 by Jenny Hauf I’ve spent much of this May feeling out of place, with a scarf around my neck and a breath that turns white before disappearing into the early evening. Don’t get me wrong: as a farmer, gardener, and fighter for New England’s ecological health I am relieved that we’ve finally gotten enough rain to sate Massachusetts out of a devastating drought. However, I’m also anxious for soil that is dry and warm enough to start our field work. Despite the nippy weather and sunless days I’ve recognized this sweet month for its heavy blossoms, breezes that smell like pine and lilac, and the annual tradition planting the Herbstalk Community Gardens. For four years Steph and I have been joined by a group of lovely women who have helped us design, create, and tend tiny herb gardens throughout the Boston area. A few of the gardens live in full raised beds lovingly built by members of our crew while others consist of a few terracotta pots and window boxes. Regardless of size each plot is unique and jam-packed with dearly loved medicinal (and often delectable) plant friends. Elissa’s raised bed at Saint Mary’s in Dorchester is calm and simple; a reverie nestled into a corner of the church’s stone walls and elegantly planted with lavender, calendula, chamomile, and mugwort (which found its own way into the garden on its own). Maggie’s garden is in the playground across from Chilacates in Jamaica Plain, packed with seedlings from calendula, feverfew, and marshmallow mothers planted years ago that keep on providing us with leafy daughters. My own garden at ZAZ in Hyde Park consists of a collection of two window boxes and two wide and elegantly squat terracotta pots, brimming over with culinary herbs used by ZAZ’s chef, Olrie Roberts, in his new American fusion dishes. This year we set him up with ginger mint, lemon and English thyme, holy basil grown from seed, lemongrass, and other deliciously healing plants. While the women of the garden crew each have our “own” gardens we are merely stewards of plots that we maintain for the greater Boston community. We welcome visitors and passersby to harvest handfuls for their own use—a wee sprig of tulsi from Mal’s vertical garden at Somerville’s Bloc 11, say, or some anise hyssop from boxes and barrels at Gail Ann’s in Arlington Center. Soon the chamomile flowers in JP and Dorchester will be ready for the plucking, and in about a month Maggie’s Stonybrook garden (our flagship bed) will have lemon balm that’s big enough to start pinching for the iced teas of summer. Whether you are new to herbs, a practicing herbalist, or a dabbling cook or tea maker, we hope that you visit our gardens this year and take some time to smell their sweetness and perhaps take a little souvenir home for your teapot, saucepan, or salad bowl. For more information on the Herbstalk Community Gardens Project, including ways to volunteer, please visit our gardens page.
 Jennifer Hauf, grower and owner of Muddy River Herbals, is a farmer and writer living in Boston. As part of our Herbstalk garden team, she also ensures that pockets of herbs thrive around the city. A transplant from the rustbelt of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she grew up in love with the life around her, especially as seen in her father’s and grandparents’ gardens. She began using herbal medicine a decade ago, and has been tending to herbs on farms and gardens since 2006. When not elbow-deep in the dirt she writes about urban ecology at her blog, Spokes and Petals, spins wool and bicycle tires, and occasionally hammers out a tune on her banjo. She is available for gardening consultations, workshops, and freelance work.
by Jenn Falk “The entire Universe is concentrated in the garden. The garden allows us to become one with nature. And when we meditate we cannot separate ourselves from nature.” I took this quote from a snippet that I saw in a little docu-piece online about Japanese gardens. Isn’t it lovely? It’s the essence of what Pepperand I will be getting at when we teach our special Yoga/Herbal-infused/Mindfulness class this year at Herbstalk! I’m super grateful to my dear friend, Steph, for welcoming us as the first ever yoga class to be taught at this event. In reality what this class offers is a meditation on friendship. You see, once you start a mindfulness practice such as yoga or meditation, your lifestyle changes. It’s inevitable. We learn to become better friends with ourselves, and with other creatures and life on this planet. This can manifest in a variety of different ways. One amazing friendship that can be forged on this path of inner growth is each and every one of our relationships with plant life. You might begin to take in your surroundings more, noticing the changing seasons and with that the types, colors, and energy of plants around you. You might start to crave owning more houseplants and then truly pay attention to them. You might attract more friends who are gardeners, herbalists, nature explorers. What you put on or in your body changes as you put more reverence into the idea that we are a part of nature. I see it happen all the time! It’s a lovely thing to witness happen to friends and family who begin dedicating time to their yoga/mindfulness practice. We begin to transform our lifestyles and welcome the healing and open energy that can come from nature. This is why Herbstalk is such an amazing creation for those of us here in an urban environment. We are able to learn from some of the best in their field about how to engage closer with the plant world. There will be all varieties of classes, teachers, and business owners to take it in from. Everything from learning how specific herbs can support your nervous system, to how plants can aid in your spiritual process, to creating and sustaining an herbal/natural beauty routine. For me, discovering and staying open to the magic of plants and herbs has always been a feminine and spiritual experience. As teenagers, Steph and I would head out into the parks, climb trees, create our own rituals in our backyards…and this created healing that allowed us to forge a deep friendship — one that still remains my oldest and dearest to this day. I believe the fact that our friendship is still going strong is due to this weaving of our spirits with how we take care of ourselves through our belief in and our love for the natural world. What occurs when you pay attention to your own day-to-day mindfulness or healing process is a respect for and honoring of our own bodies, and thus with nature. You don’t have to become a plant expert/healer/herbalist extraordinaire, or a yoga teacher/wellness practitioner to reap these benefits or learn more. All you have to do is stay willing to open up your senses. Possibly watch the lunar cycles, and enjoy each season. Try and see where your interests in plant-life comes out! It could be in consuming tea, using herbal tinctures or elixirs to boost your system in some way, planting a garden plot, or even just taking trips to local gardens for enjoyment. The options are endless in how slowing down through mindfulness and yoga can connect you deeper into what surrounds us via plant wisdom and medicine. Pepper and I met this past year in Elena Brower’s Art of Attention teacher training, and immediately hit it off through (what else) learning about our love for plants/herbs/the natural world! Our class for Herbstalk will go deeper into this idea of weaving together how we discover wellness with our relationship to plant life. The 2-hour class will involve: meditation, some kundalini kriya, some yin postures, hatha flow, prolonged restorative shapes, sampling herbal elixir, flower essences, aromatherapy, and short discussion. It is on Sunday morning, June 8th at 9:00am at Herbstalk at the Somerville Armory on Highland Ave. We look forward to seeing you there! “The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.” -Hanna Rion  Yoga teacher Jenn Falk has been guinea pig and friend to herbalist and Herbstalk founder, Steph Zabel, for 20+ years. She credits her friendship with Steph to all she knows about herbal wisdom and her respect for it. She’s also married to an organic garden professional and artist, and they are raising their family to love the use of herbs, grow vegetables, and take care of the Earth. Learn more at:www.yoginijennfalk.com
Submitted by Jenny Hauf. A bumble bee visiting ornamental sage in the Allandale Farm flower field. Image by Tana Wilkinson This time of year I’m often rendered breathless and starry-eyed by my surroundings. Everywhere I look something new is curling out of concrete and woody shafts. The oaks are budding and cherries are tossing pastel confetti into the night. The unfurling of everything—especially the herbs, those that I’ve coddled and loved into being, as well as the ones that appear on their own—thrills me and turns my mind to apothecary dreams. Salves, tinctures, beers, teas, scrubs, soups, condiments galore…there is so much to make from this green bounty! But this spring I am looking at the botanical world a bit differently. I have a brand new diploma from Bee School and hives that I’m building from pine. The more that I learn about bees (and the other pollinators so integral to North American ecosystems), the more my understanding of urban ecology deepens and expands. The herbs in our cityscapes heal, sustain, and provide for more than our own species. Spiders shelter in comfrey, cats go into ecstatic trances over catnip, and pollinators of all stripes, wings, and feathers obtain nourishment from almost everything in the neighborhood that blooms. Take, for example, the gloriously ubiquitous dandelion, a plant painted so beautifully in Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine.” In his perfect novel, Bradbury documents the annual harvest of the plant for wine made by the main character’s grandfather. The boys bent, smiling. They picked the golden flowers. The flowers that flooded the world, dripped off lawns onto brick streets, tapped softly at crystal cellar windows and agitated themselves so that on all sides lay the dazzle and glitter of molten sun. “Every year,” said Grandfather. “They run amuck; I let them. Pride of lions in the yard. Stare, and they burn a hole in your retina. A common flower, a weed that no one sees, yes. But for us, a noble thing, the dandelion.” Dandelions blooming by a greenhouse. Image courtesy of the author. The dandelion certainly is a noble thing. It spreads a glistening wildfire through any soil deep enough for its taproot to find purchase, romping around the city with constituents that aid our digestion and purge our bodies of toxins. And not only do these dandelions make medicine that helps us rejuvenate our bodies and awaken to the fullness of spring, they also provide one of the most important foods for pollinators hungry and adventurous after a long, cooped-up winter. As anyone who has stuck their nose in a fresh dandelion knows, its assemblage of florets (what looks like one big flower is actually a composition of dozens!) are drenched in sunny pollen and sugary nectar, both of which are sought out by bees and other pollinators for sustenance. It is increasingly well-known that pollinators are essential to life as we know it. While a blog post is far too short a medium for seriously exploring their importance, it is a perfect space for a little list of herbs that you can grow to support your neighborhood’s bugs (and pollinating birds), as well as your own health!
For more lists of pollinator-friendly plants, see these great links from the Xerces Society and the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, the latter of which focuses on medicinals, as well as plants that attract hummingbirds. PS: Lots of medicinal herbs are now available for purchase at Allandale Farm. Most of our live plants were started from seed and have never been treated with non-organic methods. This month’s selection includes woodland natives goldenseal and black cohosh, as well as pollinator favorites like comfrey, hyssop, and lemon balm. We’ll also have a lot of herbs for sale at Herbstalk on June 7 & 8! Jenny Hauf is a medicinal herb grower and writer living in Boston. She began using herbal medicine a decade ago, and has been tending to herbs on farms and gardens since 2006. Jennifer is the herb grower at Allandale Farm, and when not elbow-deep in dirt she writes about urban ecology at her blog, Spokes and Petals, spins wool and bicycle tires, and occasionally hammers out a tune on her banjo. She is also available for gardening consultations, workshops, and freelance work.
Submitted by Jenny Hauf of Allandale Farm. Photo by Justin Q. Taylor. I hope that you, dear reader, are enjoying the slow, sweet beginnings of spring. It is lovely to listen to the rain while warm and dry inside and to follow the millimeters of growth in the neighborhood’s emerging bulbs. Besides the sweetness and slowness, however, there are also days splattered with cold and shades of grey. It makes you long for green—the light new kind that will soon overwhelm our landscape. While we don’t have much of that springing chartreuse yet, we can find it by growing seedlings or potted plants in our kitchen windows. Indoor gardening is a thing of joy and complexity. Aside from bringing the beauty of living plants into your home, windowsill flowers (and cacti, trees, vines, ferns, and more!) can help purify the air and add new textures to your décor. And, depending on what you plant, your little garden can also fill your teapot! Rosemary bonsai courtesy of Justin Q. Taylor. If you’re interested in growing plants inside it is essential to pay attention to their light requirements. Just as you would with an outdoor garden, observe your space intimately before choosing what plants to grow or sow. If you live in a dark basement apartment unfortunately you won’t be able to grow passionflower, though if you’re interested you might be able to rig up a lighting system fancy enough to make it work. Do your homework and you’ll reap the rewards. I also recommend a visit to your favorite garden center. Because indoor plants are restricted to container life, a setting that is so different from the earthen soil, it helps to speak with a professional about feeding, watering, and general nurturing. The internet, of course, is very helpful as well, and the links below will provide a good basis for beginning your living room garden. Before revealing the best herbs for growing indoors I’ll mention that I’ve discovered that these plants thrive when there’s a young kid in the house. From one friend’s 7-month old who is enamored of the family rosemary to another toddler that’s kindred to a basil, little children enjoy the sensual delights that come from knowing a plant. They delight in the reward—the immediate and satisfying release of aromatics—that comes from touching an herb. Of course, kids will also put things in their mouth—as will your pets—so make sure that anything at kid or pet height is non-toxic. And so, without further ado, here are my top twelve herbs for Indoor Growing (as of this writing!). Aloe (Aloe vera) Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilicum) Catnip (Nepeta cataria) Houseleek (Sempervivum tectorum) Mint (Mentha, spp.) Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata) Hot peppers (See link for best varieties) Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) Sage (Salvia officinalis) Mad-dog Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) (Treat this like its cousin, mint.) Thyme (Thymus vulgaris) Valerian (Valeriana officinalis) As always, please feel welcome to leave comments about your own experience with growing herbs, especially if you’ve worked with herbs not profiled in this article. Let’s work together to make this a great resource for interior gardeners! Jenny Hauf is a medicinal herb grower and writer living in Boston. She began using herbal medicine a decade ago, and has been tending to herbs on farms and gardens since 2006. Jennifer is the herb grower at Allandale Farm, and when not elbow-deep in dirt she writes about urban ecology at her blog, Spokes and Petals, spins wool and bicycle tires, and occasionally hammers out a tune on her banjo. She is also available for gardening consultations, workshops, and freelance work.
Submitted by Jenny Hauf of Allandale Farm. When last I wrote winter was everywhere, piled thickly on medians and hilled at the edges of parking lots. There’s still a lot of snow out there, but this glorious thaw is loosing it and putting my mind in overdrive. It’s time to move into the next step of herb garden planning! A drawing by Laura Grover of my urban herb garden in March. If you’ve not yet read part one of this series, An Introduction to Growing Urban Herbals, I encourage you to do so. After you’ve read it and made yourself acquainted with your space, soil and light conditions, and the plants that you want to grow, you’re ready to get serious and make…a map! It’s easy to go crazy in your first year of gardening. Like a new love, everything about the garden is blissfully overwhelming. It’s great to have that feeling of rapture, but it can quickly grow messy—and expensive—as you indulge in more plants than your containers and borders can handle. Drawing out a simple diagram will help you to understand the vast possibilities and important limitations intrinsic to your space. Use a tape measure so that it’s to scale and make it as detailed as possible. Once you have a nice map to reference, begin adding to it. Draw in the plants that you’d like to grow. It’s helpful to make a few copies of your original map so that you can create several drafts of the garden. Tell the paper everything you want and it will show you all that you can have. This kitchen garden will have herbs bordering beds of vegetables. Planning a garden requires a combination of aesthetics and practicality. The aesthetics come in the arranging of rich marriages, flings, and flirtations between your plants. The practicalities come with a set of useful rules.
The last step in preparing your garden for planting is amending the soil. Check the results of your soil test and mark what your soil needs. This wonderful UMass site breaks down your test results and shows you how to give your soil what it wants. Once you can work the ground these amendments, as well as good quality compost, should be applied. (If you put compost on your garden last year there’s no need to add more now.) Remember that many herbs prefer a soil that is somewhat “poor,” so combine the information from UMass with this link that I shared last month. Please feel free to ask any questions or offer your own tips in the comments section. You can also contact me through my website. And quickly, a joke. What’s a pirate’s favorite medicinal herb? Arrrrnica! (Which you can start from seed right now! Just sow it in some fine seeding mix, stick it in the fridge for 1-3 weeks, and move it to a cool, sunny place to germinate.) See you in April! Jenny Hauf is a medicinal herb grower and writer living in Boston. She began using herbal medicine a decade ago, and has been tending to herbs on farms and gardens since 2006. Jennifer is the herb grower at Allandale Farm, and when not elbow-deep in dirt she writes about urban ecology at her blog, Spokes and Petals, spins wool and bicycle tires, and occasionally hammers out a tune on her banjo. She is also available for gardening consultations, workshops, and freelance work.
Submitted by Jenny Hauf of Allandale Farm. We’ve arrived at a point in human history where the majority of us live in cities. It can be easy, especially in this monochromatic season of winter, to see our metropolitan setting for only the breathless materials that surround us: asphalt, mortar, aluminum and brick. This environment, seemingly devoid of life, can threaten to overwhelm us. However, if we adjust our perception it gradually becomes apparent that fecund tenacity bursts everywhere within our cities. That exuberance presents itself in wild plants and animals, and also through the caring hands of the world’s millions of urban gardeners. This article is the first in a series aimed at helping the city dweller create and nurture an herb garden; one’s own temple of living urban beauty. Be it in a crate on the fire escape or in beds of geometric symmetry in the backyard, the healing powers of herbs transform ourselves and our environment. The idea of urban gardening can appear restrictive. However, cosmopolitan gardens have proven to be ideal palettes for botanical beauty and creativity. I heartily believe that everyone can have an herb garden. If you are interested in growing your own there are some simple steps you can take now to prepare for the glories of spring planting. First, consider the space available to you in which to grow your herbs. You’ll either be growing your garden in the earth or in containers—old bathtubs, wooden pallets, clay pots, et cetera. If you’re hoping to grow plants in the ground take a survey of your site’s soil. The best way to do this is to take a sample during a thaw and send it to a lab. (My Boston soil is tested at UMass.) Soil testing is especially important in urban areas due to the presence of lead and other contaminants. It is also useful for understanding the chemical, elemental, and organic makeup of your garden, and for determining your soil pH. (Most herbs will grow well in pH levels between 6.5 and 7.) For more information on healthy soil for growing herbs, click here. Next, consider how your garden is lit. Is it sunny? And if it is now, in February, will it remain so in July? Take into account surrounding trees (which will eventually leaf out), buildings, and anything else that may keep the sun from reaching your garden. Remember that the slant of the sun changes throughout the seasons, and also note the direction that your garden faces; if an oak is at its north end but the garden is free from obstructions in the south, the location should do just fine. Most herbs like to grow in “full sun,” which is defined as at least six hours of direct sunlight. However, if you do not have sunny areas to work with don’t fret—there are herbs that will grow well in partial and even full shade. Lastly, you’ll want to start dreaming and scheming about what it is that you’d like to grow. We’ll dive deeper into this subject next time, but for now consider what you’re hoping to get out of your plantings: teas? Salves? Culinary seasonings? Acquaint yourself with your growing zone, which generally dictates what you can grow naturally out-of-doors. Pour over seed catalogues like Horizon and research different types of herbal and urban gardens (many of which I’ve collected on here). And go to the library! Some great books to look up are: Homegrown Herbs: A Complete Guide to Growing, Using, and Enjoying More than 100 Herbs McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting. See you next month—four weeks closer to spring! Jenny Hauf is a medicinal herb grower and writer living in Boston. She began using herbal medicine a decade ago, and has been tending to herbs on farms and gardens since 2006. Jennifer is the herb grower at Allandale Farm, and when not elbow-deep in dirt she writes about urban ecology at her blog, Spokes and Petals, spins wool and bicycle tires, and occasionally hammers out a tune on her banjo. She is also available for gardening consultations, workshops, and freelance work.
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