the wildcrafted garden

Backyard, late winter

I originally planned to spend last spring and summer growing vegetables and flowers.  Started preparing the plots nice and early, then we were hit with more snow than I've ever seen in my life. I spent the next month making ambitious, drawn-to-scale maps and plans for the different plots I would put in when the snow thawed...

yeah, right...

coldframe

...and building a coldframe, thinking it might be good to start some cold-weather plants while we waited for spring.  I didn't start them. We still haven't used it much.

So the snow thawed, and life happened.  My seed money went to textbooks, and the  idea of planting an über-special, organic specialty garden (in sodden, clay-heavy soil on a shady northeast-facing lot) went out the window.

Backyard, late spring

I had made elaborate and, in hindsight, thoroughly embarrassing plans that I think now could never have happened without a greenhouse and an assistant.  I was off-track.  Fortunately, the blizzard made me pump the breaks and stop to reflect. I re-read some of what I'd journaled at the start of the year:

"I would like to become proficient enough to teach workshops on cultivation, harvesting, and simple wildcrafting for home use.  This yearlong project will support my work toward this goal... I do not know yet what and how much I will plant or what will be yielded.  I plan to wildcraft tinctures, ointments, oils and creams for experimentation purposes (and home use) as my harvest permits."

Enter our wonderful, native wild species.

Once the soil warmed and tiny seedlings started emerging, I saw that there were already many medicinal plants literally right in my backyard.  First came the honeysuckle, ground ivy, dandelion, mint (cultivated years ago, and still rambling through the yard), mugwort, red clover...

Paul teaching the herbies.
(c) urbnvision photography

Then came "The Ohio Trip"--an amazing experience of botanical discovery and wildcrafting on the land herbalist Paul Strauss (of Equinox Botanicals) stewards and speaks for in Rutland, OH. (Shannon has blogged it better than I ever could.)  While we were there I harvested and made preparations of at least a dozen herbs...

Ohio medicine

Back at home, I found myself newly inspired and more proficient at recognizing what was growing not just in my yard, but around the neighborhood.  Which was a lot.  In June, on a 15-minute walk from the Metro station home, herbs abounded: chicory, mugwort, dandelion, yellow dock, cleavers, jewelweed, mullein, goldenrod, yarrow...    

poke!

By mid-summer, there was a ton of plantain (P. medicago and P. lanceolata), purslane, wild strawberry, poke, red clover, wild lettuce and chickweed growing in the yard.  I'd also brought back some comfrey, stoneroot, and valerian from Ohio, but only the comfrey was really thriving.  

Once the exuberant energy of summer arrived, I couldn't help but splurge on seedlings, which I cultivated in a few small beds around the house and in many, many containers.  We planted nettles, lemon balm, chamomile, catnip, garden sage, rosemary, a few types of basil, and some beautiful Cuban oregano.

Cuban oregano feels 

like lambs' ear

This was my first time doing any serious container gardening. We drilled holes in 5-gallon buckets for the larger plants, and used smaller pots for the miniature peppers and okra.  Now that it's cooler at night, I've moved them all indoors.  I'm wondering whether the eggplant and pepper blossoms are going to make it long enough to fruit.

This year I focused on growing medicine, but couldn't help planting tomatoes (zebra-striped greens, romas, cherries, and a big one whose name I don't recall), peppers, eggplant, and okra.  My cukes and squash were total failures (was it me with not enough rainwater to get them through the "watering moratorium" we had during the hottest weeks of the year?).  But one lovely little cantaloupe managed to make it for a while... until the critters got to it.  A benefit to growing medicinal herbs: they seem to be pretty bug- and animal-resistant.

herbs and veggies make
great houseplants

I harvested a little of everything growing around the yard this summer--leaves, seeds, and flowers.  So we have a nice store of dried herbs, culinary spices, and tea blends for the winter, plus some seeds to plant next year and to share with others.  Now, as we are moving into colder weather and the leaves are changing color, I'm beginning to harvest roots--dandelion, comfrey, burdock, chicory, poke.

I've also been making remedies and kitchen medicine from this season's harvest.  So far, our little yard (and surrounding blocks) has provided herbs to make:

• poke berry tincture
• mint glycerite
• catnip/lemon balm glycerite
• horsetail tincture
• sage- and white truffle-infused olive oil (no, i didn't gather the truffles)
• rosemary/nettles/sage hair oil
• fire cider (peppers, green tomatoes, onion and garlic pickled in apple cider vinegar)
• nettles tincture
• burdock root in mesquite honey
• kofi's "kid tea" (red clover, lemon balm, mint, nettles and chamomile)



the medicine harvest

• and lots of dried herbs for tea or tincturing...

I'm glad I didn't force the cultivated garden this year, and chose instead to notice the humble and beautiful local plants that are already here.