All posts by Jordan Charbonneau

The King of Herbs: Growing Basil

June 15, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Once you start growing your own fresh basil, there’s no going back. While tomatoes may get most of the attention in America’s summertime gardens, basil is the king of herbs. The basil you can grow at home is also more impressive than in the store. It’s much cheaper too! Thankfully, it’s also quite easy to grow, and you still have plenty of time to grow basil in your garden this summer.

Direct Sowing Basil

This time of year, the simplest way to grow basil is to direct sow it. Basil is native to tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, including Thailand, Iran, Pakistan, and other countries. Due to its tropical upbringing, basil thrives in full sun and needs a mimic of 6 to 8 hours of sunlight to produce. It also grows best in rich, well-drained soil and germinates best when the soil temperatures are around 70-75°F.

To direct sow basil, plant 3 to 4 seeds every 12 inches. Lightly cover the seeds, no more than two times the depth of the seed. Basil takes about 5 to 14 days to germinate. When the plants have four leaves, thin them to 1 plant every 12 inches for fuller, bushier plants. You can transplant extra plants to another bed.

Transplanting Basil

Basil can also be started in flats or containers indoors. To get an early start next spring, start your basil indoors about four weeks before your last frost. In flats, space seeds ½” apart. Thin to two inches apart and transplant in 3-4 weeks.

Growing Basil From Cuttings

Interestingly, basil is also easy to grow from cuttings. Take a cutting from your own or a friend’s basil plant that has at least four sets of leaves. Remove the bottom set of leaves and place the cutting in a clean, filtered glass of water in a sunny spot indoors. Change or refill the water as necessary until the cutting has clearly visible roots. Then transplant the cutting to the garden bed with loose, rich soil or a container.

Growing Basil in Containers

Basil is also a suitable herb for container gardens. Start your basil just as you would for the garden. Select a container with drainage holes (or make them) and use potting mix and some good-quality compost. Keep the container somewhere sunny and water consistently. Basil doesn’t like to be soggy but thrives with consistent moisture, and containers tend to dry out more quickly than the garden.

Can you Grow Basil Indoors?

You can grow basil indoors, but it’s much trickier. As basil enjoys full sun, providing adequate light in a home year-round is hard. Here in the northern hemisphere, you may be able to grow basil in a sunny, south-facing window. Your basil plant may need more light if it seems weak or spindly. A grow light bulb placed close to the plant may allow it to thrive. Read the bulb’s instructions for the exact placement. Many bulbs must be surprisingly close to a plant, just a few inches from its top leaves.

Ideas for Using Homegrown Basil

If you ask anyone (or Google) what to do with basil, they’ll tell you to make pesto. Don’t get me wrong, I love pesto, but there’s so much more to basil than just pesto! If you haven’t worked with fresh basil often, here are a few of our favorite ideas for using it.

Chop it up and toss it onto homemade or delivery pizza.
Make a classic Caprese salad with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, salt, and olive.
Use it for refreshing cocktails or cocktails like bloody marys, watermelon coolers, or limeades.
Top your morning toast or bagel with slices of fresh tomato, basil leaves, salt, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil.
Take your grilled cheese up a notch by adding basil leaves in with the cheese.
Basil pairs well with lemon and strawberry. Try adding a new twist to lemon cake or strawberry shortcake recipes by topping them with finely chopped basil.
Add basil, garlic, and other herbs to your favorite bread recipe if you love baking.
Basil, cheese, white beans, salt, and pepper, make for a tasty, easy-to-throw-together pasta dish.

Basil as a Medicinal Herb

Basil also has a long history of use in traditional medicine. Basil has been used as a carminative (to relieve gas), to help ease stomach aches, and to improve digestion and appetite. Research indicates that it may inhibit gastric acid secretion. As it’s also a culinary herb, experimenting with basil as an herbal remedy is fairly safe. You can try basil in food, teas, and tinctures.

*None of this is intended as medical advice. Always consult your doctor.

Basil’s fresh, gently spicy flavor makes it a must-have for the kitchen and the garden. It’s not too late to add basil to your garden this year! Start basil from seed, transplants, or cuttings in the garden or patio containers.

Garden Advice

Choose the Right Lettuce Type for Your Garden

June 6, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Lettuce is excellent for beginner gardens, seed savers, and succession planting. Even if you didn’t have a great spring lettuce crop, you can sow another for fall. If you’ve been browsing lettuce on the catalog or website, you may have noticed that there are an almost overwhelming number of varieties divided into a few different categories. Below we’ll cover the different types of lettuce and how to select the best one for your garden.

Lettuce Types

Romaine (Cos) Lettuce

Even if you’re new to gardening, you’re probably familiar with romaine lettuce from your local grocery store. It produces upright, elongated tall heads with thick succulent ribs and distinctively flavored long, thick crinkled leaves. In most stores, you’ll see green Romaine, but you’ll find seeds in other colors, like the red heirloom Rouge d’Hiver (Red Winter) Romaine Lettuce or the deeply blotched Mayan Jaguar Romaine.

Romaine is the most nutritious type of lettuce you can grow. It does best in loose, fertile soil and is moderately tolerant of heat and shade. Some varieties, like Jericho, an Israeli variety bred for the desert heat, are a favorite among market growers for their heat and to-burn resistance.

Loose-Leaf Lettuce

You may have also spotted loose-leaf in stores, probably in baby lettuce mixes. As the name suggests, it’s a non-heading type of lettuce. Like Romaine, there’s so much more than you’ll find in store. Loose-leaf lettuce contains the largest diversity of attractive heirlooms.

Loose-leaf is second to Romaine in nutritional value. It’s great for home gardeners because it does well as a cut-and-come-again type and allows you to harvest only as much as you need at once. However, it doesn’t keep in the fridge as well as Romaine. Loose-leaf is also the most forgiving of poor soil and is generally more heat-tolerant than other types.

Bibb (Butterhead) Lettuce

Bibb or butterhead lettuce has small, loose green heads, blanched yellow interiors, and thin, soft-textured leaves. It has a wonderfully almost-buttery, sweet taste. The small heads are a great size for single people and smaller families.

Bibb has intermediate nutritional value. It’s generally more tolerant of hot weather than crisphead lettuce. As a group, it is best for cooler regions, with some notable exceptions.

*There’s also Buttercos lettuce which has the characteristics of both butterhead and cos.

Crisphead & Batavian Lettuce

You’re undoubtedly familiar with one common type of crisphead lettuce you’ll find at nearly any grocery store, Iceberg. Like Iceberg, other crisphead lettuce varieties are popular for their tightly folded, blanched crisp leaves.

Crisphead is less nutritious than other varieties. Because it is harder to grow to perfection, we offer varieties that are more adapted for hot regions. Crisphead lettuce should be set out early in the season since it requires a long cool season. Shading with cheesecloth or screening is recommended if heads have not formed by late spring.

Common Questions About Growing Lettuce

How Do You Keep Lettuce Going in Summer?

While some varieties are more heat tolerant than others, lettuce is a cool-season crop. You can extend your season into hotter weather in a couple of ways. The first is to cover your plantings with a reemay blanket.

The other is to plant tall vegetables in north-south rows and plant heat-resistant lettuce underneath the leaf canopy so that it is shaded during the hottest portion of the day. Corn planted in rows 4 feet apart or pole beans on a fence or trellis is ideal. Interplanting lettuce with bush squash also gives good results. Mulch the lettuce well, keep it well watered, and enjoy!

How to Start Lettuce in Hot Weather?

If the temperature exceeds 80 degrees F, lettuce will often fail to germinate. You can plant lettuce during late summer or early fall while the days are still hot, provided the seeds are germinated in the refrigerator for 4-6 days. Another method is to soak the seed in 10% bleach for 2 hours at 40-60 degrees F, followed by four water rinses. This method enhances both the speed and amount of germination.

One more method is to keep the soil cool with burlap or boards; remove cover promptly after germination to keep grasshoppers and other pests from enjoying the shaded tender sprouts!

What’s the Best Type for Beginners?

Generally, we recommend loose-leaf types for beginners as they tend to be the most forgiving of various conditions, including heat and poor soil. They also grow quickly, helping you get harvests faster and more frequently. You could also try Romaine lettuce if you have good, loose, fertile soil.

What’s the Best Type for Greenhouses?

We recommend using heat-tolerant varieties of heat-tolerant, loose-leaf, or Bibb types for greenhouses.

How Do I Save Seed From My Lettuce?

To save seed, you should isolate varieties by a minimum of 12’ for home use. For pure seed isolate varieties a minimum of 25-50’.

Lettuce will eventually bolt, especially in hot weather, sending up a tall flower stem. The flowers look a bit like mini, yellow dandelions. The flowers will eventually become fluffy and dry, and it will be time to harvest seed.

Gently bend the flower stem into a paper bag or container and give it a good shake. Any mature seeds should drop into the bag. You may need to try this for several days as the seeds slowly mature.

After collecting your seeds, you can winnow out the chaff or unwanted plant material. You can use a fan, and a couple of dishes, pouring the seed from one dish to the other as the wind blows the lighter, unwanted material away. Avoid getting too close to the fan, as lettuce seed is quite light.

There’s a lot more to lettuce than you’ll find on the grocery store shelves. Romaine, loose-leaf, Bibb, and crisphead lettuce types all have their pros and cons. Find a tasty, beautiful heirloom variety that fits well in your garden!

Garden Advice

Basics: Annuals, Biennials, Perennials

May 30, 2023 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

There are many different groups we divide plants into, and when we’re new to gardening, these can get a bit confusing, especially when there is overlap. There are hybrids and open-pollinated varieties, herbaceous plants and shrubs, brassicas and nightshades, and culinary and medicinal herbs, to name just a few. One helpful distinction for gardeners and seed savers is annuals, biennials, and perennials. Today’s blog will cover these types of plants and what it means for your garden and seed-saving practice.

What’s the Difference Between Annuals, Biennials, and Perennials?

These three labels all refer to a plant’s life cycle. They help us determine how long the plant will live, when it blooms, and when it will produce seeds.

Oregon Giant Dwarf Snow Pea (annual crop)

Annuals

As the name annual suggests, these plants complete their entire life cycle in just a single year. Many familiar garden crops are annuals, including vegetables like cucumbers, summer squash, corn, and beans; herbs like basil, dill, and cilantro; and flowers like sunflowers, zinnias, and cosmos.

Their life begins in spring with a seed that grows into a plant, flowers, and produces seed all before winter sets in. Some of these annuals may self-seed, meaning the seed they drop may come up the following season without replanting, but they do not truly overwinter.

Tomatoes are an excellent example of a crop we grow as annuals but are actually perennials. In their native range in South America and other tropical regions, tomatoes can be grown as a perennial.

Saving seed from annuals is easy and is what we recommend to beginning seed savers because you’ll get seed the first season.

Carrot Flower Forming in the Second Year (biennial crop)

Biennials

Biennials are similar to annuals because they have a specific, fairly limited life cycle. In their case, they complete their life cycle in two years. You’ve probably grown biennial plants without realizing it. Many root crops like onions, carrots, and beets are biennial as are cabbages, collards, and chard. There are also biennial flowers like hollyhocks, foxglove, and Sweet William and a few herbs like parsley.

Biennials begin their life as a seed and grow into a plant that overwinters. Some biennial plants die back a bit in the winter, while others remain evergreen. Many biennial crops require extra protection to survive the winter in our climate and other cooler climates. The following year they resume their growth when the temperatures warm. Then they flower and produce seeds.

Except for flowers, the biennial life cycle is generally ignored by all but seed savers. Most vegetable and herb biennials are best when you harvest them in their first year. Let a carrot or beet stay in the ground all winter, and it will be tough and woody in the spring as the plant takes store nutrients from the roots to produce flowers and seeds. Cabbages don’t form their characteristic heads the following year; instead, they reach for the sky with tall flower stems. To save seeds from biennial crops, you must be prepared to overwinter them.

Perennials

Perennials are simply plants that live longer than one or two years. In gardening, the word perennial is also often used to describe herbaceous perennials like rhubarb, asparagus, salad burnet, and daffodils. However, the term perennial also applies to woody shrubs and trees you may add to your garden, like roses, apple trees, and blueberry bushes.

Some perennials may begin flowering and producing fruit and seed in their first year of life. Others, like apple trees, may need to grow for several years before flowering.

While they’re generally a more significant investment of time and money, perennials continue to give year after year. Often, folks will use perennial plantings as the backbone of flower gardens, adding just a few annuals around them each season.

Sometimes we save seeds from perennial crops like rhubarb and asparagus, but many perennials are often propagated from root divisions or cuttings.

As we become better informed about the plants we’re growing, we can make better choices for our gardens. Knowing the difference between annuals, biennials, and perennials can help you create a flower garden that always has something blooming or save seeds from your favorite vegetables and herbs.

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