[Sca-cooks] Re: SC - Creating a period garden

[Stefan li Rous]

I said back on Friday:
> Thank you Balthazar and the others who sent me info on herb growing
> by email. I think I will try this. At one time I had a bunch of
> various house plants, but they gradually died off as I got active in the
> SCA and got married. Now I may be willing to try again. We are going
> to Fredricksburg, TX, near here in the Texas Hill Country, for our
> anniversary this weekend. One of the places I've spotted in the
> literature is an herb farm (http://www.fredericksburgherbfarm.com/ ).
> They have seeds and they may have cuttings. We'll see.

Thank you everyone who commented on which herbs might be good for a
beginner and the precautions to take with mints.

Unfortuntely, although I was able to read your messages by the
time we left on Saturday morning, I didn't manage to get them
printed out to take with me.

I was correct in guessing that this herb farm would have plantings
available as well as seeds. I ended up buying the smallest plantings
they had, I think they labeled them as 4 inch. These were all $2.75
I think. These weren't much more than the $1.75 they were asking for
each packet of seeds and there was a bigger variety. Whether this is
a good price, I have no idea.

I also got two small books on growing herbs and herb gardens. There
were more volumous works, but I thought these two would do to start
with. I also bought some of their liquid fertilizer solution for
herbs. I will transplant these to larger pots in the next few days.

These are the ones I ended up with:
Dill ‘Bouquet’ (Anethum Graneolens)
English Mint (Mentha Spicata var.)
English Thyme (Thymus Vulgaris)
Holy Basil (Ocimum Basilicum Sanctum)
Peppermint (Mentha x Piperita)
Rosmary, ‘Lockwood de Forest’ (Rosmarinus Officinalis var.)
Sage (Salvia Oficinalis)

They also had the flat, Italian parsley and catnip. I'm holding both
of these in mind for the future. I'm still not sure how to protect
a small catnip plant from my four cats. While one or two could probably
care less for a catnip plant, I'm afraid the others will kill the small
plant.

I also hadn't realized that some of these came in so many varieties.
The Basil, for instance. I did try to pick varieties that I thought
might be closer to period. Thus the English and Peppermint instead
of orange mint or chocolate mint. I hope all of these are useable
in food and that they aren't just ornamentals.

Does the 'var.' in the Latin name mean varietal? ie: a sub-species?

--
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****