Favorite Smells of Fall

What are your favorite smells of fall?

The smells I most strongly associate with fall are:

Leaf tea. The smell of wet leaves and pine needles on walks through the neighborhood or hikes through a forest are earthy and often very much like black tea and herbal teas. They remind me of how much I like hot tea as the weather turns colder.

Harvested herbs like basil and mint. I let them dry on a tray in the kitchen before storing them away for use all during the winter.

Pumpkin pie baking. The wafts of cinnamon, cloves, and ginger are so appealing whether they are the real thing or in candle form.

Roses. Roses tend to burst into bloom when the summer heat wanes. They have a wonderful last hurray in fall before the frost takes them.

What are your favorite smells of fall?

Preserving Herbs

August is the time to start preserving the bounty of the herb garden. I have basil, parsley, mint and stevia this year.

I prefer drying rather than freezing because it is ‘greener’ (uses less energy). Here’s the basic process (shown with basil but will work with most other herbs as well):

Gather herbs. I use kitchen scissors and the basket I use over the sink to rinse them so they are immediately ready for the next step. I leave a few plants to continue to use fresh and may harvest again for drying if enough grows back before the frost comes.

Rinse the herbs. You don’t want bugs, spider webs or insect eggs along with your herbs.

Chop them up. If you want small pieces, use a food processor. This time, I plan to use the herb in stir fry and soups so cutting with scissors was good enough.

Place in a breathable bag and hang where the herb can dry thoroughly. I chose to use a washable veggie bag this time. The drying can take several days or longer depending on the humidity in the air. Shake the bag or otherwise move the herb around in the bag to make sure it is drying evenly.

When thoroughly dry, place in an airtight container….and enjoy your herbs in the months to come.

Around our (Maryland) Yard in August 2012

I waited until I thought the dew would be dry from the grass - but misjudged it. At 9 AM, the grass was still very wet and I had to take my flip flops off to make it back up the slight incline of our back yard!

August is a month to start thinking about drying mint and basil. Both are blooming and growing profusely right now. Maybe I can get several harvests from the plants this month. I’ll do a later post on my technique for drying herbs.

Dahlias are the showy flowers in my flower beds this month. Other things are blooming too but somehow the dahlias always stand out above everything else.

I planted a sweet potato under the dahlias (I had one that sprouted before I could bake it) but the deer found it….it’s recovering but may not have enough time to actually grow sweet potatoes.

There are at least three different kinds of fungi in the back yard. The big bulky ones at the top of the picture collection below are the same ones growing on an oak stump from the ‘yard’ posting last month (and I posted about them at mid-month as well) - they’ve weathered from white curves to structures with rings and almost a clay like color. Two puff balls are a little further down on the mulch from where the oak stump is rotting. Then there are the very delicate mushrooms that come up in the grass. There always seem to be one or two in the back yard.

Previous Months: July 2012, June 2012, May 2012, April 2012, March 2012, January 2012 

Favorite Smells of Summer

What are your favorite smells of summer?

The smells I most strongly associate with summer are:

Fresh herbs from the garden - either outdoors while I am gardening or indoors when I am preparing a meal that includes them. Mint, rosemary, and basil are my favorites.

I like the smell at the beginning of rain. In the summer - there is so much vegetation where I live that the smells are rich and vary considerably…but they always remind me of crisp greenery and warmth.

Citrus. Somehow citrus is a summer sun smell to me. I like orange and lemon. There are a lot of products that include the scent. I love to have orange zest drying in my kitchen giving the whole kitchen its smell (and then using it in a stir fry or baking….and getting the smell again).

Cucumber. It has a very light scent…but certainly one that is cool in the midst summer heat and brightness.

What are your favorite smells of summer?

A Garden in Pots

About a month ago I had a sweet potato in the bin that sprouted. I cut off the sprouted end and put it in a bowl of water (cooked and ate the rest of it). It grew slowly at first then - just as I noticed that roots has developed - it started to grow very rapidly. It grew straight up, reached the bottom of the raised mini-blinds above the kitchen sink and then used them for support. It was clearly time to plant the sweet potato outside. Several years ago I had a pot crammed full of sweet potatoes by the fall starting out this same way. the only challenge was to keep it well watered.

 I decided to buy herbs and 'greens' in small pots to fill every container I had on the deck. 

The stevia, orange mint, Italian parsley and chocolate mint are pictured above (left to right). The sweet potato, rosemary, and basil are pictured below. I hope the sweet potato will grow all over the metal scultures so that it can get plenty of sun. Notice the two parts to the sweet potao vine. It was so long and spindly that it bent while it was transfered outside; the stem eas cut and (hopefully) the end will root quickly enough that there will be two plants in the pot.

Last but not least, I planted the curly parsley in the old turtle sandbox that my daughter outgrew long ago. It looks a little lonely right now but there are peas planted that will come up all around it (old seeds so it's an experiment to see how many will actually sprout). 

So - why didn't I buy tomatoes? They've been part of my deck garden for the past few years. Over time I've come to realize that the local Farmers Market has excellent tomatoes and I can try new varieties every week whereas if I grow my own I have only one kind (and they are not beautiful plants!). It's harder to get just the small amount of herbs and greens to be used for a meal and keep them as fresh as you want unless you grow them yourself. So - I've made a change this year by sticking with green stuff. I'll probably plant the mint in the garden at some point and let it 'escape' so that I'll have lots to dry for herbal tea.  Something needs to compete with the lemon balm that is taking over one end of the garden and growing into th yard.

The challenge - as in previous years - is to keep everything watered on the deck when it doesn't rain often enough. Collecting water from rinsing veggies and carrying it outside is enough until it gets really hot and dry; then we'll have to rig a hose and mister for our 'garden in pots' that I can see from my kitchen window!