Weekly Tasks: Weeding in the right quadrants of the garden
Readings: Chapter 5 “Feeding the Soil” and review/browse Chapter 12 “Cooking and Preserving” – Farming While Black
Monday, 1/24
This morning in the herb garden, I met with Beth before class to come up with a plan for the day. We decided that some final weeding in the bottom right quadrant of the herb garden would be good, along with the start of weeding in the upper right quadrant. Once weeding was finished, we could begin putting down mulch.
When everyone arrived, it was really nice to have lots of helpers in the garden. Cedar and I began in the upper quadrant while Laura, Elijah, and M tackled the bottom. We got through quite a lot of weeding in the two hours we were there; two buckets were filled and dumped for compost. It was a very successful day, and was especially nice to have so many hands helping in the garden.
We also spent a bit of class testing the soil after learning about it in our Farming While Black chapter this week. I rolled the soil from the herb garden into a ball, which was a bit hard to do as it was rather crumbly. Then I tried to make a ribbon by squishing the soil through my fingers. The results can be seen in the photos below. I enjoyed being able to put what we learned from the soil chapter into action in the herb garden today, and am excited to go out and test with different soils around campus too.
Readings
The Evergreen Herbal – Tari Gunstone
Chapter 4 – “Herb Gardening”
I had already briefly browsed this chapter last quarter so it was a nice review for my week. This chapter gives brief descriptions of both the Evergreen European Medicinal Herb Garden and the Longhouse Ethnobotanical Garden on campus. It includes this diagram which Beth had also just shared with me as well: a layout of the herb garden from 2017. This will be highly useful in determining how things have changed in the garden since then. I am excited to work off of it to revive lost herbs and bring the garden back to its full potential.
The rest of the chapter shares information on starting your own herb garden and also on harvesting and drying herbs. The steps listed for beginning an herb garden include:
- Set intentions and a realistic goal for your garden
- Assess your environment and commitment level
- Get creative with your space
- Gather your plants
- Lay it out
- Learn maintenance needs
I appreciate receiving this list from fellow college students because the idea of limited and temporary space for herbs is present in their minds as well. When most of us envision a garden, we see a plot of land with plants growing right in the earth, but a garden can also be a set of pots and planters that are small and easy to transport. This reminder of quality over quantity is important for all.
The Herbalist’s Way – Nancy and Michael Phillips
Chapter 6 – “Growing and Drying Medicinal Herbs”
This reading went well with the selection from The Evergreen Herbal. It went into a lot more detail on the growth, harvesting, and drying of medicinal herbs. I was especially appreciative of the information on seeding, cuttings, and root divisions, as we may be doing some seeding of our own this winter, along with the transplanting of the lavender plants. There was also lots of information on how to properly harvest different parts of herbs, whether it be picking the leaves and blossoms, digging up roots, or stripping tree bark. The chapter ended by talking about proper drying and storage of herbs, along with how to properly price herbs for sale (which doesn’t apply to the Evergreen herb garden but is still wonderful to learn about). A lot of this information I had already learned from the first class of the Home Herbalism series, as well as through other readings, but it was, of course, a good review.
I was especially appreciative of the section discussing wildcrafting, as foraging for herbs is one area of herbal medicine that I have not gotten too much information on but am very excited about. Our planet already provides us with so many wonderful medicines, but it is important to approach these natural remedies in an ethical and respectful manner. We always want to leave an area better than when we arrived at it, never taking too much or leaving too much of an impact on the land. I am excited to explore the Evergreen woods come springtime and experiment with foraging for herbs growing right in my own backyard.