Herb Spotlight: Basil, Ocimum basilicum

Anyone who's been to my garden know that one of my favorite, favorite herbs is basil. I grow it everywhere. I love the smell, the taste, the color...every thing. It's a pretty useful plant too. Who doesn't have a bottle of dried basil in their spice rack? I've been known to eat it right out of the garden just as readily as I'll throw copious amounts in a a pasta sauce or pesto.

It's used in all kinds of cooking; Italian, Thai and a handful of other Asian cuisines. Everyone is probably pretty familiar with this mint. Did you know it's a mint? It is! It's also known as St. Joseph's Wort too. And there are tons of cultivers of basil as well--sweet basil, Genovese basil , spicy globe basil, boxwood basil, magical Michael , dark opal basil , Cuban basil, Thai basil, cinnamon basil, Mrs. Burns lemon basil, just to name a few. I'm fond of lemon and lime basil because it adds such a wonderfully citrus scent to my garden when I brush by it.

Basil in amongst the veggies

I like to plant it in with my tomatoes and peppers. It's said to improve the flavor of tomatoes and I've found it is pretty effective in keeping some bugs away too. (Other bugs will flock to it and it seems to do nothing for grasshoppers which are usually the biggest problem where I live.) Just as a side note, basil shouldn't be grown next to rue, it will inhibit its grown. As an additional aside, Basil and Rue Don't Get Along sound like the title of a fascinating BBC program.

Sweet basil just starting out in my herb garden

So basil is a pretty handy friend in the garden and quintessential spice to have on hand but did you know that it has medicinal properties as well?

It does indeed!  Here are just a few of the uses for basil outside the kitchen.

• Basil is rich in antioxidants so it can be a boost for your immune system
• A tea made from basil, particularly tulsi (holy basil) can be used to make a sore throat feel better, help bring a fever down faster, and even help reduce cholesterol
• Dried basil leaves can be used to make a tooth paste which can help freshen breath
• Basil oil or a tea made from the leaves can also help reduce stress and are reputed to help sharpen memory.

Tulsi basil just starting out in my garden. It got about a foot and a half tall.

So next time you're in the supermarket, buying plants or seed for your garden, consider how useful basil could be to you!

Disclaimer: Now I'll say you shouldn't run out to your garden instead of going to the doctor and I'm not a doctor, I don't even play one on TV so this isn't a substitution for medical care. Herbs can also cause adverse reactions or reactions just like prescription medication so make sure you do your research and that you use herbal remedies safely.

Plant of the day: Succulents

In my 2012 garden, I fell in love with succulents and I'm really not sure why I hadn't just been putting them absolutely everywhere prior to that point. Succulents are awesome because they play up to some of my best strengths, namely abandonment and forgetting to water things.

From July, you can see some of the plants are getting big!

Now, I know that these two skills might make me a terrible gardener but somehow my garden always makes it. In fact this year, it got so large I started calling it Jurassic Park. I had tomatoes that would have been taller than me if they hadn't been weighed down by their fruit and 12 ft tall sunflowers (they drove the squirrels crazy!). Once the plants started producing--and you'd be surprised how many tomatoes 23 plants produce...or not--I was a lax photographer so unfortunately, I don't have the pictures where there was plants everywhere!

But back to my succulents. They're great because they're very low maintenance. They like the hot and they like the dry. Plus (and this may not be a plus for everyone) they don't get out of control big. I like to use them in containers because I can then move them around the yard.

Succulents fall into a fairly broad category of plants and even definitions. If you're a botany nerd, such as I am, you'll know that there are a lot of different orders and families that fall into the common term of succulents. Now, I'm not wild about cacti so the succulents I usually plant fall into the family Crassulaceae.  That's mostly because I have a habit of groping plants. Yes, I commit plant frottage.

What this means (the plant family, not my need to touch them) is that I like to plant succulents like Hen and Chicks or Jade. So those are some succulents that are easy to come by and if you plant them in containers, you can bring them inside during the summer so you can enjoy them year round!

Plant of the day-Cosmos bipinnatus

One of my favorite flowers for my garden would be Cosmos. What you most commonly find in gardens is dubbed garden cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) but there are many different species out there. In some areas, it can become an invasive species however, here in Colorado they don't seem to be a problem. The best part about our climate here is that you can usually get an spring and fall bloom (due to hotter summer temps around here) These flowers love the sun and will tollerate the heat as long as they get enough water.

One plant from last year's garden which decided to pop up in this space despite not having been planted here! 

 They're annuals but they'll self seed fairly easily, as evident by my little volunteer above. I usually have a rule in my garden to plant annuals in containers and perennials in the ground but cosmos are so happy and colorful, I don't mind the extra work.

Some cosmos in the brown pot on the left hand side

Back in the sadle: How I spent my summer

I meant to document this through out the summer last year. Of course when you're doing demo work and putting in 320 sq ft of garden beds, time can get away from you. However, it's the winter now and while I'm waiting for the seeds to sprout and the ground to thaw, I can start updating my blog again. So here's how my amazing garden came to be!

Part of the backyard makeover involved taking out a deck and a sidewalk. The old deck was a bi-level deck that was composed of two 18X18 sections. It was fairly unsafe because (as we found out when we were taking it apart) the beams were a little too far apart and the top section lacked hand-railing. I'm sure back in the day, the deck was a big selling point... like if you're a big bbq-er or I don't know, whatever else people do on decks. The deck and the backyard were not the reason we were drawn to the house. Under our care, the deck mostly became a halfway house for foxes and raccoons. Which is clearly what the suburbs needed.

Well we ended up taking out the whole deck (which is where I found out I really like tearing things apart) and I smashed out the side walk. That looked like this.

Seriously, I love smashing concrete

This is what the new deck looks like. We played with some of the porportions and unfortunately this picture is not an in progress one and you can see that we started paving already.

The deck still isn't stained and it's sort of a work surface but it's still a neat deck

We used two different patterns to give ourselves some additional options for parties. The pavers that were put down in a traditional grid form the garden path and the diagonal pavers form a little patio where we have a chimina

As for the pavers, well we took out all of the grass on one side of the backyard and reclaimed the area from the old deck. This is 500 of the 1000 pavers that we purchase to put down between the raised garden beds. We put the beds in first so that we could lay out the pavers correctly. Those boxes by the way are made out of the old deck! It wasn't treated lumber so all we did was sand off any remaining stain and built these amazing raised beds.