I’ve just caught myself getting more like my father – funny how those traits we (as a family) have always ribbed him about mercilessly are the very things I’m doing now!
My father is a workaholic and I definitely caught that from him. He comes from a long line of them. My grandfather worked, running his own business, well into his 80’s and at the same time kept the most spectacular, sizeable garden well stocked and immaculate. He had an incredible talent with growing things – honestly, it really seemed to me that he could cut a branch off a tree, poke it in the ground and two weeks later would have a new tree!
Both Dad and I like our gardens but I don’t think either of us quite managed to inherit my grandfather’s amazing green fingers. But what Dad might lack in his father’s seemingly encyclopaedic gardening knowledge he makes up for in his super-maxed-out efficiency. It now seems to be called OCD – when I was in my teens we had a somewhat less polite term for it that ended in the word “retentive”! I seem to have a talent for growing things and putting them in the right place to thrive without really understanding how or why. This talent does not though extend to houseplants – I can kill a cactus inside – plants stay strictly outdoors in my household!
A couple of months ago, I asked Dad what a particular shrub in his garden was. It was winter so it wasn’t in leaf so wasn’t immediately obvious and he couldn’t remember its name. I assumed, wrongly, that was where it would end until spring when it came back to life. But no, out comes a hard backed notebook with a detailed sketch of the whole garden and numbers written in everywhere there was a plant attached to which was a corresponding list of the plants each number represented. It tickled me – it was so typical of my father but then I thought nothing more of it.
Then, this morning, I started planting out my raised herb bed. which is one of those VegTrug, wooden troughs. In the past, especially when it is raining and I don’t have the time or inclination to stand outside trying to smell and taste the different leaves to make sure I’ve got what I was after herb wise, I’ve often ended up using the wrong herbs for a recipe as I can’t remember what I’ve planted where. I’m a bit hopeless at differentiating between flat leaf parsley and coriander in the pouring rain and I certainly have no hope whatsoever of distinguishing between the plain and the lemon thyme!
So today, feeling very much the green warrior, I filled my trough with the compost that I’ve been rotting down for the past year from my kitchen waste and mainly using up those little pots of fresh herbs I buy in the supermarket which end up looking a bit sorry for themselves on the kitchen windowsill, I planted it out. Then out came my recipe book and I sketched out where I had planted everything and listed each herb so this year I’ll be able to go straight to which ever herb I need. I feel very efficient.
They say that fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree and with a surname like Peach, I guess it’s hardly surprising that’s true in the case of my herb garden!
A quick after thought on planting herbs – I don’t keep my rosemary or bay in with the rest of my herbs. I have both of those planted out with the rest of my shrubs as they are hardy and will, without a restricted root space, grow into a nice large bush. I often chop of great hunks of rosemary in particular and place it in a shallow baking tin on top of the coals of the BBQ so that it smokes rosemary through to the lamb on top.
Also, whatever you do with herbs, don’t grow mint in with the rest of them. It will strangle the life out of everything else and take over. Mint is incredibly hardy and will come back year after year and I keep mine in small barrel containers. It’s hard to kill it off – one year when we moved, the containers got put in the garage in error and it wasn’t until mid-summer that I found them. They had been completely deprived of light and looked quite unappetising and anaemic and fleshy when I rescued them. A few weeks later, with some light and water, they’d sprung back to life and 6 years later are still going great guns.
