The Everlasting Herb Garden
The Willy Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper is a fictional, eternal candy invented for “children with very little pocket money.” It changed color and flavor when you sucked on it and never ever got any smaller. Wonderful! It fits my everlasting description perfectly.
In a time when even the simplest cooking herbs often cost five dollars or more in grocery stores, I am beginning to feel like one of those “children with very little pocket money.” Here in the Sierra foothills, a little gardening, while not quite at Everlasting Gobstopper level, will supply lots of fresh herbs for your kitchen.
Start with Mediterranean herbs like oregano, sage, rosemary, thyme, tarragon and lavender. Drought tolerant, they require some water to survive our hot summers. These are all perennial in our climate, which makes them “everlasting.” Plant them once in full sun and harvest herbs for years. These plants need well drained, not too rich, soil. Once established, they can be left pretty well alone.
Use these herbs fresh or dried. Drying is simple. While you can use a dehydrator, we just cut a bunch and hang them upside down from one of our kitchen cabinets where they are out of the way. We strip off the usable parts and bottle them in one of those expensive herb bottles that now never seems to run out.
Chives will just keep on giving. Before the first frost, start them from seed indoors and then set them out where they will get watered. Once started, they are pretty cold tolerant and will overwinter if you trim them heavily before winter. They’ll come back in the spring with more savory goodness.
Another common everlasting herb is California Bay Laurel. Growing wild in our foothills, there are a couple of trees we can harvest and dry some leaves when we are running low. One caution though; California Bay Laurel is much more potent than bay leaves from the store, so be careful how much you use.
Basil is a simple-to-grow herb that needs to be planted every year. It requires water and better soil and dies with the first frost. Used fresh or dry, it is an absolute must for Italian cooking. The pesto we make (using almonds instead of pine nuts, to save a few cents), freezes wonderfully and provides year-around flavor in our household. Basil is so easy to grow that you can find it in pots in the grocery store.
Many of these herbs can be grown in pots and can be quite decorative. Rosemary, for example, has wonderful green foliage and baby blue flowers. If you don’t grow it yourself, check for a source on a neighborhood walk.
Herbs are the closest thing to Everlasting Gobstoppers a gardener can grow. One caution – as much as we all like mint, always plant it in pots as it spreads everywhere. It truly is unstoppable and there are not enough mint juleps in the world to contain it!
Jim Bliss is a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener of Tuolumne County.
