Herbs

For years I've tried to grow herbs in the yard with minimal success. I always thought they should be planted on the south side of the house so that I could possibly enjoy a longer season with them. I would carefully till the soil, adding peat moss and manure in an attempt to get a decent crop. I remember last year going to the Farmers Market in Provo and seeing Ziploc bags of herbs ready for purchase in early June and then think, "Crap I don't even have my herbs planted, and these guys are selling it." But after going to the nursery and buying stock, planting them, my luck was not that good. As this picture shows, my success, especially this year, was poor.

As you can see the Basil (front) and parsley (back) didn't do so well in between the chives (right) and spearmint (left) two herbs that can't be killed with gasoline.

But early this spring I pulled some Lavender plants from the east side of the house making room for my herb garden. I went to the nursery and purchased Rosemary, Lemon Balm, Chives and Basil starts. As you can see here the results were significantly better.

The plants did very well. My next issue was that we don't do a lot of cooking in the summer with yard work, biking, blading and other activities. So what to do with herbs when Mother Nature does her thing and freezes the hell out of everything; especially on the northeast side of the house were my new herb spread was set.

I decided I would try and dry the Basil and keep it through the winter to be used in Italian dishes we sometime make when the weather is cold. So here is my attempt to dry it on a cookie sheet.
Next I crushed it (by hand, can I sell it for more money? It's also organic. Where's the money?)

Lastly, I bagged it. Tada! (Maybe I should pay a marketing firm to create a packaging label for me.)As cold weather has now set in, I've been looking at soup recipes and noticed that most of them call for "fresh" Bail. So I naturally thought my packaging efforts had all been in vain until last night I noticed in the cupboard on the herb rack a brand new bottle of McCormick Crushed Basil. DAMN!

So is life, but I figure I have grown a little with my efforts. Besides if the end of the world comes next year and society as we know it slows; at least I will have the comfort of knowing I can do this. (RIGHT; and pope is really Mormon!)