Fresh-Picked Field Trip: Free Gardening Classes at Squak Mt. Nursery
Most people have some thing in their lives that serves as a frustrating reminder of the limitations of time. A pile of unread New Yorkers. An unfinished knitting project. A box of canning supplies purchased in a fit of enthusiasm but never used.
For me, it is a storebought packet of rosemary. Buying rosemary at a store while living in the Pacific Northwest makes me feel disorganized and forever behind on my to-do list.
Why didn’t I think to swing by my friend’s house before I made this recipe? Her front yard is full of FREE rosemary! Why didn’t I make it to that free herb class Seattle Tilth put on last summer? I was signed up for it! I let work interfere and had to cancel. Why didn’t I just read some website about container gardening, buy a pot and stick some rosemary in it months ago? Why can’t I get it together??
So like an unfinished knitting project, a pile of magazines, storebought rosemary is one of those little sticking-it-to-ya reminders that there is a gap between Life As Envisioned and Life As Actually Lived.
Every once in a while, though, one does finally manage to wrestle back a little time to help close that gap. On Saturday, determined to make some kind of progress, I got up early-ish (for me) and dragged myself to Issaquah for a free herb container gardening talk at Squak Mt. Nursery.
Squak Mt. offers their customers free talks on gardening most weekends, including several on edible gardening. This herb container class was given by Patti Chambers, Squak Mt.’s herb expert. She will be giving another class this Saturday, March 20, on general yard herb gardening.
I found the talk to be extremely helpful. Patti covered basic info like general planting and care, but also went into more detail on some interesting things like the differences between the varieties of herbs like thyme or rosemary. (To be perfectly honest, it had never actually occurred to me that there were different varieties of rosemary.)
The talk was about an hour, I think, and Patti both lectured and gave a demo of potting a multi-herb strawberry pot and another, larger pot. She provided a handout with some helpful info, and afterwards, as we looked around at the herb section of the nursery, she was available for additional questions.
If you are considering planting herbs in your garden this year, but feel like you need some direction, I recommend checking out Patti’s Herb Garden Design talk on Saturday, March 20. That one seems like it will be more focused on yard than container gardening, so check out some of her tips below if you’re looking for some potting tips. Also be sure to check back on the Squak Mt. site in case they schedule that or other interesting classes later this spring or summer.
Tips from Squak Mt. Nursery Herbs at the Back Door Talk:
- Prune! Prune! Prune! Patty emphasized that frequent pruning is very necessary for maximizing your herb plant.
- Use potting soil, not compost. The soil in pots will need to be replenished every couple years or so.
- You can use fertilizer when first planting and in the spring, but not a lot of stimulation is needed for herbs.
- Container herbs need more water. She recommends inserting forefinger completely into soil, and if it’s dry, it’s time to water. Annuals like basil and parsley will need more water. Woody ones like rosemary and lavender are more forgiving. Patty said her landscape rosemary actually never needs additional watering in her yard.
- Harvest herbs when it’s cool, morning and evening. In the heat of the daytime, you will be losing some of the evaporating essential oils.
- Preserving: to dry, use a rubber band to secure small bunches and hang upside down in dry place from a paperclip. To freeze, Patti recommends pureeing with water or making a pesto with oil and freezing in ice cube trays. Once frozen, store in labeled Ziplocs.
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Reader Comments (1)
I have a lot of reminders, too. Piled up newspapers waiting to be read or to be recycled, tons of beads to be designed into pieces of jewelery, recipes to be revised and finalized, a P-Patch or a small herb pot and so on.Thank you for all the information, I will definitely make my way to one of the free gardening classes I saw on Freattle :)))