Wednesday, May 20, 2009, 7pm-9pm @Camilla Room, Harry P. Leu Gardens 1920 Forest Ave, Orlando, FL 32803 FREE to the public Growing Culinary Herbs is this months topic with an overview of varieties, cultivation tips, and where to get plants from locally. Bring your favorite recipes, perhaps a tasty sample, and any plants, cuttings, and seeds to share. As always, bring any surplus from your garden to share, treats for the tasting table, and plants and gardening supplies for the raffle table. The meeting is free and open to anyone interested in organic farming, foods or products! Arrive early at 6:30pm for socializing, food, and beverages. Afterwards we continue the discussion nearby at Ethos Vegan Kitchen from 9-10pm.

Well, a soil test will let you know what the pH really is, and would probably offer some recommendations about how much lime would be useful. I live in a place where the soil is a bit acidic, and I've certainly been known to just toss some lime into my garden on principle, largely because that's what my grandmother did. A soil test would be more reliable, though. :-) Basically, I think you have 3 main options: Get a soil test and follow the recommendations. Throw in some lime anyway, if you "know" that the soil is acidic, and just guess on amounts. Familiarize yourself with what plants (or your specific herbs) look like when they're growing in too-acidic soil, keep an eye out for these signs, and add lime accordingly. You won't know in advance what you need without a reliable soil test, but if you're willing to try and see (which means possibly failing in the meantime), you can correct things over time by watching for signs in the plants.

It can be fun to experiment with growing seed when you're a beginner, but it can also be incredibly frustrating! I suggest you take a visit to your local plant nursery and start off with seedlings (baby plants). This is a double advantage. First, your plants have a head start, giving you rewards sooner; second, you have the opportunity to taste and smell the plants before you buy. Slow-growing plants like Bay take forever to grow from seed - and rosemary can be a very slow starter, too. One of the major gripes on this forum is the fact that there is very little regulation regarding the labelling of plants or seeds. Too often, you'll see a label on a packet of seeds saying 'French Tarragon', but you can be quite confident that it will NOT be French tarragon - because FT rarely sets viable seed! Similarly, the plant you buy may be Russian Tarragon (an almost tasteless weed), or even Winter Tarragon (which is a very fair substitute, actually, but not a tarragon). Another example of fraud is peppermint. Peppermint is actually sterile, so it must be propagated vegetatively - by cuttings, layering or division. Yet people merrily continue to sell packets of seeds labelled 'peppermint'. It makes me grind my teeth! So - while you're browsing amongst the plants, don't be afraid to pick off a leaf - crush it, smell it, taste it. With Tarragon, you should get an astonishing mouth-numbing effect (great for tooth-ache!). Taste the difference between spearmint and peppermint - there is no mistaking the differences with a taste-test! Do some WWW-searching to learn the botanical names of edible herbs. For instance, there are hundreds of species of sage, but only a very few are edible - you'll be looking for Salvia officinalis. For bay leaves, you'll be looking for Laurus nobilis, and no other. You can be somewhat more confident that seeds bought in the herb/spice deparment in your supermarket are correctly labelled. Herbs like fenugreek, mustard, coriander (what you call cilantro), caraway, cumin etc usually germinate very well - and haven't been chemically treated like many propagation-purpose seeds. You can also look out for fresh herbs from the fruit/vege section of your supermarket. You'll often get plants in small pots - these are usually fed with lots of nitrogen to hasten leaf growth, while the roots will be a bit pot-bound, but you can often get them to grow if you don't leave them too long before transplanting them. And in amongst the veges, you'll find onions and garlic and ginger and lemongrass. When planted, onions and garlic and ginger roots will grow; and if the lemongrass stems have even a tiny little root on it, that will grow, too. With a lot of the herbs you'll end up with, you can collect seed from them, or take cuttings, and you'll end up with a perpetual supply. Of course, you'll need to provide the right conditions for all your herbs, so it helps to know where they originated, and to copy as near as possible the conditions there (climate, soil, etc). Also learn about which plants are annuals, and which are perennials. Any good nursery should be able to supply lots of that sort of information on request. Don't forget to browse through this forum, using the Search facility if you like. There is some excellent information to be found here.

I have grown lots of rosemary from cuttings using Miracle Gro potting mix. Actually I use this mix for all my seed starting and have had pretty good results. It is a mix and does not have soil, I think.