What herbs grow in your garden?

[Jenise]

In another thread, Dale mentioned: "We seldom use/buy chervil, marjoram, savory but frequently use fresh parsley, cilantro, tarragon, dill, mint, rosemary, shiso, thyme. All but cilantro and tarragon are usually in garden (sage and bay leaf too)."

So what do we grow? In mine: marjoram, golden oregano, sage, bay leaf, tarragon, chives, thyme and rosemary, although my rosemary is under attack by mites and turning yellow. I'm trying to figure out whether to pull the whole plant or try cutting it back to near zero and seeing if it can regrow from the same rootstock. (If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.) Either way, I have to get those mites out of there.

I replant parsley every year. It doesn't winter over--the plant survives but it bolts immediately.

[Robin Garr]

Mary does most of the gardening, but offhand I recall sage, basil, parsley, and chives.

We have a 30-year-old sage plant in our raised bed out back. Along with it, we have thyme, Italian parsley, Greek oregano, cilantro (only for the early part of the growing season) and basil. The Italian parsley is partly for culinary reasons and partly because it, like all members of the carrot family, is habitat for the Eastern black swallowtail.

The Italian parsley is partly for culinary reasons and partly because it, like all members of the carrot family, is habitat for the Eastern black swallowtail.

Are Eastern black swallowtails particularly good roasted with carrots?

A very old, knarly, and beautiful rosemary plant, and French Tarragon are in the back in one of the raised beds that sit empty now after years of a bountiful garden. A large waist-high tub sits outside my kitchen door with thyme, marjoram, parsley, sweet basil, and chives. I had a sage plant, it died last year. Over the years, I've tried cilantro, dill, and parsley, with little success.

Nice that you have fresh chives. The ones from the store keep terribly, literally a day or two, before turning to mush. But I think I read that chive also bolts easily.

We have a large quarter-century+ old rosemary bush next to our front door. We used to have two, but we had a -20F freeze about 15 years ago that killed the other one.

As an adult I've lived in apartments and condos not conducive to gardening. But I grew a patch of mint in our family garden while in high school and as an undergrad. It of course tried to take over the rest of the garden and also the lawn.

Ah, yes, the Eastern black swallowtail. I collected butterflies as a kid. They are large and beautiful, but the primary food of their caterpillars is wild carrot and related plants.

My junior year in college I was away from home doing a summer internship. That year my dad decided to plant a row of carrots in the garden. In early June I got a letter from my mom saying, "Dad's garden is coming along fine. We've had a lot of black swallowtail butterflies in the yard this year. I wish you were here to see them." "Uh-oh," I thought to myself.

Sure enough, later during the summer I was home for the weekend. I asked my dad how the garden was getting along. He said, "We've got a problem with what must be the world's most demented rabbit. It's been eating all of the carrot leaves down to the ground but hasn't touched the carrot roots themselves." I went out into the garden and about half the carrot plants had been eaten down to the ground. I carefully examined the remaining carrot plants and sure enough, I found a huge final instar black swallowtail caterpillar larger than my thumb. These caterpillars are pretty gaudy--yellow,, black, and green stripes--and very large, but the pattern happens to be ideal camouflage for carrot leaves and you really have to search to find them. I brought the caterpillar back to my dad and said, "here's your demented rabbit".

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Nice that you have fresh chives. The ones from the store keep terribly, literally a day or two, before turning to mush. But I think I read that chive also bolts easily.

Mine has never bolted. They are the last thing to die off in the fall and the first thing to come out in spring. I love that! I've had a bed of them for 10 or 15 years now.

As an adult I've lived in apartments and condos not conducive to gardening. But I grew a patch of mint in our family garden while in high school and as an undergrad. It of course tried to take over the rest of the garden and also the lawn.

Ah, yes, the Eastern black swallowtail. I collected butterflies as a kid. They are large and beautiful, but the primary food of their caterpillars is wild carrot and related plants.

My junior year in college I was away from home doing a summer internship. That year my dad decided to plant a row of carrots in the garden. In early June I got a letter from my mom saying, "Dad's garden is coming along fine. We've had a lot of black swallowtail butterflies in the yard this year. I wish you were here to see them." "Uh-oh," I thought to myself.

Sure enough, later during the summer I was home for the weekend. I asked my dad how the garden was getting along. He said, "We've got a problem with what must be the world's most demented rabbit. It's been eating all of the carrot leaves down to the ground but hasn't touched the carrot roots themselves." I went out into the garden and about half the carrot plants had been eaten down to the ground. I carefully examined the remaining carrot plants and sure enough, I found a huge final instar black swallowtail caterpillar larger than my thumb. These caterpillars are pretty gaudy--yellow,, black, and green stripes--and very large, but the pattern happens to be ideal camouflage for carrot leaves and you really have to search to find them. I brought the caterpillar back to my dad and said, "here's your demented rabbit".

-Paul W.

Great story, Paul, and you're perhaps the only person I've encountered other than myself to use the word instar in a sentence When we first moved here 36 years ago, black swallowtails and monarchs were fairly common. Nowadays, they're a rare sight. People have done a fairly good job of repopulating milkweed habitat for the monarchs, but the loss of Queen Anne's Lace (aka wild carrot) from the landscape has not been addressed to nearly the same extent. About 10 years ago, my son and I followed the fate of several black swallowtail larvae as they progressed through the first 3-4 instars but then they migrated to the nearby forest for their final act and we lost sight of them. Because they mimic the poisonous pipevine swallowtail, they are pretty much safe from predators.

In my younger days in PA, we had a lot of Queen Anne's Lace. I've always liked that flower. Our local variety had a small violet floret in the center of each flower.

[Jenise]

Lots of it popped up in our yard and on the beach when we first moved here 23 yrs ago. But none at all in the last ten or so. Funny how weeds, which after all are just flowers nobody wants, tend to come and go.

Queen Anne's Lace is indeed the species from which the domestic carrot was bred. It is not native to North America. It is native to the temperate regions of the Old World but after its introduction to North America it's become widespread. I don't know what native member of the carrot family is the natural food of the Eastern black swallowtail (which is native to North America). The larvae also feed on laurel, so perhaps the mountain laurel is its native food.

BTW, be careful with Queen Anne's Lace. European hemlock (yes, the one that killed Socrates) is also a member of the carrot family and the two plants look dangerously similar. Hemlock has also been introduced to North America. Fortunately it doesn't grow as widely as Queen Anne's Lace. All parts of hemlock are very toxic.

-Paul W.

But I think I read that chive also bolts easily.

I grow chives very succesfully (more so than any other herb, I think).

They are the first to come up in the spring. They do tend to flower fairly early. but if you just remove the blossoms, they last the whole season, and they are about the last to shut down in the late fall. There is also more of them every year. I've only ever planted them once, and they've been coming up for 10 or 15 years.

FWIW, we're in zone 6, although since I grow them in an unheated greenhouse, it's probably closer to zone 5 indoors.

Queen Anne's Lace is indeed the species from which the domestic carrot was bred. It is not native to North America. It is native to the temperate regions of the Old World but after its introduction to North America it's become widespread. I don't know what native member of the carrot family is the natural food of the Eastern black swallowtail (which is native to North America). The larvae also feed on laurel, so perhaps the mountain laurel is its native food.

BTW, be careful with Queen Anne's Lace. European hemlock (yes, the one that killed Socrates) is also a member of the carrot family and the two plants look dangerously similar. Hemlock has also been introduced to North America. Fortunately it doesn't grow as widely as Queen Anne's Lace. All parts of hemlock are very toxic.

Paul, good question about the native food for the butterflies. Fennel and dill (other members of the carrot family) were AFAIK also introduced from Europe. Regarding poison hemlock, it grows wild in the East Bay hills where I grew up (as does fennel, too, FWIW) and it's fairly easy to distinguish from the other members by virtue of the color of its stem, which is purplish.

I grow herbs in a small unheated greenhouse in the garden (zone 6, but probably closer to 5 indoors). I grow chives, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, Greek and Italian oregano, and lots and lots of Genoa basil. I keep trying French tarragon, but it never does terribly well. Neither did Thai or holy basil. Cilantro bolted almost as soon as it was ready.

I also grow rosemary in a sunroom in the house for use in the winter. I've also tried thyme there, but it doesn't do well.