Guest Blogger: Annie Wegner LeFort, owner and founder of EatMoveMKE, teaches cooking and yoga classes in the Milwaukee area, organizes hikes and local dinners, and offers both private and group Health Coaching services. Learn more at eatmovemke.com.
To learn more about how to enjoy herbs, join Annie’s class “Using Culinary Herbs” on Friday, April 28 from 6-7:30pm. For more info, contact her at annie@eatmovemke.com.
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Spring is in the air. Daylight is longer, the snow is (hopefully) gone, shoots are popping out of the ground, and the temperatures are feeling more mild. This time of year I get excited about all things outdoors from farmers’ markets to wild foraging hikes to hanging laundry and gardening. Especially gardening!
Another sign of spring is chives beginning to poke through the soft soil of the garden. They are always the first to emerge in my culinary herb collection followed closely by sorrel, mint, and lemon balm. I grow at least a dozen culinary herbs in my garden adding oregano, various types of basil, parsley, chervil, sage, thyme, cilantro, dill, chamomile, lovage, borage, and lavender to the list over the years that I’ve maintained my urban homestead.
I use these herbs both fresh and to prepare seasonal cooked dishes and homemade preserves and also dry or freeze them for use in cooking year-round and to create custom tea blends. My cooking style is rooted in low-waste or no-waste, which moves me to use not only leaves and blossoms, but the stems and sometimes the roots as well.
Many of the herbs I grow are perennials, herbs that come back on their own each year. These herbs such as oregano, lemon balm, mint, and sage can be wildly abundant so it’s important to be mindful of where you plant them and stay diligent about culling them each season if you don’t want to them to take over your plot.
Herbs that I plant each season are different varieties of basil, chervil, and dill. A few starts purchased from the local farmers market or family-owned garden center usually give me plenty of flavor for a whole season.
Herbs like parsley—both flat-leaf (aka “Italian parsley”) and curly leaf—are biennials, which means that they will provide wonderful leaves the first year and go to seed in the second season.
I also have plentiful herbs like borage and chamomile that start as “volunteers”, plants that come up in the garden with no effort on my part. They germinate from seeds dropped by flowers in the previous years.
And lastly, the cilantro in my garden is planted in “successions”, which is the practice of seeding crops at certain intervals (ie 7 to 21 days) in order to maintain a consistent supply throughout the season. Cilantro doesn’t grow back after it’s cut like some perennials or even the annual basil, which, when harvested from the crotch of a stem encourages exponential regrowth. After cilantro matures, it goes to seed. Harvesting the entire plant (roots and all, if you wish), means that it requires replanting if you want more throughout the season.
To plant annual herbs—starts or seeds—I wait until after the last frost date, which could be end of April to early or mid-May. A frost date is the average date of the last light freeze in spring or the first light freeze in fall and is estimated based on historical climate data, but not set in stone. As a rule of thumb, I seek out starts from local garden centers or growers around Mother’s Day, which is a fun tradition with my daughter. Our hardiness zone in the Milwaukee area is 5b with a growing season around 180 days. It’s a brief six months that we can grow food outdoors with the heart of the season feeling like it starts in late June.
I harvest herbs daily in the summer to use fresh in salads, for cooking, baking, and to dry throughout the growing season. As some herbs will produce more the more that you pick—basil, mint, lemon balm and other herbs in the mint family (lamiaceae)—I harvest heavily and keep the drying process going for herbal tea mixtures and dried backups come winter. The simplest way to dry most herbs is airdrying; wash the herbs and pat dry, strip the leaves off the stems, spread them out on a baking sheet or screen and put them in a dry, sunny spot out of the way of pets. Then, check them every day and toss them for even drying. This low-energy process may take a few days or most of a week. One can also dry herbs more quickly in a dehydrator; that is my go-to method for the end-of-season harvest.
Herbs can also be frozen. Finely chop or puree them, fill ice cube trays or muffin pans with the herbs then top with water. Once the cubes are frozen solid they can be transferred to freezer bags, labeled, and dated. Frozen herbs are great added to soups, casseroles, egg dishes, baked goods, dressings, and dips.
Another favorite way to use herbs in is a variety of pestos. A classis Pesto Genovese contains basil, garlic, Parmigiano-Reggiano, olive oil, and pinenuts. But there’s lots of space for creativity in making pesto beyond basil. My favorite combinations are Sage-Walnut, Arugula-Almond, Mint-Feta-Pinenut, Dandelion Green-Hazelnut, Nasturtium Leaf-and Sunflower Seed, and Carrot Top-Almond. I’ve also made pesto with the leaves of ramps (wild leeks), lemon zest, and sorrel. These pestos are easy to freeze in ice cube trays or muffin pans as well and thaw quickly to use in pasta dishes and spreads or to add to a soup, egg bake, or pizza.
Homegrown herbs make great gifts in the form of preserves—herbal jellies, herbed fruits, and custom tea mixtures. I dry and blend catnip, lemon balm, mint, and chamomile to create a my own bedtime tea mix.
Most of herbs I grow are for culinary purposes, but the medicinal herbs I enjoy cultivating each year are peppermint, comfrey, calendula, and tulsi (holy basil). I also grow elderberries and while they are not an herb, both the blossoms and the fruit can be dried and incorporated into tea mixtures.
Peppermint has cooling properties, can relieve bloating and indigestion, reduce nausea and vomiting, relax muscles, and relieve headaches and menstrual cramps. It is antibacterial, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory and also aids sleep. Tulsi is a superfood with antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory properties as well. It can prevent respiratory illnesses and reduce phlegm. It is also known to reduce stress, as it lowers the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone in the body. Tulsi can also reduce blood sugar and cholesterol levels in the body.
There are many possibilities for both culinary and medicinal herbs we can grow in Zone 5:
-Agrimony
-Angelica
-Anise hyssop
-Borage
-Calendula
-Catnip
-Caraway
-Chervil
-Chives
-Cilantro/Coriander
-Clary sage
-Comfrey
-Dill
-Echinacea
-Chamomile (depending on variety)
-Lavender (depending on variety)
-Feverfew
-Sorrel
-French Tarragon
-Garlic chives
-Horseradish
-Lemon Balm
-Lovage
-Marjoram
-Mint hybrids (chocolate mint, apple mint, orange mint, etc.)
-Parsley (depending on variety)
-Peppermint
-Rue
-Salad burnet
-Spearmint
-Sweet Cicely
-Oregano (depending on variety)
-Thyme (depending on variety)
-Savory (winter)