BiG TeA PaRtY Sustainable Living

EVEN ALICE LIKED THE TEA
A Primer on Homemade Tea Blends written by Elizabeth Fiend

Recently BiG TeA PaRtY threw a Sustainable Living “Tea Party” at Playa Del Fuego (an East Coast Burning Man) – hundreds of people stopped by to read our posters and share their own ideas on sustainability. Our homegrown and home-blended wormwood iced tea was a hit. Many asked for the recipe and how-to for homemade herbal iced teas. Here’s the low down:

I grow my own herbs, if you have some earth I recommend this sustainable pastime. Gardening and growing some of your own food (and beverages!) is a rewarding endeavor. Otherwise, dried herbs are available for sale on the internet.

GROWING HERBS:

•    Herbs are easy to grow. Know your climate and soil — choose plants accordingly. Herbs will be perennial (long lasting), annual (just one season) and sometimes in-between like biannual and short lived perennials.

•    Make sure you really know what you’re growing because you’ll be ingesting these plants. Purchase plants and seeds from reliable dealers. Often, plants will be mislabeled at lesser garden centers.
•    In my experience it’s best to purchase perennials as plants; annuals are usually cheaper to grow from seed.

HARVESTING AND DRYING HERBS:
•    When possible, harvest herbs on a dry day in the morning to get the most impact from the plants natural flavoring – their oils.
•    Always leave at least one third of the plant intact when harvesting (except annuals, eat it all as frost approaches as it’s going to die soon anyway).
•    Since my herbs are home grown and I don’t use any chemicals in my yard, I don’t wash my herbs (as drying them is the goal) instead I dust off any dirt with my fingers and inspect for dead bugs, feathers etc. which I remove.
•    Tie the herbs in small bundles and hang them upside down in a dry and aerated location away from direct light until they’re dry.

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BASIL — Eat Some Today!

Source:  The Thyme Garden

I’m growing five kinds of basil in my garden this year and the Fiends eat some almost every day. Here’s a nice article about this tasty herb from The Thyme Garden a seed supply store.

Posted by: Elizabeth Fiend

There are about 150 species of basil native to areas of Asia, Africa, Central America and South America. It is believed that Alexander the Great introduced the herb to Greece after returning from his Asian campaign. Basil was considered by the early Greeks as the herb of kings. The Romans thought it a symbol of love (and it is still considered an aphrodisiac) and even to this day Tulsi Basil is considered holy and sacred to Hindus.  Cultivated for more than 5000 years, basil was once used by Egyptians as an embalming herb in the mummification process.
Today basil is primarily used as a choice culinary herb in dishes ranging from Italian to Thai. One of the best characteristics of basil is that it seems to actually like being used; pinching off leaves keeps the plant from going into seed production and stimulates growth. Don’t be afraid to pinch off the growing tips – it will make your plants bushier.   

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~~~~~~~ Uncommon Plants for the Garden Bring Much Joy ~~~~~~~

Photos and top of article by Elizabeth Fiend

Uncommon Gardens.

Even though my garden is big by city standards, there’s never enough room for everything I want to grow. One of the strategies I’ve developed is to grow things that I can’t buy in a store.

Enter Elder and Josta, two delicious nutritious berries (pronounced yusta-berry). Make juice, pies, jellies. Dip the huge elderflower in (soy) milk, drudge in cornmeal and lightly fry up a delightful Flower-Fritter!

For a more adult type of fun try alcoholic infusions. Easier than pie to make, much easier.

Method: fill a big glass jar with flowers or fruit, pour the liquor or wine over and cover. Let it sit awhile. One week, two weeks a few months, there’re no hard and fast rules. When you’re ready strain if flowers, or use a tomato press to squeeze every last bit of juice out of the fruit.

When I make a concoction out of both flowers and fruit I infuse each one separately. This way I’m straining flowers and squeezing fruit.

Last year I made an Elderflower Gin that was out of this world. A splash of tonic and you have the essence of sunshine in a glass.

This year I’m basing my beverage on the Whiskey Sour. First I’m infusing the flowers in whisky. After two weeks I’ll strain out the flowers and I’ll add the Jostaberries. This I’ll put through the tomato press (or use a food mill) so all the dark, tangy goodness from the berries will stay in my beverage.

We’ll be drinking this mid-summer in the garden with friends. Want to come over?
Love,
Elizabeth Fiend

Below find an articles on the horticultural properties of Elder trees and Jostaberrie bushes, and an article that details some of the mythical and magical properties of the Elder.

~~~~~~~~~~ Elder in Folklore and Magic ~~~~~~~~~~
Source: The Practical Herbalist

Elder is a relative new-commer in world folklore, holding her place most prominently in European history and mythos where she has been associated closely with the Celtic faerie lands and those similar otherworldly realms of various European traditions. Elder is sacred to many goddess-traditions and especially to the goddesses Venus and Holle. Most popular among pagan traditions modern and old is the myth of the Elder Mother, a spirit who inhabits the Elder tree and holds the power to work a variety of magics in this world.

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Cement Gardens for the City
written by Valerie K

Believe it or not, all these blooms were grown either in pots or in a raised bed that has only about 6-7 inches of soil.

You may have seen BiG TeA PaRtY’s Elizabeth Fiend‘s garden and how gorgeous it is [to take a look click HERE]; an oasis in the grime of a big city.  But not every urban home has enough space for that much greenery, in fact most back yards where I live in South Philadelphia are covered in cement and cinder block, and it’s not always possible or financially feasible to tear up the cement and get back to the earth.

Despair not, city dwellers, with just a few feet of space there is room for a healthy, happy and beautiful garden!

My yard is about 14′ x 7′ of cement, enclosed by cement block walls, sounds grim doesn’t it?  But look what I got last year – this is mid-June during the second wave of blooming – mostly perennials highlighted here but a few annuals are spicing it up, like the hot pink Snap dragons in the left-hand photo

You don’t need soil that reaches down to the water table to grow flowers like those pictured above.  With raised beds sitting on top of cement, and a variety of pots and containers you would be surprised (I was!) how lush your yard can be.  And after a couple years it starts to really flourish if you get some good perennials going, and then it’s up to you how much work you want to put into it….

I took these photos this year (2011) on April 28th – and I hadn’t even planted anything new yet!

As you can see in the photos above, by the end of April a lot is happening even though I did not put much effort into it.  Sure, I pulled some weeds but I’ve been really lazy and at the time of that photo, I hadn’t added compost or planted annuals or started many of the containers that will fill out my urban backyard garden.  I had not even pulled out the dead stuff from last year until the day I took this photo (In the fall I like to leave most of the carcasses intact for birds and insects to feed on through the winter).

But my garden starts without me, ready or not, and what you see in that last photo grouping is the result of six years of work and experimentation – by this point I don’t really have to add more flowers if I don’t feel like it, the plants you see above would be just fine all on their own.  But I like to add splashes of color in the form of annuals, and try new varieties so that each summer my garden has a different look.

Of course you can grow food, but this article is about flowers.  If you want to grow vegetables, you need to do a bit more research to make sure your soil is healthy, your compost is safe for food and any non-food plants near your food are not toxic.

Personally, I’m in it for the flowers.  My goal is to look out my kitchen window and see life, color, green, hopefully some birds, some bees, maybe even butterflies.  Also my goal is not to work too hard at gardening, and with flowers you can be a lot more lax than with vegetables and herbs.

Read on to get some tips on getting started.  I’m not just being modest when I say to you: if I can do it, anyone can.

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3 GREAT HERBS 4 u 2 GRoW

Article and Photo BY ELIZABETH FIEND

SALAD BURNET makes an awesome home-grown herb because it’s practically evergreen. Do you realize the implications of this? Well, the pilgrims did when they brought it to America from its native Europe. It means you can grow something GREEN to eat practically year round, even in cold climates. It tastes yummy, like chicken. Oh, no that’s rattlesnake. Salad burnet is tangy with a hint of cucumber. It makes an attractive edging plant and is easy to grow.

PERENNIAL CHIVES is a must have herb not only for cooking but also for the garden as it’s a great companion plant which repels problem insects. In the Middle Ages chives were used to ward off evil spirits. Today we appreciate their high content of vitamins A, B and C plus the minerals iron, potassium and calcium. Like all alliums, chives reduce blood pressure. The purple flowers are edible and very good tasting. Sprinkle some snipped chive stalks and a crumbled chive flower over rice, or other food, and you’ll have a strikingly beautiful presentation of green and purple confetti.

FLAT-LEAF PARSLEY is a biennial herb that’s easy to start from seed. Parsley contains more vitamin C than an orange! Because if its high chlorophyll content, parsley gently clears toxins from the body thus combating inflammation and high blood pressure. The ancient Romans gave parsley to gladiators to promote their fighting skills.

TO GRoW Salad burnet and parsley are biennials, which means the plant has a two year lifecycle. They’ll grow like gangbusters the first year and you should harvest plenty. The next year they’ll “bolt” or “go-to-seed” producing flowers, than seeds and then they commit suicide. It’s a good idea to “deadhead” or pinch off the flower head and replant the seeds. Plant new seeds every year to ensure a steady supply of these nutritional powerhouses. Chives come in many varieties. I recommend a perennial chive which will live forever, giving you more bang for your buck. There are also flavors of chives like garlic chive (you can recognize it by its flat leaf). Buy plants or seeds. Reseed and make more plants as needed.

TO HARVEST For salad burnet and chives, simply cut off the stems about 1 inch from the ground. Parsley grows in individual stalks. Cut them right above a set of leaves. Always make sure to leave at least 1/3 of each plant intact. Best eaten fresh (not dried).

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The view from our garden dinner table, makes everything taste twice as good!

If you’re looking for me, check the garden ! I’ll be working, lounging or eating there every week from now on. Enjoy some photos from last years efforts.

Garden and photos by: Elizabeth Fiend

I do so enjoy my hammock!

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Sprouting plants from the food in your pantry

Source: The New York Times ~  Written By Michael Tortorello

For an all-purpose garden tool, you can’t beat a full set of molars.

Andrew Montain, a 28-year-old urban farmer, presented this theory the other day in my kitchen as he rolled a nutmeg seed in his hand like a gobstopper.

“I want to crunch into this with my teeth and see what happens,” he said. Maybe it was a shell. Maybe it was a whole seed. He was eager to find out, but first he had a question: “How’s your liability insurance?”

I had invited Andrew to my home in St. Paul not to test his dentition, but to conduct a botanical experiment: If we plopped this nugget in a tray of dirt, would it grow into a nutmeg tree?

What I was imagining was a kitchen garden in the most literal sense: a crop borne of the pantry instead of the usual seed catalog.

For generation after generation of farmers, the staple crops we ate at the table — wheat and barley, maize and beans — were the same seeds we sowed in the fields. They were descendants of the first semi-wild crops that had more or less “‘volunteered’ for domestication,” as Peter Thompson, the British conservationist, wrote in his 2010 book, “Seeds, Sex and Civilization.” These seeds “germinated rapidly, completely, and at low temperatures.”

Today’s farmers, with their pedigree seeds, grow foods that are bigger and more bountiful than the peasant crops of the past. The viability of the seeds these cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetables produce, though, is an afterthought.

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Article and Photos by ELIZABETH FIEND

Although there’s still a chill in the air and a bit of winter to come, if you want to do a garden this year, start now. That’s right. The key to gardening is to be on top of everything. Gardening is based around the weather and the weather waits for no man — or woman.

You probably have a growing mound of garden catalogs by now. A few arrive in my mailbox every day.

Overwhelming! If you don’t have catalogs, try buying a mail-order plant ONE time, and you’ll be flooded with garden catalogs for the rest of your life.

What I do is just thin out from the very beginning. If you try to look through every single catalog, you’ll be paralyzed by too many options. So you must weed out from the start.

Divide the catalogs into categories like flowers, seeds, landscaping, accessories. I grow a lot of soft fruit, so I set aside catalogs that sell fruit as well.

After you’ve divided the catalogs into categories, start with the Buy Local philosophy. Sure, buying local helps dollars grow in your own neighborhood economy, but there’s another overriding reason why this is a good idea. Buying a plant from a nursery located in an area that has the same ecology as where you plan to plant the plant is some extra insurance that it will grow happily in your yard. Yes, that plant from the nursery in New Mexico is gorgeous but face it, it’s just not going to take root around here even if the phrase “hardy enough for colder climates” is tossed about in the catalog’s description.

I live in Philadelphia and there are some big nurseries right here in my state of Pennsylvania: Burpee’s, The Cook’s Garden among them. You can’t get much more local than that. Plus by buying local, you’ll be kinder to the environment by saving fossil fuel with a shorter transport to your garden. There is one major downside to the buy local thing when it comes to mail order. The Feds. When you make a snail mail or Internet purchase from a company located in your home state, yikes, you’re going to be charged sales tax. Still, I do it.

Of course, not all the plants I desire can be obtained from Pennsylvania nurseries. So I move out geographically, just not too far. Ohio is looking pretty good to me this year and I’ve ordered my plants from Bluestone Perennials out of Madison; my seeds from Cook’s Garden, Warminster, PA.

You know about the hardiness zones right?

The hardiness zone, or just zone, was developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. Zones are based on the average annual minimum temperature over a five-year span. Numbers are assigned and graphed, they make undulating bands across the map, much like you see on a weather forecast map. Zone 1 is the coldest, here in Pennsylvania, we’re Zone 6. (Yeah, the zone thing is starting to get a little thorny right now due to global warming, but we won’t get into that today.)

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GARDEN WREATHS written by Elizabeth Fiend

I recently created two wreaths out of vines from my garden. One wreath is ‘living’ so I guess I could call it topiary. It’s like a magical window I look through to the rest of the yard.

I started it with a hula-hoop, if you look closely you can see the green and white stripe of the hoop. With a piece of string I suspended the hula-hoop above the grape vine, hanging it from the cross-beam of a seating area Mr. Fiend built in the way-back of our yard. At first I tacked another piece of string from the bottom of the hula-hoop to the ground so the wreath wouldn’t swing around in the wind.

Every couple of weeks during the growing season I would wrap and tie down the vines around the hoop, at the same time cutting back vines that were growing in the wrong place. It was slow going at first and tricky to keep the vines growing in the proper direction and I almost bailed on the project. But I kept at it. Three years later it looks smashing. Don’t you agree?

I came up with the idea of using a hula-hoop as a base for the grape-wood circle because when the wreath was sturdy enough I could easily cut open the hoop and twist it out leaving a truly amazing circle of live wood suspended in the air. I think I’m ready to cut the hoop, but I’ll wait until the winter when there are no leaves.

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Chuck the Caterpillar. Part of the series “Fiend Garden Notes”

Photos and Story by Elizabeth Fiend

This is Chuck. He lives out back.
Chuck’s interests are eating bronze fennel and hiding from birds.
Chuck hopes to grow up and be just like his mother a beautiful Black Swallowtail butterfly.

I touched Chuck once. He was eating the fennel I was going to use for Mr. Fiends lunch. I moved Chuck over to a different fennel plant, one I could share. Touching Chuck was really super cool. He felt like no other thing I had ever touched. He was sort of marshmallow like. But he was alive! The way he felt stayed with me for several days. I wanted to touch him again. But I haven’t. I don’t want to stress him out. He already was going super still every time I took his picture.

Chuck will have a pretty interesting life. Having started out as an egg, he’s now a caterpillar. Soon he’ll be a pupa and then a butterfly!  WOWZER. Love, Elizabeth Fiend

Click to learn about a Swallowtail butterfly’s life cycle.

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