Herb Gardening 101 Class at the Desert Botanical Garden

For the last 3 Sunday afternoons I had the chance to attend a class at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix.  The class was called "Herbs from Garden to Kitchen".  Our teacher was Catherine Crowley, also known as "The Herb Lady" (this is a link to her blog) and wow does she know her stuff!   I got a notebook full of tips and useful information.
We also toured the Herb Garden on site at DBG and had a chance to touch, taste and smell some unique herbs that Catherine brought in from her own garden.  Have you ever seen Chocolate Basil?  How about Cinnamon Basil?  My favorite was Lemon Basil.  Actually pretty much anything with lemon smelled delicious.  There's also Lemon Thyme, Lemon Grass, Lemon Verbena and even more.

We learned about shopping for plants & seeds, as well as planting, location, watering, sunlight, fertilizing, insects, etc.  I always thought it was nearly impossible to grow anything but cactus here in the desert, but I'm learning that there are actually quite a few plants that will thrive here.  The most important thing is WHEN you plant and how much sunlight the plants will get.  Even though our days a quite warm, Catherine says that EVERY edible plant needs at least 4 to 6 hours of sun each day.

For the grand finale of the last class Catherine brought in several samples of recipes that she had made with herbs, plus we watched some video of other recipes that she had created.  You can see 4 different kinds of tabouli in the photo above. We got copies of the recipes to take home too.  Oh, by the way, in case you don't know...everything tastes better with fresh herbs!

We're pretty much at the end of our range for springtime planting now, so I wanted to pick up a few things before it was too late.

On Saturday Terry and I did some shopping.  Here's what I planted today.

Yellow Pear Tomatoes, Strawberries, Alyssum, Lavender, Basil, Lemon Basil, Parsley, Rosemary, and Chives.  We also picked up these yellow flowers that I thought were Euryop daisies, but the tag on them says some kind of Butterfly something or other...oh well, they look similar, so we'll see how they do.

We picked up a nice Star Jasmine vine for the atrium in the back yard too.  I hope it does o.k.   The area doesn't get a lot of sun, so it's iffy.   But, I love the scent of star jasmine, so I'm hoping we can make it work.

This last photo is what the front entry area looks like now with our humble little garden...or maybe I should call it my humbling little garden (depending on how it does).

I tried a few things that weren't recommended, but we can't really afford to buy a bunch of big flower pots right now, so I had to use what we had.  The Herb Lady recommends that you use pots at LEAST 2 FEET across if you do container gardening in Phoenix, in order to insulate the plants from the heat.  Most of the pots we have are smaller than that, so I tried to keep them away from the edge.  We'll see how they do....

Eventually we need to extend the water drip lines so we can run one into each pot, but for now we'll hand water them.  And the long term plan is to fill the plant shelves in the front of the house with pots as well.  I think it will add some nice color, scents and even some goodies for eating too.

I really love having God's amazing creation around.  My grandmother made her living as a farmer, but the knowledge wasn't passed down to my generation.  I always thought it would be great to have my grandmother come and live with us for a year or so and teach us how to garden, but unfortunately, that never happened.  Terry did pretty well with a garden when we were in California, but so far he hasn't had the time or inclination for it.  Hopefully this will get us started and eventually our yard will be overflowing with little bits of God's glorious beauty.