter, growing only about eighteen inches high and is slow to bloom. You'll find 'Fernleaf' listed as 'Slow-bolt' in some catalogs.

Another dill that is slow to bloom is 'Dukat.' If you plan on using primarly the flavorful leaves more than the seed heads, then you will want a slow bolting variety so that you have dill weed for a longer period of time.

'Dukat' is one of the better dill varieties to dry for dill weed. Dry it in a warm, airy place, without light. An attic works, so does a food dehydrator, but don't use the microwave which will evaporate the plant's essential oils, which is where the flavor is.

The most common dill grown in most people's gardens is a variety usually sold as 'Bouquet." It produces harvestable leaves in about 50 days from planting and has seed for pickling use, in about 85-90 days. This one grows about thirty six inches high and blooms a bit earlier than the slow-bolt varieties.

How is dill grown? In the South you can plant dill seed in late fall or early winter. It's a cool season plant, so if the seed is planted early, it will germinate and grow when the conditions are best. Dill doesn't transplant well. While you can transplant it, the transplant never thrives as well as a seed that is planted where it will grow to maturity.

As soon as hot weather hits, dill begins going to seed. If you want dill weed over a longer period of time, it's best to do successive plantings through the spring, and to plant more than one variety. Try as you will, though, dill won't grow in the hottest part of summer.

Here's one of my favorite salads which uses fresh dill (called "dill weed.")

2 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded and cut in 1 inch pieces 2 cups, pineapple tidbits 1/2 cup sour cream 1/4 cup fresh dill leaf, diced slightly

Combine ingredients, mixing, then chill for at least an hour before serving. Serve 1/2 cup servings on top of lettuce leaves with a fresh dill leaf on top.

Another easy recipe using dill is this dill dip:

Dill Dip

1 cup sour cream 1/2 cup mayonnaise, like Hellman's 2-3 drops Tobasco or similar hot sauce 2 drops Worchestershire sauce 1/4 cup fresh dill weed, chopped fine (or 1/8 cup dry) 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Combine ingredients and mix well. Chill for at least an hour, or overnight. Serve as a dip for fresh vegetables or chips.

Dill & Tomato Sandwich Spread one slice of bread with any good mayonnaise Spread the other slice of bread with a thick layer of whipped cream cheese Put a generous layer of fresh dill leaves over the cream cheese Top with sliced, ripe tomatoes, a lettuce leaf and thinly sliced cucumber.

Sources Nichols Garden Nurrsery 1190 Old Salem Rd., NE Albany, OR 97321 www.nicholsgardennursery.com

Johnny's Selected Seed www.johnnyseeds.com

Pinetree Garden Seeds P.O. Box 300 New Gloucester, ME 04260 www.superseeds.com

Richters Herbs Goodwood, Ontario LOC 1AO Canada www.Richters.com

Make Your Own Marshmallows!

2006-08-22T21:00:00.000-05:00

For The Herb Companion magazine
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

In the part of my garden that has a sign marked, "Edible Flowers," I have a marshmallow plant (Althea officinalis) growing. Unlike most of the other edible flower plants I grow there, the marshmallow is grown to teach a point, rather than for it's flowers. The ordinary marshmallow plant isn't that showy, it gets leggy unless you prune it back half way in mid summer, and you could easily overlook the tiny, pale white-pink flowers completely. The fact is, this isn't a remarkable or noticeable plant at all.

But when I take visitors on tour of my various culinary and medicinal beds, on to my exotic vegetables and water plants, I like to end up at the edible flower beds. I let visitors sample the old rose variety I grow which is generally in bloom with tiny, hauntingly fragrant white flowers. It was a favorite of my mother's throughout her lifetime. I encourage the visitors to taste the tangy, tart begonias, the unfamiliar flavor of marigolds, the pungent sages, spicy dianthus, and the subtle pansies and basil blossoms. We talk about how well these flavors work in sorbets and iced desserts. Then we pause at the marshmallow and we talk about the origins of how things come to be.

"Like the marshmallow for example," I say, pointing to the leggy, fuzzy leafed plant. Can you look at this and imagine fluffy marshmallows?" If it's a children's group that I'm touring, I may have earlier stuck miniature marshmallows to the stems of the plant to make my point.

Explaining, "Here is where marshmallows first came from" often focuses the children's minds on the plant I am describing and they ask if all you have to do is harvest the marshmallows.

"Yes," I say. "See how the grow next to the stem?" and wait for someone to laugh at the silly idea.

But when you think about it, it really is amazing that anyone dreamed up that fluffy confection and it's only when you delve into the history of the plant do you come to see how plants, and food evolves with time.

The Althea plant was in use in ancient Egypt where it was used to make a honey-based condiment, thickened with the powdered Althea root and was used as a medicine for royalty, treating sore throats. Marshmallow plants made their way from Europe to the Americas, where they naturalized along the East Coast. In Europe, and later America, in the nineteenth century, doctors used the extracted juice from marsh mallow plants, cooking it with sugar and egg whites, then whipping it into a foamy meringue that became firm. The resulting candy was used to soothe the sore throats of children and adults alike. The juice of the althea, was used as a topical treatment for wounds and cuts, as well as a liquid ointment for throat problems.

By the early 1900s, gelatin had replaced Althea officinalis root in the recipe for marshmallows, making them commercially viable, but also eliminating the cough suppressing, potential immune system boosting and wound healing properties of this useful plant.

In case you missed it, this change was significant for reasons beyond medicinal. If you are vegetarian, eating a gelatin based product, such as a marshmallow, means you are eating gelatin, which comes from the boiled bones of pork and beef, as well as fresh frozen pigskins and cattle hides. You'll also find gelatin in chewing gum, cream cheese, sour cream, cake icing and the candy known as gummy bears. Gelatin is also found in the coating for pills, as well as in cosmetics, throat lozenges and ointments.

So upon closer look, it seems someone didn't just gaze upon the lowly marshmallow plant and have a light bulb moment, inventing the marshmallow. Instead, it was a useful medicinal plant, whose properties evolved into the popular fluffy candy we know today.

When I describe to my garden tours the process of extracting the juice of the marshmallow, it's even more amazing that someone ever made anything useful. The method as it was described to me is this. You dig up some marshmallow plants, replanting a few of the smaller pieces to grow new plants.

Scrub the roots, getting off the soil and dark outer peeling. Then the roots are pulverized in water, pounding them until it is just a mass. More water is added and stirred, then the sediment is allowed to settle to the bottom of the container.

The water is siphoned off, leaving the residue, which is dried and further pulverized. Finally the resulting powder is the part that is added to the sugar, beaten egg whites, vanilla and corn syrup and cooked, then poured into a pan that has been sprinkled with powdered sugar. After the marshmallow has set up, a moistened knife is used to cut the mallows into bite sized pieces and it is rolled in powdered sugar.

The juice of the marshmallow plant has been used medicinally for centuries. The bruised root exudes a mucilaginous sap, that was used for soothing burns and sore throats, it's stickiness coating the wound or sore and aiding in healing. It is this muciliginiousness that made the plant useful. Other plants related to althea include the more common hibiscus, okra and others, and each have some of these sticky juiced properties. (Okra, which came from Africa, was used medicinally, as well, although not for the exact same purposes).

Usually, though, tour groups don't get the full amount of background. Most people don't want that much information, especially children's groups. So my method is to simply perk their interest with the connection between the althea plant and marshmallows. Maybe some little tidbit will inspire a child to read more, or an adult to want to explore more about the histories of medicinal plants. While not every plant has something as visible as the marshmallow to catch someone's interest, most plants do have a history that is just as rich and colorful if we but pause to look.

Jim Long gardens in the Ozarks Mountains. His gardens are open by advance reservation only. Visit his website at www.Longcreekherbs.com.

Eat More Parsley - It's GOOD for You!

2006-08-22T20:59:00.000-05:00

For The Herb Companion, Spring, 2006
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

I was sitting in a restaurant recently, when I overheard a conversation between a five year old boy and his mother. The boy asked, "Mummie, what's this green thing on my plate?"

I looked over to see what he was inquiring about and saw a plate of fried chicken nuggets. Next to that was a plate of half-eaten child's size pancakes and a glass of soda.

The mother said, "Oh, that's just parsley, it's for decoration, not something you eat."

Never mind it was the only fresh, healthy food on their plates. But to teach a child that parsley's not edible!

However, most people don't think much of parsley today. It's that little piece of green fluff on top of the grilled salmon. It's the green leaves scattered around sliced meats and cheeses on an appetizer tray. It is, in today's world, basically an herb that has been relegated to being just decoration.

But the Romans, and the Greeks before them, used parsley in great quantities and looked upon parsley as an essential herb, recognizing its individual flavor in foods. The Greeks held parsley in high esteem and made wreathes of it and used them in celebrations as gifts to the gods. The Romans looked upon parsley as important in keeping away drunkenness, and so, exotic salads of parsley with rose petals and violets were eaten at the great banquets to ward off inebriation.

Fresh parsley has a flavor of its own, which makes it useful in cooking, although dried parsley has virtually no flavor. Curly leaf parsley (Petroselinum crispum) has pleasant flavor, but flat leaf, or Italian parsley (Petroselinum neapolitanum) has an honest, more robust, flavor that is perfect in soups, salads, salad dressings, gremolatas and pestos.

Parsley is an excellent breath freshener, thanks to its high chlorophyl content. It is high in Vitamins A and C, and one cup of minced fresh parsley contains more beta-carotene than a large carrot, almost twice as much Vitamin C as an orange, more calcium than a cup of milk, and twenty times as much iron as one serving of liver.

It's easy to grow, but slow to germinate from seed. One old European myth says parsley seeds go nine times to the devil and back before germinating. In the community where I grew up, I was told to plant parsley seed in the sign of the moon; pour boiling water on the row, cuss it thoroughly and cover with soil, then, everyday go out and cuss it some more until it peeks through the soil. From those instructions you would think the someone was trying to germinate baby dragons from rocks instead of simple parsley plants!

Parsley is easy to grow. It likes a full day of sunshine, with moderate soil, or a planter on the patio, and requires very little care. The boiling water trick I learned from my childhood, is just a method for loosening the outer shell of the seed. The cussing and yelling probably doesn't do anything for the germination.

You can also speed up germination by soaking the seed for a day or two before planting. In some regions you can plant the seed in the fall and the freezing and thawing of winter will loosen the seeds so they can sprout.

A really simple method to speed germination is this: Put four or five parsley seeds in each compartment of an ice cube tray. Fill the tray with water and put it in the freezer for a week. Then, plant the ice cubes in a row. Germination will be much improved with no yelling or cussing required. Parsley is a biennial, which means it grows one year then goes to seed the next. The flavor of the leaves is good the first year, but turn bitter as the plant goes into flowering the second year. In other words, grow parsley as an annual for continuous leaves to use.

Gremolata is a chopped parsley seasoning, used somewhat like pesto, (which uses basil instead of parsley). Gremolata is chopped parsley with garlic, lemon zest, sometimes including olive oil. It is used for adding to the cook pot near the end of cooking for flavor, as an ingredient in soups. stews, as a topping for lamb, pork, chicken or fish.

Here's a basic Gremolata recipe:.

3 tablespoons chopped flat, Italian parsley, or 6-8 sprigs 2 garlic cloves 2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest Freshly ground pepper Put ingredients in food processor and chop well. Try a parsley salad: 4 cups barely chopped parsley, 1/2 cup of halved ripe cherry tomatoes, some sliced radishes, a green onion diced fine and some fresh lemon juice squeezed over with a bit of olive oil and tossed well.

Parsley is full of flavor and vitamins and the next time you see it on your dinner plate, eat it for the great breath freshener it is. Grow it, cook with it and eat more parsley - it's actually good, and good for you!

Death by Violets

2006-08-22T20:58:00.000-05:00

For The Herb Companion magazine
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

For many years in my twenties and thirties, I worked as a landscape architect. It was the perfect profession for me because I love plants, and I enjoy designing people's outdoor environments. And, although I am a bit embarrassed to admit, I greatly enjoy spending other people's money.

Early on, when I first began my business, I landed a design job for a newly wealthy client. The couple, a handsome young attorney and his stunningly beautiful trophy wife, had just built an expansive house in the fashionable suburbs of the city. They hired me to create a total environment, with a swimming pool, multilevel decks, a variety of gardens, with patios, a water feature and a gazebo.

I understood very well what they wanted, which was lots of bling, something to make their neighbors envious. They wanted a landscape that shouted, "Money lives here."

When the job was finished, they threw a party, in honor of my work. Invited were the young movers and shakers of the community, in other words, more people like my clients. From the contacts I made at that party, I was busy with work for the next seven years and it established me as the guy to call if you had bottomless pockets for your landscape project.

The next substantial project I took on was for a wealthy bachelor. He owned several thousand acres of ranch land and chose a pristine location at the base of a bluff to build his home. An entire hillside cliff was dismantled by stonecutters who chiseled the limestone into building blocks for the house. A house in France was bought and dismantled simply for the eighty seven massive, seventeenth century doors. Another house in England was purchased for the four hundred year old English oak door frames, flooring and mantle pieces. A factory in San Francisco was torn down and the railroad car length wooden beams were transported to the site to become hand-waxed, exposed beams in the house. Slate from South America made the one hundred and three patio-sized steps leading to the front door; Italian marble covered the bathrooms. An attached arboretum held a pool, hot tub and steam rooms with a waterfall backdrop made of boulders with sculpture commissioned for the project.

My job, first, was to take the remains of dismantled bluffs behind the house and rebuild them into natural looking, aged stone cliff faces, building two fifty foot waterfalls and pools below with thousands of well chosen plants. To return the bluff colors to their mossy origins, I used a combination of buttermilk, horse manure and moss, blended into a paste and painted on the stone. I spent two years there, creating an environment of natural beauty with a sophisticated look. Wildflowers and herbs were planted between the house-sized boulders in the front lawn. Wild edible water plants edged the spring-fed ponds. Hundreds of thousands of spring bulbs were shipped from Holland, hand picked for the lawns and beds.

After the completion of the house, the owner moved in. He hired a private chef, a woman I'll call Peggy, and her caretaker/chauffeur husband, Bob. I became well aquatinted with Peggy and Bob as I was on site nearly every day, overseeing my landscape crews or ordering more plants.

Peggy and I became friends, primarily over our common interest in food. She knew I had enthusiasm for edible wild plants and culinary herbs and so we occasionally exchanged recipes. When a lavish party was planned at the house, Peggy would invite me in beforehand to taste this item or that and ask my opinion.

It was springtime and there were sweeping banks of lovely purple violets along the bluffs and creeks below the house. I'd been telling Peggy about candying violets and so one day she asked me to show her how I did it.

The house had a public kitchen attached to the spacious dining room. A four hundred year old redwood had been felled to make the dining table, which was a simple plank, five feet wide and long enough to seat forty. Next to that were several marble topped counters with hammered copper sinks and antique, gold plated French fixtures.

Behind that, was the service kitchen, the real working space. I brought in a basket of violets I had picked and Peggy broke an egg and separated it. I frothed up the egg white with a fork and began dipping the blossoms into the egg, then dropping them into a plastic bag of sugar and shaking them. Quickly we had a few dozen violet blossoms laid out on waxed paper to dry.

"I understand," Peggy said. "I had no idea it was so easy."

I reminded her to dry the violets in a barely warm oven or food dehydrator, then put them into airtight containers until ready to use (and away from direct light, which would ruin their color).

I learned there was to be a big party in a few days, a political fundraiser. Actually there would be two parties, two hundred people in each. The first group would include the governor of the state, the Attorney General, a couple of Senators and other bigwigs of the state's political machine, along with lots of the local upper crust of society.

Peggy had decided she would use candied violets to decorate her many desserts she was preparing and told me of her plan. Bob was to gather the blossoms. I asked him if he knew the plant we were talking about and showed him a patch of violets near the house.

"Oh, yes, I can see. I know what to pick," Bob had said.

I stopped by on the day of the party to make sure my crews had not left any tools or unplanted plants where the guests could see them.

"Jim," Peggy called out from the front door of the house when she say me walking up the steps. "Come and check my violets, I need your opinion," she said with a concerned voice.

When I got into the kitchen, I saw huge platters of candied violets, piled high. There were thousands of candied violets and I complimented her on her work.

"Something's wrong," Peggy began. "Taste one and tell me what you think." I chose a couple of violets nearest me from the platter and popped them in my mouth. I chewed, enjoying the sweetness. Suddenly, my throat turned numb. My tongue, also. I evidently looked startled because Peggy handed me a glass of water and asked, "Is this the way they are supposed to taste?"

After I sputtered and choked a bit and drank the water down, I muttered, "No. Those aren't violets, what are they?"

We turned to Bob, who was kind of a sweet but not terribly bright, doofus. Bob said, "Those are the ones you told me to pick, I just do what I'm told." "Show me where you picked them," I said, still not certain what the mistake was. A ray of sunshine was coming through the window, hitting the platters of violets, making their frosty purple color seem to glow.

Peggy and I followed Bob past the golf green, along the nature trail at the base of the waterfall until Bob pointed and said, "Here. This is where I picked the violets."

My mouth dropped open. Peggy's eyes got wide. What we were looking at was a tennis court-sized bed of vinca minor. Bob had simply assumed that anything with a lavender flower, had to be a violet. Never mind that one plant was a trailing groundcover with small leaves along the runners and that the other, the violets, grew in individual clumps with heart-shaped leaves. To him, if it was purple, it was a violet.

At that time I had no idea if vinca minor was edible. From the numbness in my throat and tongue, I assumed they were probably poison. My mind was spinning. Imagine it, I thought to myself, the headlines in the morning news would read, "Governor dies with violets in mouth."

I thought through the impact of the deaths of the leaders of the political party in power, how Bob might have single-handedly killed off the power structure of the state and local governments, bringing in a progressive party.

Peggy must have been thinking the same thing. She looked at me and said, "I need to get back to the kitchen. I have a new menu to put together for the party tonight."

Only years later did I learn from a pharmacist that vinca minor isn't poisonous, but not recommended for eating. It had minor medicinal properties in historic medicines. The politicians wouldn't have been killed, just very uncomfortable for an hour or so while they had their stomachs pumped., which, looking back, might have been fun.

The lessons for us were many. First, to always know the correct identity of the plant before you eat it. Second, don't judge a flower by its color. And third, politicians are lucky that people taste food beforehand, before serving it.

An Old-Time Healing Plant Saves the Lawn-mower Boy

2006-08-22T20:57:00.000-05:00

For The Herb Companion magazine
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

Comfrey's gotten a bad rap in recent years. My own dermatologist, who's not particularly interested in herbs, cautioned me one day a few months ago that "comfrey shouldn't even be used topically, it's just too dangerous." I think he brought it up because he recalled from years before that I make myself a bit of fresh comfrey salve after my visits to him. I go about once a year to have him freeze any sunspots I've developed over the previous year. My salve is a simple mixture, just t several young, tender comfrey leaves, 1/2 cup aloe vera gel and about 1/4 cup rubbing alcohol, all put into a blender and blended until it's a thick, green goopy salve, which I then cover and refrigerate.

Then, as soon as I return from my trip to the dermatologist's, I put little dollops of the green stuff on each place he's frozen, twice a day, which rapidly promotes healing.

Once, I'd forgotten that I had an appointment with the dermatologist just 4 days before I was to appear on an HGTV program. Only when I was sitting in the doctor's office did I remember the conflict in my schedule. Afraid my face would look like a meteor shower had passed, I began using my comfrey salve that very day. Surprisingly, only 4 days later, there wasn't a mark left for the television show's make up person to hide.

There's evidence that comfrey shouldn't be taken internally, at least not on a repeated basis. And there's also evidence that regular, repeated use on your skin might have deleterious effects on your liver. It is, of course, good to err on the side of caution.

Several summers ago I had a teenage guy who came each week to mow my lawn. His goal was to earn enough money during the summer to buy a car and he was intent on quickly mowing and getting on to his next job.

One morning soon after he had arrived for his weekly mowing, Bobby came over to where I was working in the herb garden. He held up the palm of his hand to me and explained that he'd cut it a few days ago and that pushing on the lawnmower handle with that hand kept reopening the wound.

"Got anything I can put on it?" he said.

I examined his hand and saw it was a clean wound, not infected, just uncomfortable. Of course what he probably wanted was a bandage, but he didn't ask for that and so I decided it was a good opportunity to teach him about comfrey. I walked a few steps and picked a couple of tender comfrey leaves.

"Here," I said to him. "Chew these up a bit and put them on the cut." He stood there, looking puzzled. "Ah, I, er, don't think I want to put that in my mouth," he said. "It's just leaves."

"Bobby, what's under your lower lip right now?" I asked with a knowing grin. "Skoal," he said, looking a bit embarrassed.

I told him to spit it out, that comfrey was a whole lot more useful than the tobacco he so lovingly held in his lips. Reluctantly he spit out the Skoal, wiped his lips and tentatively took the comfrey leaves I held in my hand.

He felt the leaves and noted that they were fuzzy. He was like a child, stalling, avoiding doing what he was instructed. But finally, seeing that I wasn't backing down (and only after I had put a comfrey leaf in my own mouth), he put the leaves into his mouth and worried them around with his tongue, breaking the plant's cell walls, watching me all the while to see if I was at any moment going to tell him it was a joke.

After he had chewed the leaves up a bit and finally saw that I was totally serious, I said, "Now flatten out the leaves with your fingers and apply them like a fat bandage to the palm of your hand that's cut and hold it against the mower handle while you mow. I think you'll find it helps ease the pain."

Bobby did as I suggested and in a couple of hours came back to show me that the wound did, indeed, look a bit better. I picked a few more leaves for him and told him to repeat the process that night after he got home from work, then apply it again the next morning. (I also instructed him to regularly use hydrogen peroxide on the cut to cleanse it).

It was a week later when Bobby came back. No sooner had he unloaded his mower than he came bounding over to me in the garden like a puppy chasing a ball. Holding up both palms he said, grinning from ear to ear, "I bet you can't tell which hand was cut, can you?"

And it was true. There was no indication of any wound, old or new on either hand. The wound was totally healed and gone. The next thing from Bobby was a question that really tickled me. It was even more than I had hoped for. "That worked so well, so what else grows in your garden? " he asked.

And with that, I gave Bobby his first ever tour of an herb garden. He willingly smelled and tasted everything I handed him, asking questions, wondering what this was used for and what that plant was over there that I hadn't gotten to yet. It was obvious that this was the first time a garden, or plants, had caught Bobby's attention and suddenly he couldn't get the information fast enough.

Comfrey may be a plant that deserves caution, but from my point of view, it has a long history of use and I will continue to use it, carefully and sparingly.

Jim Long's gardens and books can be seen at www.Longcreekherbs.com. Readers comments and questions always welcome at Lcherbs@interlinc.net.

Akos and the Lavender Massacre

2006-08-22T20:56:00.000-05:00

For The Herb Companion
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

I've always been resistant to learning the metric measuring system. It's pure stubbornness on my part, dating back to my childhood when I read Americans were going to have to adopt the rest of the world's measurements. "Why"? I remember asking. No one consulted me or let me vote. I intend to live out my lifetime ignoring the difference between a millimeter and a kilometer. Neither measurement evokes a mental image for me.

With our native measurements, I know in my mind what they look like. Tell me to hold up my fingers and measure an inch, and I can, because I have a mental picture of an inch. Tell me to walk a mile and I will know how far to go. But ask me to point out a millimeter, or a decimeter, or any of those other foreign terms, and there is just no mental picture that comes in my mind. Just because the rest of the world does something, is not reason enough for me to change. Usually the world and I just agree to disagree. But for some years I hosted foreign exchange students. They came, one at at time, to work with me and learn my methods of herb growing and marketing. These students were in their twenties, had a degrees in agriculture and were reasonable fluent in English.

Akos was my first exchange student, arriving in March from Budapest, Hungary. I got him settled into a little apartment on my farm and within a few days began giving him work assignments in the garden.

Akos' first assignment was to prune my lavender plants, readying them for spring. I explained I'm very particular about my lavenders. I've learned over the years they require a raised bed in this climate; otherwise their roots rot and die. I've learned they want a bit of mulch, so I use pine needles. Too much mulch will choke them, I explained to Akos, and every year they get a light application of garden lime and never, ever, should one dig around the base of the plant. The lavenders have very shallow roots which are easily damaged.

The young man stood patiently, nodding his head and eagerly trying to absorb everything I was saying. When I would ask, "Do you understand?" he would nod a polite "Yes."

I didn't want to hover around as if I didn't trust my new student, so I handed him a pair of trimmers and explained how I wanted him to prune the lavender plants. I explained "Eight to ten inches is plenty." He nodded that he understood. I pointed out where the trimmings should be thrown over the garden fence to the goats, who, most likely, would have them for lunch.

Lavender plants do best when pruned each spring. I cut mine back in late February or early March, just when there are the tiniest green leaves beginning to appear on the old limbs. With an annual pruning, the plants will be more robust and produce a greater supply of blooms. Then, after the early summer blooming, the old bloom shoots are removed to make way for a second, late summer flowering.

I looked out the window some time later and Akos was still working diligently on the lavender bed. I could see piles of the old limbs and trimmings piled carefully to the side. I went back to my other work. When he came indoors later and said, "I'm done, come to see," I went out to inspect his work.

What I saw caused my mouth to drop open. Instead of plants which were cut back to eight inches or taller, the stark lavenders were cut nearly to their main trunks. Trying to not scare the fellow on his first work assignment, I carefully chose my words and tried to lower the pitch of my voice to near normal. But I wanted to scream or cry.

"How did you decide eight inches was not enough?" I finally managed to ask. He blushed red. "Inches?" he asked. I don't know that measurement. I cut these back to eight centimeters."

I was certain that the lavenders would die, but over the following weeks I saw the severely pruned plants were putting up new growth. I thought to myself possibly within a couple of seasons at least some of the plants might be back to their former glory.

To my continuing surprise, by mid summer my lavenders were blooming more than they had ever bloomed. The spikes were longer and more numerous. Not a single plant had died as I had so dourly predicted.

Now each spring, I laugh as I prune my lavenders, remembering Akos and my mistake relating measurements to him. I always prune them back more severely than I used to, cutting them down to four of five inches above the main stem. I give them some compost and a light sprinkling of lime, scattered on top of the bed before laying down a new layer of pine needles.

My lavenders have continued to thrive with this treatment and I send an annual thank you email to Akos to remind him of our first misunderstanding and how much I learned from it. Maybe it's time I learn a new set of measurements. Lavender is versatile and resilient, so maybe I can be, too.

Nekked in the Garden

2006-08-22T20:54:00.000-05:00

For The Herb Companion magazine
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

People who write about gardening sometimes have unusual ways of amusing themselves when they get together. On an annual basis the Garden Writers of America meets, tours public and private gardens, listens to programs and lectures, and smoozes about the craft and work of garden writing. At those yearly conferences there will be 500 or so people including television gardening personalities, magazine editors, radio talk show hosts, newspaper and magazine columnists and lots of garden book authors.

One of the popular entertainments during this annual conference is the night of karokee. I believe the reason it remains popular year after year is the absolute joy of seeing distinguished personalities making absolute fools of themselves.

At this year's conference, after karokee had wound down one evening, a group of us were sitting and talking about gardening. Someone offerd up the question, "What's your most embarrassing moment as a gardener?"

I think the questioner had in mind something like the time you planted parsley and got rhubarb, or you planted the gladiolus bulbs upside down and they grew to China.

That was far from the answers that were soon revealed, however. One garden writer mentioned having fallen asleep beneath a well-mulched bed of sunflowers, only to be discovered by her teenage son who thought she had lost her mind.

"He actually called 911!" she said.

Another admitted to having lost her diamond ring in a patch of turnips and not finding it until after she and her husband divorced. When it was my turn I offered up my story.

"Well," I began, "this may be a bit radical for this group, but here goes." I described having moved to my remote rural area 26 years ago. At that time I would almost never saw a car pass by on my road, sometimes not for a week or more. I was 30, exhuberant at rural life, at having a real garden to tend and of establishing my self-sufficienty.

"Back then," I said, "I was a late-blooming hippy. It was just me and the earth, the basics of life. I wanted to live off the land and be totally at one with the Universe."

I began the habit of gardening without a shirt. Soon I had also left off my shoes, reveling in the feeling of the fertile soil under my feet. I hadn't experienced that since childhood. Then, noting that if anyone did happen by on my road, I could easily hear their car tires on the gravel for a half mile away and be warned, I decided to leave off the rest of my clothes, as well.

The feeling of gardening completey naked in a totally private place was a freedom I had never experienced. It became a habit, a daily routine. The dog and cat at first looked at me strangely, maybe surprised that I could remove my covering and they couldn't, but other than that, I gardened without interruption.

One day as I weeded along a raised bed of bronze fennel, talking to the butterflies, conversing with the bluebirds, I suddenly heard a soft voice nearby. I peeked over the fennel and there, not fifty feet away, stood a smartly dressed, matronly lady, her hand resting on the garden gate. Her car, along with a lady traveling companion were parked nearby in the driveway. I could see that she was driving an old Buick, the kind with big, balloon-like tires, the kind that could glide silently on graveled country roads .

I stood up, keeping the chest-high bed of fennel between me and the unwanted visitor. She wanted to know if I knew some long lost cousin of hers who had lived nearby, decades before. I didn't, I declared politely. She continued asking me questions, but in a soft voice, so I kept having to ask her to repeat her words. Finally she said, "Young man, if you would come a little closer I wouldn't have to repeat myself. It's unkind of you to make me yell.."

I knew she had more voice because she had just squalled at my dog, nearby. I thought to myself, "How rude! You're in my yard, uninvited and you are telling me where to stand so you can talk to me about people I've never heard of. And you are yelling ugly things at my innocent dog!"

But I remained courteously behind the fennel, preferring not to shock the lady. She kept up the banter, telling me about her cousins, their house, their childhood, their divorces, their wayward children, their stint in jail. Once again she insisted I join her at the garden gate, with more force this time.

"Ok," I mumbled to myself. "This is my farm, my garden and you are a pest." I stepped determindly out from behind the fennel and strode to within a few feet of the lady, just as she had requested. Her eyes grew big. She looked at the trees, then the sky, then the power lines over the garden. She watched the barn swallows diving at mosquitoes overhead,. She surveyed the torn roof on the weathered old garden shed behind me, up at the oak trees, over toward the hills beyond. Her voice trailed off in mid sentence.

She didn't apologize, nor did I. But she did refrain from any more tales of her misguided relatives and their woeful lives. Quickly, and quietly she got into her old Buick. The car's silent tires snaked their way up the gravel driveway and over the hill and out of sight. I would have loved to listen in on the conversation between the two ladies as they drove away.

My most embarrassing moment was also a moment of triumph, but after that, I kept an extra pair of shorts in the garden, just in case.

It's Poison, Don't Touch it!

2006-08-22T20:47:00.000-05:00

For The Herb Companion magazine
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

I've always wanted to garden. From the time I was old enough to walk, I would follow my father as he used the old push tiller, "helping." I began to pester my parents by the time I was four years old, to let me have my own garden. I would spend hours looking through seed catalogs, learning about plants and asking questions.

My questions led me in interesting directions. My paternal grandparents were quite old by the time I, their only grandson, came along. My grandfather had been born right after the Civil War, in a sod house on their homestead in Kansas. My grandmother had come from Tennessee after the War, in a covered wagon. Both of them had suffered difficulties, worked hard and witnessed tragedy. And so, when I came along, full of questions and excitement about life, they worried. Boy oh boy, did they worry. Worrying was their full time hobby in their old age.

They lived on a farm and whenever we visited them I was constantly bringing in whatever new plant or fruit or flower I had found, to ask its name. The naming of plants was always important for me, but whenever I asked what this or that was called, my grandparents, both of them, had only one response.

"It's poison. Don't touch it!"

It didn't matter whether I had just picked a bouquet of poison ivy (which I once did) or a handful of grape leaves, the answer was always the same. I was taught always to respect my elders, so I didn't challenge my grandparents' answers. One day, though, I was very curious about the vines I saw growing along the fence rows and had asked my grandfather what they were. His pat answer, "It's poison, don't touch it" was all he gave.

But later that day I saw my Grandma Harper, my mother's mother, and out of curiosity, asked her the same question. To my surprise, she didn't tell me it was poison. She didn't share my Grandad and Grandma Long's view that children should be protected from everything, at all costs. Instead, she believed that the more a child knew, the better prepared he might be for life. She told me the vines were grape vines.

Grandma took me to the cellar and showed me rows of jars of grape jelly, the deep purple color showing through the glass. Then she directed my gaze to quart jars of dill pickles. Picking one up, she turned it around and said, "See the grape leaf? I put one leaf in every jar of pickles to keep them crisp."

After that I quit asking my paternal grandparents questions about plants. Anytime I wanted real information, I knew that my Grandma Harper would tell me the truth. And so, as I reached my fifth birthday, I again started asking my parents to let me have my own garden.

My father finally agreed to till up a little plot of ground for me, about six feet by six feet square. My mother would let me choose the seeds and help me order them from the seed catalog. The agreement was that I would plant the garden exactly like I wanted, with the seed I chose, but if I did, I had to weed and hoe my garden, just as they did the big garden.

I was beside myself with excitement. I made a list by tearing out the pictures and descriptions of every plant I wanted to grow. To my disappointment my mother explained that there wasn't room for everything and that I must cut the number of seed packets down by half.

I worked hard on my selections. I wanted to grow corn and radishes. I wanted a row of touch-me-nots as I liked popping their seed pods. I chose onions and lettuce, a row of zinnias, peas, carrots and sunflowers. I wanted a clump of mint and some sage, too. When my mother suggested I still had too many things for the small space, I insisted I would make it work.

When the seed order arrived in the mail I could hardly stand to wait for the package to be opened. I spread out the packets and looked at the colorful pictures on the front, imagining what my garden was going to look like. I barely slept that night as in my mind I kept arranging and rearranging the rows of plants. Next day, as soon as breakfast was over, I took my child sized hoe and rake and began making rows in my garden.

It felt like magic to me, putting little shriveled up seeds in the ground, knowing that in a week or two, they would emerge and grow into living plants.

The first plants up were the radishes, in about five days. Then the lettuce next and the carrots. Peas and corn took a little longer and I grew impatient, checking several times a day.

At first keeping the weeds out of my little garden was easy but soon, as the weeds grew faster and the other plants began to crowd each other, it became a harder job. The weather grew hot and it wasn't fun to pull the weeds everyday.

Within a few weeks I had realized my mistake. In my effort to get everything in the garden, I had planted the rows too close together (about eight inches apart). That meant the corn was overshadowing the zinnias. The mint on one corner of the garden was overtaking the peas. But no one said, "I told you so." Instead, every time I harvested a radish or an onion or a pod of peas, my mother would compliment me and make it a part of the meal. (Once, the three of us split the five peas out of one pod with both of my parents declaring they were the sweetest peas in the garden).

My parents let me make mistakes in my first garden. They didn't discourage me, or even chastise me for letting the weeds get out of control. Instead, they encouraged me and let me learn from the choices I had made.

I'm grateful for that, for their letting me make mistakes with my first garden and to learn from them. I credit them for encouraging me into an occupation that has sustained me for my entire lifetime and look back fondly on my first garden.

Questions and comments welcome at Lcherbs@interlinc.net and at www.Longcreekherbs.com.

Betty Wold and the Disappearing Muffins

2006-08-21T21:17:00.000-05:00

Down to Earth column for The Herb Companion magazine, summer, 2005
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

For seven years in the late'80s and early '90s, I held an annual herb festival at my farm in the Ozarks. I dubbed it, "Herb Day in May," and the one day affair was filled with herb experts speaking about growing and using herbs.

My intention back then was to have an event which brought herb-minded people together to learn and exchange information. In those days there was little in the way of publications, not a lot of books and herb nurseries were not easy to find.

I featured herb foods for the luncheon and afternoon refreshments, had musicians and plant sellers, and generally made the occasion one of fun, education, food and festivities. One year we held a "Shakespearmint Players" play on the roof of the herb shop, with the audience seated in the herb garden. Another year we had soap makers, herbal fortune tellers, jugglers, butter churning (to make rose petal butter) and lots of elaborate herbal foods which I prepared.

To attend, you had to be on my mailing list for the little herb publication I wrote and published, reserve in advance and pay a fee. Each year the number of people coming grew larger and each year I had to turn more people away due to lack of space. Every year I increased the fee for the day, eventually charging $35 per person and every year, people complained that I didn't charge enough because of all the food and entertainment I furnished them.

Visitors came from many states. and the speakers, too, were from as far away as Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas and beyond. One year my good friend and herbalist from Oklahoma, Betty Wold, presented a fascinating program on cooking with herbs. (She had actually been to the very first Herb Day in May, the one that was rained out. Having come prepared to give her program, she dressed in her garden hat, flowery dress and garden gloves and gave her program to 5 people in my living room, entertaining all of us and making us feel that we hadn't been rained on at all).

Betty began her lecture by telling us about Benje, the bisinge dog she had recently acquired. Bisinges, if you don't recall, are the Australian dog that never, ever barks, a quality that Betty liked very much.

According to Betty, she had invited several guests from New Zealand to stay with her for a few days. They were to tour her herb garden, then she would lead them on tours of some nearby botanical gardens and art galleries. On the day of the guests' arrival, Betty had made some stunningly good orange muffins with chamomile and sage. "It was a new recipe," Betty said, "something I'd dreamed up one night when I couldn't sleep and I was certain they would be delicious."

Betty set the freshly baked muffins on the kitchen counter to cool, covered by a tea towel, and went about fluffing up the house and readying it for visitors.

The guests arrived in early afternoon and everyone was enjoying visiting. Betty put on the tea kettle to make a pot of tea to serve with the muffins. She put out the napkins then went to fill a napkin lined basket with the orange chamomile muffins.

"The muffins weren't there!" Betty said. "Not a muffin remained, only the crumbs. I thought I had lost my mind. I looked in the oven. I looked in the pantry. What could I have done with those muffins? I really thought I had lost it!" Betty said with a laugh at herself.

With no muffins to serve, Betty brought out some store bought cookies and went on about hosting her guests, explaining with a laugh and some embarrassment, that she really did bake muffins for her guests. After dinner that night everyone said their good evenings and went off to their beds. As Betty described it, "All at once I began hearing giggles. Then laughter and now and then a shriek. One guest said,'Betty, we've found the missing muffins."

Betty went to look as the guests came out of their rooms, each carrying a muffin. Benje, the bisinge dog, had carefully carried each muffin and tucked one under each pillow of all of the guests' beds. Betty laughingly told us in her lecture that bisinge dogs other trait, besides not barking, is that they hoard food. Benje had put a muffin under every pillow for some future time when there were no muffins to be had, and since Betty's orange chamomile muffins were the best thing around, he thought he'd hit the jackpot.

"Benje thought he had found a hiding place where he could go get a muffin a day for days and days," Betty said.

Betty concluded her lecture by telling us that not to be afraid to use herbs in new and unusual ways. "You just never know how a recipe is going to turn out, or where your muffins are going to turn up," she said.

If you would like some recipes for using your herbs in interesting ways, check out my Recipe Blog. Happy gardening! Questions and comments welcome at Lcherbs@interlinc.net and at www.Longcreekherbs.com.

A Small Miracle in Every Seed

2006-08-21T21:14:00.000-05:00

For The Herb Quarterly magazine, Spring, 2006
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

Seed. Isn't it remarkable? Seeds found in Egyptian tombs, sealed up for thousands of years, when planted, still grew.

There's a tree growing on the campus of Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri that came from just such a seed, found in an archeological site in the 1950s. The seed had lain dormant for over a thousand years, yet when given light and water, sprang to life. I've sat under that tree and marveled at its history and the seed that brought it back to life.

In my closet, in neat stacks of storage boxes lie dormant my own collection of seed. Although not as exotic as a dusty Egyptian tomb, included in the cache are seed samples sent to me from correspondents around the world. Like pepino cucumber (Anchochas cyclanthera pendata), a seed so rare that the only reference I have found is in the book, Lost Crops of the Incas. It's both a medicinal herb and a vegetable, as well as being a very attractive vine.

Stored there, too, are seeds I have collected on the island of Sulewesi and West Papua, New Guinea. Next to those are herb seed from the desert region of northern India and more from Thailand. There are roselle seed (Hibiscus sabdariffa) that wonderful Egyptian tea herb, which is also the base for sorbets and summer drinks in my home.

Green pepper basil seed from Mexico lie in wait there, along with south Indian lemongrass, which is the plant source for citronella oil, that wonderful mosquito deterrent. And papalo, as well, the Mexican herb used much like cilantro in rural Mexican cafes.

Why do I have these seed collections, you might wonder? I guess because first of all, I can't throw seed away and second, I see them as being like a savings account. I withdraw some of the seed each spring and plant it, and in the fall, harvesting and replenishing the supply like an investment for the future.

When a seed is planted, a truly amazing miracle happens. The seed absorbs warmth and moisture from the soil and the interior begins to swell, eventually bursting the protective outer seed coat. Then, with more magic, a tiny root forms and heads downward deeper into the soil, seeking nutrients. At the same time, responding to light, the plant emerges upward, pushing bits of soil away as the sprouting seed takes on the immature form of a plant and pushes itself into sunlight.

Hidden inside a single seed lies the capacity to grow a new plant, and to pass on the traits of the parent from which the seed came. The new plant can mature and reproduce, creating a field or a forest of plants, all the result of that tiny seed.

When I was a child I was mystified by this process, baffled by how the germinating seed knew when, and which direction to grow. In the eighth grade, for a science project, my teacher allowed me to do experiments on seeds. I chose seed that were virtually indistinguishable to the naked eye, and planted them in trays. I kept records to compare how quickly seeds in the dark germinated as compared to those in full light. My little plant experiments were kept mostly on the wide windowsill of the classroom, which became a dangerous location for them.

Over time I discovered that other eighth graders, who had no interest whatsoever in plants or science would daily water my seedlings with Coca Cola. Sometimes they simply smashed their hands into the tender seedlings, crushing my experiments. Still, over time I was able to demonstrate several things that have served me well as a life long gardener.

First, I learned that proper light is essential, not only for seeds to germinate, but for plants to thrive. Basil, for instance, just will not thrive unless it has ample sunlight and if you give it a shady location, be prepared for an unhealthy plant.

Next I learned that plants are amazingly resilient. Even smashed into the soil by stupid eighth graders, most of my plants recovered and resumed growing. From the grass we mow on a weekly basis to trees damaged by storms, plants have the ability to survive injury.

Third, I learned that Coca Cola notwithstanding, plants require specific nutrients. Too much or too little of the basic requirements and the plants will not reach their full potential. And yet, plants are resilient enough to withstand wide variations in their nutrient supply. While my plant experiments withstood countless dousings of soda pop, they did infinitely better once given normal amounts of water and fertilizer.

From the book, Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan, I learned how diverse seed, even within a species can be. Apple seed, for example, according to Pollan, virtually never come true to the parent. With four seed within each apple, the possible variations from the parent reach into the millions.

And from that book I also learned how important the relationships between humanity and plants are. Plants respond to human needs, either through selection or through the ability to evolve to take advantage of people's preferences. Like maize, a wild plant found in the Americas, but through selection and cultivation, the cultivated varieties have little resemblance to their wild counterparts.

That process can work in reverse, as well. Look to the more common variety of holy basil. If planted in the garden next to other basils, it will cross at random with any other basil in bloom and the seedlings will nearly always be a poor reproduction of either of the parent plants.

The mystery of seed is something I look forward to each spring. Not only through the seed catalogs, but through my little cache of seed from previous years, I can grasp the possibilities of yet another garden year. With trowel and seed in hand, I begin the process anew, ready for the miracle of the seed to happen all over again.

Happy gardening! Readers comments or questions always welcome at Lcherbs@interlinc.net or www.Longcreekherbs.com.

The Lemony Herbs

2006-08-21T21:11:00.000-05:00

For The Heirloom Gardener magazine
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

When I first started growing herbs in earnest some twenty five years ago, I began with all of the ordinary herbs. I grew parsley, thyme, rosemary, sage, chives, bee balm, borage, tarragon, fennel, dill, and sorrel. Each year I added a few new ones, including lovage, hyssop, oregano, marjoram, basil and lemongrass.

It was probably the lemongrass that first got me thinking about plants that share a similar flavor even though they are unrelated. The fresh lemony flavor of lemongrass was something I very much enjoyed.

The flavor of young lemon balm leaves, too, shared that same fresh lemony flavor and I gave it a place in my herb garden. In a short while I was concocting recipes for using lemongrass and lemon balm in foods that would highlight those herbs' flavors. My lemon balm cake recipe came about because of those two herbs and over the years I served it many times at herb events at my farm.

The next lemony herb I found was lemon basil. It has the same fragrance oils as lemongrass and lemon balm and I made a place for it in my garden as well. Within a short time I found that lemon basil must have its flower spikes cut back on a weekly basis, otherwise it blooms, sets seed and dies. But if kept clipped, it will produce wonderful lemony leaves until the fall frosts.

Lemon basil is useful as a salad herb - simply put the clippings into tossed salads. I like to put leaves or flowers from this herb into a blender with a small clove of garlic, a tablespoon of chopped green onion, some oil and vinegar and a tiny touch of honey and whirr it up into a very quick, very tasty salad dressing.

But my favorite use for lemon basil is in mid summer, when there is a bountiful supply of the limbs and leaves, is to pick a substantial bunch, dip it in water and lay it over the grill above medium heat on the barbecue. Then I spread shrimp, still in their shell and uncooked, on top, then another layer of lemon basil on top. With the barbecue grill's lid down, it takes only about 2 minutes to steam the shrimp. They should be turned once and steamed another minute and removed from the heat. The lemony herb flavor seasons the steamed shrimp and you can eat them that way or with a dipping sauce. I like to cook the shrimp this way while visiting with my dinner guests, and let them eat the shrimp while I continue cooking the main course on the grill.

But there are lots of other lemony herbs that are as equally useful. Lemon thyme, for example. Lemon thyme combines the sweet-hot flavor of thyme (which you use in poultry dishes) and a fresh lemony flavor.

It's a small perennial plant, grown around the edges of rocks or along the herb garden border. I like to use sprigs of lemon thyme in salad dressing, and in a marinade for chicken for grilling. Chopped fine and combined with softened cream cheese, it is also very tasty spread on crackers or stuffed into cherry tomatoes as an appetizer.

Combining lemon thyme, some lemon basil and cream cheese, then spread on fresh bread, topped with cucumber slices and ripe tomato, this is a most excellent sandwich and one I look forward to each summer.

Lemon verbena is another very satisfying herb to grow. Tropical in nature, it must either be brought indoors in winter, or replaced each spring and grown as an annual. It can easily reach five feet in height in a season if not pruned and the intense lemon flavor and fragrance is easily used in a variety of ways. As a sorbet ingredient it gives a lovely, sweet flavor to the frozen dessert. Used as a simple iced tea, it's amazingly refreshing. I like to chop up a small handful of fresh lemon verbena leaves when I make a fruit salad for a large group. I combine bite sized pieces of watermelon, white grapes, strawberries, cantaloupe and lemon verbena, adding some cranberry-raspberry juice to blend it all together. After chilling the salad in the refrigerator for a few hours the lemony flavored dish is ready to eat.

To make a refreshing cold-pressed lemon verbena iced tea, put six lemon verbena leaves in a pitcher. Fill the pitcher with ice, then water to the top. Leave it for a few minutes for the lemony flavor to mix throughout the beverage, then serve. It's actually that easy!

Here's my recipe for Lemon Balm Blueberry Cake, using two of the lemony herbs:

Lemon Balm-Blueberry Cake

Herbs used:
3 tablespoons freshly chopped Lemon Balm leaves
2 leaves Lemongrass (for this use the leaf, not the bulb), snipped fine with scissors....it's important to snip with scissors, not expect the food processor to do it adequately)

Recipe:
1 package Duncan Hines or any brand Lemon Supreme cake mix (or your own white cake recipe from scratch) Combine the liquid ingredients called for on the box...usually 1 1/3 cup water and 1/3 cup oil. Put that liquid in a blender with: 3 tablespoons freshly chopped Lemon Balm leaves and 2 leaves Lemongrass which have been snipped up with scissors. Pulse-blend until the herbs are fairly well pulverized. Add that to: The cake mix and eggs, beating well and pour into two oiled, floured round 9 inch cake pans. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool.

With cake slicer or large knife, slice each cake in half horizontally, making 4 small layers.

Filling: 1 large package instant vanilla pudding 1 large (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened to room temp. 3 cups milk

In food processor, pulse blend filling ingredients, then stir in by hand, one small carton Cool Whip. Fold together well and refrigerate for several hours. Spread about 1/2 inch layer between the first and second layers of cake. Place the second cake on that, and cover the next layer with the filling. Put a layer of fresh blueberries over that, add the third layer, repeat with filling and berries, then place the fourth layer on top. Cover it with filling and dot liberally with fresh blueberries. Photos of this cake are on my website, just click on "Garden Visit" and you will see photos. If you want more recipes using herbs, go to my Recipe Blog. Happy gardening!

Salsa

2006-08-21T21:07:00.000-05:00

For The Heirloom Gardener magazine
Copyright© 2006 Jim Long

Did you know that salsa is now more popular than catsup in terms of sales nationally? Or that most restaurants now offer patrons hot sauce just as often as catsup and mustard?

Our food preferences have changed considerably over the past twenty years. If you're old enough, think back to the 1960s and what typical American food consisted of. T.v. dinners. Pot roast. Fried chicken. It wasn't until Shakey's Pizza opened the first national franchise of pizza restaurants around 1962 that pizza came onto the national table. Then, in the 1970s, Julia Child introduced us to French cooking in the first ever nationally televised cooking shows.

Before Shakeys and Julia, most people in the heartland wouldn't have known what to do with oregano or French tarragon, much less sorrel, rosemary or a dozen other herbs that these two made famous.

In the 1980s and'90s we saw a new wave of immigrants to our shores and with them came new foods. Ten years ago you could have driven across Missouri or Arkansas and probably not encountered a single Asian or Mexican restaurant. Drive those same roads today and it's virtually impossible not to encounter both, in most every little town you pass through.

With salsa on the top of the condiment list, it's worthy to note that salsa isn't just tomatoes any more. While tomato salsa is the primary kind you will find on the grocery store shelf, just like any food there, you can make it fresher and more tasty by making it yourself. You can make salsa from lots of other fruits and vegetables than from the standard tomato.

For some years now I've been encouraging visitors to my gardens to grow their own cilantro. And not just the standard spring and fall cilantro, but to grow some summer varieties, as well. I especially like Vietnamese cilantro (Polygonum odoratum), a plant that works perfectly in salsas if you remember to keep harvesting the leaves and tips (let it get leggy and the older leaves taste awful; keep it cut and use only new growth and it's delicious). Vietnamese cilantro loves summer heat and will grow best in damp soil, even in pots floating in the water garden.

Mexican cilantro (Eryngium foetidum), also known as culantro, thorny coriander, Ngo gai and stinkweed, is another cilantro flavored plant that works great for salsa. It's grown from seed and needs to be grown in the shade with plenty of moisture. The first year I grew this plant I put it in the full sun in my same herb beds where I grow basil (it is, after all, "Mexican" cilantro. Mexico means hot and dry in my mind. I was wrong. Cool temperatures and moisture are necessary).

It didn't totally realize how to grow this plant until I was in Thailand for cooking classes. My hosts were growing culantro (they call it stinkweed there) in full shade in moist beds next to our outdoor cooking classroom. While the plant looks kind of thorny, the name, "thorny coriander" comes from the thorny seed clusters. To keep it producing its tasty leaves, the flowering stalks must be kept cut away.

With choices of several kinds of cilantro, from Mexican and Vietnamese in the summer to Santo (Coriandrum sativum) grown in early spring and late fall, you have plenty of choices to grow and make your own salsas. And the seed can be harvested and kept for the following year, except for Vietnamese cilantro which must be grown from cuttings.

One of my favorite salsas to make in summer is fresh peach. Here's the recipe.

Fresh Peach Salsa

4-5 fresh, ripe peaches, peeled, seeded and diced 1-2 green onions, diced fine 1-2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, any variety, chopped 1-2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced fine 2 tablespoons (or more) sweet bell pepper, diced 1 teaspoon honey Juice of 1/2 fresh lime

Mix everything together and refrigerate for at least an hour for the flavors to blend. Serve with chips.

White Grape Salsa This is an easy salsa and has surprising, pleasant flavor.

4 cups fresh, seedless white grapes 3 green onions, cut in pieces, tops, too 3 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped 1 tablespoon mild honey or 1/2 tablespoon sugar 2-3 jalapeno peppers, seeds removed unless you want more heat 1 small or 1/2 large sweet bell pepper, seeded, diced Juice of 1 whole lime

Put everything in a food processor (or chop by hand) and pulse process until the salsa is coarsely chopped. Chill for an hour before serving.

Guatemalan Tomato Salsa

I learned this from a neighbor who has her own cooking show on Guatelaman cable television. The ingredients aren't unusual, but the method of preparing them is a bit different.

In advance, heat a skillet to medium hot. On it, without any oil or water, lay 2 whole green tomatilas, 1 large garlic clove, 1 large slice of onion, 2 jalapeno peppers and 3 roma tomatoes. Blacken all of these until they are totally charred on each side of each vegetable (garlic, too!). As soon as these are totally blackened, remove from heat and let cool. Meanwhile, mix the rest of the ingredients: 2-3 large, ripe tomatoes, diced 1 sweet bell pepper, seeded and diced 3-4 green onions, diced 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro Juice of 2 fresh limes 1 clove garlic, crushed Salt, optional

Then remove the stem and seed from the roasted jalapenos, dice them and add to the mixture. Dice the remaining roasted vegetables and add them to the salsa. Mix and let stand at room temperature for at least an hour before serving.

More of my salsa recipes can be found in my book, Sensational Salsas.

Pickin' Up Pawpaws

2006-08-21T21:05:00.000-05:00

Ozarks Gardening newspaper column
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

It's pawpaw picking time! If you walk along the lake, or in deep valleys where there's moisture in the soil, you will likely smell something sweet, something not quite melon like, not quite like a banana, but fragrant and enticing. Pawpaws, when they are ripe, give off a pleasant, sweet odor that you can smell for considerable distance. But if you want pawpaws, you have to go now, because that same fragrance that you smell in the air, is also attractive to lots of woodland animals.

Squirrels,'possums, raccoons and probably bear and wild hogs, will try and beat you to the pawpaw patch. That's why it's best to find the fruit early, then shake a few off the trees and let them ripen at home.

Pawpaws are the largest native fruit in North America. They grow in 26 of our 50 states, in Zone 5 through 8, from Florida to Ontario, westward to Kansas and Oklahoma. And even though they are found over a large area, many people wouldn't know a pawpaw if it jumped over their feet.

Lewis and Clark, in their journals, wrote about how welcome the fruit of the pawpaw was for the voyagers. Indians ate it in the fall, and likely were responsible for spreading the seed of the tree across its now large range. Pawpaws are about the size of a slender potato, about 6 or 7 inches long, and two or three inches in diameter. Generally the fruit weighs from four to eight ounces and grows in clusters of two to five pawpaws in one spot.

The trees do well as a landscape tree and actually produce more fruit in a sunny location than in shade. But when left to their own habits, pawpaw trees grow in full shade as an under story tree, usually along river banks, in deep valleys and beneath bluffs. The trees bloom in very early spring with maroon, not very noticeable flowers. They are pollinated by flies, and to aid pollination, those who grow stands of pawpaws often hang rotting meat in the trees to encourage more flies.

Pawpaws have a short shelf life, meaning if you pick a green one today and put it on the kitchen countertop, it will be ready to eat in about two days, but will be past its peak in four or five days. When it's ripe the outside of the fruit will have turned black, like a very ripe banana, and it will be quite fragrant.

The flavor has been described as between vanilla pudding and a banana or cantaloupe. Some varieties have a slight pineapple flavor, and all have a custard-like texture.

The trees never produce heavy crops like apple or pear trees do, but the amount of fruit can be increased considerably if you have another variety, or even another pawpaw tree that is not directly related to the first one. Pawpaws are good in milkshakes, are a good ingredient for cakes, muffins, pies, custards and puddings. Or, they are delicious eaten fresh, just peel them and pick out the seeds (which are the size of kidney beans and easy to pick out). If you want a real Ozarks treat, the season for pawpaws will last only about ten days, so pick yourself some pawpaws.

Happy Gardening. Questions and comments welcome at Lcherbs@interlinc.net, and at www.Longcreekherbs.com.

Bread Poppies

2006-08-21T21:02:00.000-05:00

For The Heirloom Gardener magazine
Copyright© Jim Long, 2006

I'm a student of Civil War plant medicines and my program, "Herbal Medicines of the Civil War" is popular in flower and garden show and historical conference circuits. Every time I present the program, (which includes "wounded" in-costume soldiers with lots of stage blood and realistic battle wounds), the question comes up regarding what the Civil War doctor used for controlling pain. That leads to a discuss of poppies, which played a critical roll in pain medications of that time.

Poppies are the source of opium and various derivatives of opium are still in use today. Morphine, from opium, is used to combat severe pain, and the semi-synthetic drugs, oxycodone (under the trade name Percodan), as well as Dilaudid, Vicodin and Immoblion, are all of immense pharmaceutical worth, all coming originally from derivatives of the poppy.

So what, you may be wondering, does the opium poppy have to do with bread poppies? Opium poppy is Papaver somniferum. Bread poppy is Papaver somniferum. You will find P. somniferum seed in bird seed mixes (where it's often called "maw" seed), you'll find it in little jars in the grocery store baking section. It's the seed found in poppyseed salad dressing and the seed that is ground and added to sauces for flavoring and thickening. You can buy poppyseed oil for cooking and poppy seed heads are available for decorative uses from many florists. They are all Papaver somniferum,

These amazing poppies vary in color from reddish purple to white, from lavender and pink to deep red and can be single or double. All produce edible poppy seed, but it's not from the seed that the opiates come. The medicinal part is the sap, the white, sticky juice of the poppy seed head after the petals have fallen.

Poppies were cultivated by the Egyptians, thousands of years ago. Also by the Romans and across India and Asia, and came to the Americas with the first colonists. The crushed seed heads, combined with chamomile, were used as a poultice, the petals were made into syrup and even the young, green leaves were cooked and eaten as a spring greens, much like people eat poke greens today.

Several seed companies list bread seed poppy as a "new, low-morphine (very minute amount) poppy to grow for culinary seed." Often in seed catalogs you will see Papaver paeoniflorum listed as bread seed poppy. It's not an official, correct botanical classification, as it is still P. somniferum. It's a widely grown plant and gardeners often don't know that they are actually growing the opium poppy in their garden.

Friends of mine who are in government jobs tell me they have to avoid eating anything with poppy seed, even poppy seed rolls, poppy seed dressing or cakes which contain even a small amount of the seed. The random drug tests they are subjected to, will show up as positive for drug use if they have eaten poppy seeds within the last ten days. Otherwise, though, poppy seed is safe to eat for most people and there is only miniscule amounts of the opiates in the seed.

So that brings up the question of whether you can legally grow poppies in your own garden. There are occasional news stories about grandmotherly types who have discovered the local police invading their yards, ripping out poppy plants and threatening to arrest the gardener.

Thomas Jefferson grew poppies in his gardens at Monticello. The seed descendants from his plants were sold at the gift shop of Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants until 1991. But a drug bust at the nearby University of Virginia panicked the Board of Directors and they removed the poppies and burned the seeds. It was a shame because within the law which relates to poppy growing, there is a clause regarding intent. The gardener has to be proven to have intended to cultivate poppies for the manufacture of opium, and obviously the gift shop was not intending to encourage opium cultivation. Still, to be safe, they erred on the side of caution.

The cultivation of Papaver somniferum is banned in the US under the Opium Poppy Control Act of 1942. Amateur horticulturists, however, continue to grow the flowers ornamentally in their gardens. (It's worth checking local regulations in your state if you arenervous or in doubt).

If you are planning to grow poppies in your garden, you are probably safe if you grow a small bed of poppies. Use them for color in the garden, enjoy the seeds in your cooking, and in most parts of the U.S., no one will bother you. But if you grow an acre of poppies, or start slitting the seed heads and collecting the sap, you are almost certain of landing in jail.

Shirley poppies, by contrast, are not a controlled substance. Papaver rhoeas, the Shirley poppy, give beautiful color to the garden, although the seeds aren't considered edible. The same with Oriental poppies, European corn poppies, Iceland poppies and California poppies. All of those are fine, and legal, to grow, but the seeds aren't generally considered edible.

If you buy poppy seed in the grocery store it is likely Papaver somniferum 'Hungarian Blue' which has slate-colored seed. Most of the poppy seed sold in stores and used in commercial bakeries, comes from the Netherlands. The seeds contain very little of the narcotic drug and you could chew up a bunch of the seeds (which have a good taste) and not feel any effects. It is, however, still the same opium poppy.

You can plant the seed from the grocery store and they will likely grow. For growing any poppies, they require just a few basics in order to thrive.

Choose a place where the seed can be planted early in the year and not disturbed, and a spot in full, all day sun. In the Midwest, it's best to plant poppies in late fall to early winter. I've tried planting both in October-November, and in February-March, and the earlier planted ones do better, by far. Plant the seed where you want them to grow as poppies don't transplant well. (If you aren't sure when to plant poppies in your area, plant half your seed before Christmas and the other half of the seed in early February. Plant them in two different plots in order to tell which time of planting worked best for you). The biggest mistake people make when trying to grow poppies, is planting them too late in the year. April and May is too late as that's when they are getting ready to bloom.

Scratch up the soil and mix the poppy seed with some sand so as to not get it too close together, or put it in a salt shaker and scatter the seed through the shaker top. Press the seed down, but don't cover it, just enough that the birds won't see it. If the seed are covered with soil, they probably won't germinate. Then simply leave them alone. In Zone 6 and 7 you will probably seed the tiny seedlings appear in January or February. Or you may not even notice them until late February when you see the frosty blue-green leaf rosettes of the plants. Along in late April they will spring upward with flower stalks and by May, your garden will be alive with the color of poppies.

The flowers last from three to five days, on average. If you want to use them as cut flowers, cut the flowers in early morning and with a match, singe the cut end of the stem, to seal off the loss of sap, then put them in a vase of water.

Poppy seed heads are a lot like salt shakers. Once the flower petals have fallen off, in a few days time the seed head will have turned a brownish-gray and dried. You have to be careful when cutting these seed stalks, because even slight nudge of the seed head and the tiny seeds will scatter on the ground (where they will come up next spring at the right time).

If you are collecting seed for use in baking, cut the seed stalks before they are completely dry and turn them upside down in a paper grocery bag (make sure to tape the seams in the bottom, or else the seed will spill out). Let the seed heads dry upside down for a couple of weeks, then shake them into the grocery bag. They are now ready to pour into a storage container for use in baking during the winter.

Poppyseed Dressing

1/2 cup sugar 1 teaspoon Dijon-style mustard 1/4 cup light olive oil 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar 2 tablespoons cup grated onion 1 tablespoon poppy seeds 1/4 teaspoon salt, optional

Mix ingredients together in bowl, stirring or whisking to combine. Store in the refrigerator for up to a week (if you substitute dry onion flakes for the grated onion, the dressing will last several weeks in the refrigerator). Serve over any greens salad, as well as over salads containing fruit such as this: 3 cups small spinach leaves, torn, 1 ripe pear, seeded and diced, 1 tart apple, seeded and diced, 1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese and 1/8 cup walnut pieces. Toss with poppyseed dressing.

Jim Long is the author of 24 books on herb and gardening subjects. His gardens and books can be seen at www.Longcreekherbs.com. Questions or comments always welcome at Lcherbs@interlinc.net.