Garden Wisdom Blog — category: Herb Talk

How do you know when to harvest garlic bulbs and if they have matured to the right point for harvest? Each leaf on the above-ground garlic plant represents one potential papery wrapper around the mature bulb. Having well developed, fully intact wrapper layers means that your garlic will store longer and keep its wonderful aroma and flavour. The trick is to let the plants begin to die back, but harvest before all the leaves have turned brown. The top-most, green leaves extend down, into the soil, into the heart of each garlic bulb. When the lower two thirds of leaves have...

Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) This evergreen perennial herb is native to the Mediterranean region, where it still grows wild as well as domesticated. Its Latin generic name refers to the dew (ros) of the sea (marinus). For thousands of years, this attractive, intensely aromatic plant has captivated our senses as well as our folklore. The references about rosemary in both history and legend are abundant. In ancient Greece, the herb was burnt to cleanse the air and to ward off evil spirits. This tradition lasted well into the middle ages, when it was burnt in areas affected by plague. It was...

Parsley (Petroselinum crispum) Both the curly leaf form (P. crispum) and the Italian flat-leaf form (P. crispum var. neapolitanum) of this useful herb are members of the carrot family Apiaceae, and share a close botanical relationship to their cousin the parsnip (although the similarity in names is coincidental). As with most other members of this family, parsley grows feathery, deep-green foliage above a long taproot, and eventually flowers in its second year, sending up a tall umbel of white blooms that set masses of small, oily seeds. A third, less familiar variety of parsley is known as Hamburg parsley (P....

Cilantro (Coriandrum sativum) This annual herb is known officially as coriander just about everywhere outside of the Americas. We often think of the fresh leaves as cilantro, and the seeds (which are very easy to harvest) as coriander. Cilantro is the Spanish name for coriander. The plant is native to North Africa and Mediterranean Europe, and is a member of the carrot family, Apiaceae. Its close relatives include parsley, fennel, and dill, which is easy to see when the plant flowers, producing tall umbels of white flowers. Each cilantro “seed” is actually a schizocarp that can be divided into two...