Snapshots from a Spring day in a Florida Herb Garden

Spring is a great time of year for herbs in Central Florida. There is so much going on in the gardens. Here is just a glimpse of the activity from my time at the Fair Share Garden yesterday.

The herb spiral at the Fair share garden pictured here was weeded and thinned over the last week and replanted with Holy Basil in the bare patches. Last week we had a little incident with a volunteer being bitten by wolf spider in while weeding the herb spiral. This was a more painful than poisonous bite. Fire ants can also be painful problem here for Spring gardeners. Keep an eye out for Plantago species(plantain) when you are out in the garden. You can make a spit poultice with the leaves to take the sting out of the bites; just chew up the leaves to a pulp and apply to insect bites or stings. We used Virginia plantain on the Wolf Spider bite:



Lance leafed plantain also will work. Don't let the blanket flower in the background fool you, it is not a part of the plantain pictured below.


The variegated mugwort (Artemesia speicies from the Bastyr University herb garden) is lush and intermixed with delicate fern-like yarrow leaves in the herb spiral. I like to make infused oils for pain salve with mugwort and decoct it for sprained or strained ankles. My front yard yard is covered with it where it has self-seeded. In about two weeks I will harvest the mugwort and dry it to make moxa and to save whole and dried for use with sprains strains. To use it this way you can simply boil up a pot of water with handfuls of dried mugwort. When the water cools a bit you can soak a towel in the hot water and use it as a wrap around the ankle or bruised and strained area.


I'm still waiting to see if the Neem trees in the spiral will send up new growth after having died back from the winter freezes. However, I am overjoyed to see a hint of new growth in my precious Moringa trees. Look closely to see it! I just found out that 1 million Moringa seeds are on their way to Haiti via a European organization. These trees make a very nutritious leaf, especially beneficial for nursing mothers and babys. They in face have the highest concentration of protein for any known plant and have no known contraindications for use. Last season I didn't harvest leaves from the fair share trees we planted in hopes of collecting seeds. There were plenty of flowers and insects enjoying the blossoms, but no seeds were made. From now on I will stick to woody branches for propagation and enjoy harvesting leaves for nutritional use.


Many herbs like thyme, comfrey, lemon verbena and catnip have survived the winter and are putting out new lush leaves in full force. We will keep an eye on these cool loving herbs and harvest them before the intense summer heat starts in. Yesterday I harvested three baskets full of catnip to dry, and sent thyme home with a Fair Share volunteer with a cough and sore throat. Comfrey doesn't get terribly huge in Florida, though there is plenty for salve and balm making when the need arises.



We started two new herbal projects at the garden yesterday also. The first was to put in a new trellis for a fresh planting of loofa gourds. Here are Joel, Moira, and Giovanni preparing the holes for the new posts. I can't wait for more loofa gourds to use in soaps.

Next we have the grand and ambitious new US mint herbal project. When Joel said he wanted the USA bed the Embry Riddle students built in back in October to be filled with plants that could be left alone and not replanted,

I had to suggest it be filled with mints. The large tires and tree-sized pot at fair share were getting root bound with spearmint and chocolate mint. We broke up the root bound mints and filled this bed with mint sprigs yesterday. It's going to make a great source of mixed mints for herbal tea. I'm going to be on the look out for other nice mints like peppermint and apple mint to add to the bed.

This blog post is part of a spring herbs blog party that I'm hosting. Please check out all the Spring herbal blog posts here.

Path of Peace: New Garden Bed and Garden Greens

We finally started planting and cutting back dead growth at Fair Share yesterday. Here is the new peace sign lettuce bed that was planted. This bed was started months and months ago with a truck load of Sargassum seaweed collected from the beach. It rotted down nicely and the soil is very dark and rich here.



The lovely winter hardy fennel is looking lush and undisturbed by January freezes.


We had a huge crowd of people at the garden. I guess people are happy to be out and about now that it has warmed up here. Luckily there was a lot of work to do. I may have to start thinking ahead though. A lot of people were asking me what to do next. Besides cutting back the dead plant material I started a lot of seeds in pots or direct sown into the raised beds. Some of the seeds that I started yesterday included Red clover, Rama Tulsi, Krishna Tulsi, Parsley, Lemon Eucalyptus, Tropical Tomato from Echo, watermelon, Agrimony. The kids also planted one of the raised beds with butter nut squash seeds that I had saved.


Arugala or Salad? Salad or Arugala? Or is it both? This was the big question about this flowering plant in the herb spiral. Well I think the answer is both. It grew up in the spiral underneath where the planted Arugala had gone to seed last year. And yes, this was quite near the 'Mesclun salad mix' bed that one of our volunteers planted, but Arugala is also a part of Mesclun salad, so I think the answer is both. I still think the Arugala is from volunteer seedlings from the mother Arugala plant, not just misplaced seeds from the salad bed.

Pictures from the Mural in Progress at the Fair Share Garden

It is going to be worse than the end of okra season when we are done painting this mural. It has been such a fun process. Moira and I were out again painting with other volunteers the morning after Christmas. Way more fun than looking for post-holiday sales. Yesterday for the most part I spent some time filling in a baby blue sky back ground, and working on the tricolor rainbow, which you can see in the first photo above the vegetables.



Here is a close up of the sunflowers.



I think Michelle spent more time that she would care to remember touching up the blue water way. There was a comedy of errors with mix ups with the different blue shades of paint. Luckily we were pacified by peanut butter fudge shared by another volunteer.



It's a beautiful site. You can click on the picture below to see it enlarged. I'll be sure to update with more pictures of the finished project. We will be painting again at the garden Wednesday at 4 if anyone would like to join us.

Mural Creation at the Fair Share Garden

We had fun day at Fair Share yesterday with the new mural in progress. It was quite cold out. Luckily we had access to the Lions club building where we also set up together with the Art Consortium and some warming beverages. Moira was so disappointed when it was finally time for her to go home with daddy, but she was truly tired. I came home to find that she had taken her tempera paint out and was mixing up a storm while I was away.

Here is Joel's daughter Hannah at the North East end of the building.


Fair share volunteer Lucy was a sunflower star!


Here is Jason who was painting from about 9 am to 6 pm. I don't think I saw him take a break. Jason also took some some great photos of the day which can be found on our meet up page.


We were not able to finish the mural yesterday. I'm looking forward to helping finish it up the next time we work on it. Join our meetup group if you would like to know when we will be working on the mural again.

Mural Painting & Fair Trade Gift & Artisan Market this Saturday in Daytona

This is a rain or shine event! We now have access to the Lions club for the Arts & Crafts market....

How Was Your Halloween? Sharing my Day at the Hallowgreen Festival

I spent the morning at the Hallowgreen event in Daytona Beach, which was a fundraiser for the Fair Share Garden. There were a number of workshops, trick or treaters and vendors at the event. It was an early morning as we were setting up in conjunction with the regular City Island Saturday farmer's market. My intention was to be awake at 5:45 a.m. and set up by 7 a.m. When I woke up and sat down at the computer the clock read 7:04 a.m. OOPS!! Scott accidentally turned off the alarm that he set for me. Half awake, I headed out for the market with out my bag of items for my workshop on home remedies for cold and flu. Luckily I chose a recipe to demonstrate which consisted of simple ingredients available at the farmer's market: garlic and honey. I picked up the garlic from one of the produce vendors and wild flower honey and a small jar of gourmet pickled okra from Ms. Ocie and I was all set. I knew I could count on the dedicated fair share volunteers to help me finish off the jar of pickles so I would have an empty pint jar for my demo.



Filling up the jar with honey: garlic is helpful for resolving colds, coughs, sore throats, and sinus infections. If you would like to make some garlic honey for cold and flu season you can find the full method in a former blog post.



Dana Venrick of the Volusia Flagler Cooperative Extension Service and Joel Tippens of the Fair Share Urban Garden Project gave an introduction to organic gardening at Hallowgreen.



Dana introduced everyone to the various organic supplements for the garden. One of which was Azomite. This is a mineral rich volcanic ash which we use at the garden. It is pictured below among the other items.


Rich organic soil hand mixed by Joel Tippes of Fair Share.


Chicken mother got my vote for best costume.


Here we are: chicken child, chicken mom, pouty ballerina, and I enjoying our pretzel cigarettes. Like my pumpkin arm paint? That has lingered in the form of pumpkin tan lines.


Meet two of the hand crafting vendors:

Michelle Davidson of Daytona Beach with her son Isaac. Michelle is a talented artist who makes fused glass jewelry and a wide range of fine art. Check out her fine art America website. I'm the proud owner of some of Michelle's fused pendants.


Crystal Calhoun is the owner at Stars and Crossbones and a member of the Florida Etsy Street Team. Crystal spins yarn and makes beautiful scarves and her partner Brian makes chainmaille jewelry. See the pretty green linen scarf being fingered in the picture below? It didn't stay on the table long before it was snapped up by a happy customer.

Delicate Little Beauties: My First Moringa Flowers

This is my second year growing Moringa oleifera trees, but the first year they have bloomed. If you are not familiar with Moringa, it is a highly nutritive tree, which has the highest protein concentration of any known plant. It is also very easy to digest. Since they did not bloom last year and I was harvesting a good amount of leaves I decided to just let them go over the summer and see if we got any flowers. So here are the first blooms from one of the trees at the Fair Share Garden. I am hoping that we will end up with many seeds to share. All parts of the plant have a variety of culinary and medicinal uses. The most interesting use I have found though is water purification using the seeds. In Natural Medicine in the Tropics Treatments Dr. Hans Martin Hirt gives a complete method for river water purification. About 10 crushed seeds (2 grams of seed) is needed to purify 20 litres of water. The Moringa seed binds the fine particles and bacteria and removes 90- 99.9% of bacteria. The purification can actually be done also with seed that has already been pressed for its oil. Moringa oil has a long shelf life and can be used in cooking, soap making, and as a base for cosmetics.

Plant Moringa Trees for Hunger and Hope

Moringa oleifera is a nutritive fast-growing tree, which is native to India. I learned about this tree a couple of years ago from my friend Aminu Ibrahim from our SolarNetOne project at Katsina State University in Nigera. and I just had to try growing it. This tree has been shown to be capable of reducing malnutrition in areas of West Africa where 25% of children die of malnutrition or related diseases. This plant grows well in areas such as these with drought and poor soil, and it grows wild in many areas where hunger is a severe problem. Locally grown Moringa was used in Senegal to significantly reduce malnutrition in infants, nursing mothers and pregnant women in Senegal by adding a small amount of leaf powder to the diet. Moringa is exceptionally nutrient dense. It has the highest protein ratio of any known plant, and contains all essential amino acids (those that the body cannot synthesize). There are no known side effects to taking Moringa, and it is very easy to digest. 25 grams (0.88 oz) of dried Moringa provides the suggested daily requirements for children: 42% protein, 125% calcium, 60% magnesium, 41% potassium, 71% iron, 272% vitamin A, and 22% vitamin C.

Here is a video that I found about Moringa's use in Senegal.


I have been growing Moringa in Central Florida (USDA zone 9a) for the last two years. I purchased my seed from Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization (ECHO) in Fort Myers Florida. ECHO is a non profit whose mission is to network with community leaders in developing countries to seek hunger solutions for families growing food under difficult conditions. I was very happy that my Moringa trees survived the freeze we had over the winter. The Moringa tree pictured in this blog post is of my largest tree a couple of months after the freeze. New branches grew up from the base after the freeze killed the above-ground portion. I am told that this tree will grow very well from woody cuttings. I have also learned that this plant can be grown indoors if UV light is available. My brother has started a facebook group to promote growing and sharing about this plant. My next step with this plant will be to get trees started from seed or cutting at the Fair Share Garden in Daytona Beach. "Fair Share" is an Urban Garden Project of Salt of the Earth, Inc. a 501(c)-3 nonprofit organization. The purpose of the garden is to grow food for local low income families in need.

Culinary & Medicinal Uses for Lemon Grass

I gave a workshop over the weekend at the Fair Share Garden's Tree Sale on the medicinal and culinary uses for lemon grass. Lemon grass is a great herb to add to the diet to benefit the immune and digestive systems. In case you missed it, here is the majority of the information that I provided to those in attendance. I really appreciate everyone who came out. Our next garden event will be the Spring Celebration starting at 9 am on March 21st at 405 White Street in Daytona Beach. I will be vending with a few of my friends and there will be an African Dance performance.

Medicinal uses:
Immune & Digestive System Booster: Workers at the Moretele Sunrise Hospice in South Africa have found that AIDS patients who drank lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus) tea developed an appetite, put on weight, and become stronger. Lemon grass is high in citral and myrcene, which help it relieve cramps, relieve nausea and stimulate the digestive system especially with the digestion of fats. Lemon grass is also a great choice for moderate immune depletion. Modern life is full of stress and hidden sugars which deplete the immune system and lead to digestive distress. Alcohol is another factor which can deplete the immune and digestive systems. Adding lemon grass tea to you diet is one easy way to help keep your body strong. Lemon grass is also helpful for acute stress on the immune system. It is antibacterial, increases urination and promotes sweating to help reduce mild fevers. This herb is considered a cooling herb by Chinese and Ayurvedic herbalists. Therefore it is a good choice for colds characterized by fever, sore throat, thin yellow tongue coat. To make such a tea, boil one handful of fresh leaves for 2 minutes in one liter of water, let stand 15 minutes, and strain. Drink throughout the day. Refrigerate as needed and use within 24 hours.

Steam Inhalation: For sinusitis, colds, and bronchitis a steam inhalation can be helpful for clearing phlegm. Boil a handful of leaves in a liter of water & inhale. As a beauty treatment for normal skin this method can also be applied. Place a towel over the head to make a loose tent to keep more of the steam in while taking care to avoid steam burns. As a beauty treatment for normal skin this method can also be applied.

Cancer prevention: Researchers at the University of Negev discovered that citral was able to kill lab cultured cancer cells at a concentration equivalent that found in lemon grass tea. The researchers concluded that lemon grass would be helpful for preventing cancers.

Culinary Use:
Teas: Monica Brandies, author of Herbs and Spices for Florida Gardens suggests lemon grass and rose geranium leaves for a pleasant herbal blend. Lemon grass is a 'top note,' which means that the essential oils, which give it much of it's flavor, will evaporate quickly if over heated. For this reason lemon grass is also good candidate for making sun tea.

Lemon Grass Herbal Vinegar: Apple Cider Vinegar is great for making salad dressing, adding to soups, or stir fry. Why use plain cider vinegar when you can use herb infused vinegars? Herbal vinegars not only add flavor to your vinegar, but minerals as well. Vinegar is an exceptionally good solvent for extracting minerals, vitamins, and flavors from plants. Lemon grass is high in Calcium 3.7%, Iron, Magnesium, Manganese, Selenium, and Vitamin A. Add herbal vinegar instead of regular vinegar to any recipe calling for vinegar. Cooking vegetables with a small amount of vinegar has the added benefit of making minerals from the vegetables more accessible for digestion and absorption.

How to make lemon grass herbal apple cider vinegar: Make sure you purchase vinegar from a reputable brand. You should not be using white vinegar that is 'flavored' with apple. Chop clean dry lemon grass leaves & stalk coarsely. Fill a glass jar to the top with the fresh lemon grass, pack down slightly leaving enough room for the vinegar to completely cover the herbs. Fill the jar to the top with your Apple Cider Vinegar and cover with a non-metallic lid.

Gelatin Recipes: Substitute 1 T of water for mineral rich herbal vinegar in gelatin recipes to add minerals & flavor.

Lemon grass soups: Lemon grass is very popular in Thai soups. When making soups with lemon grass use the stalk and cut it the stalks at an angle to maximize the surface area. Add the lemon grass at the end of cooking the soup so that it does not boil for more than 10 minutes. Remember that lemon grass is a top note and the flavorful essential oils will dissipate quickly if heated for too long.

Simple Lemon Grass Ginger Soup
2-3 stalks lemon grass sliced diagonally
1 medium onion sliced
2-3 slices fresh ginger
1 chicken breast cubed
sesame oil for frying
chili paste
salt to taste
additional vegetables as available
1 quart chicken or vegetable stock

Directions: Heat soup stock with salt and ginger. Sautee onions & small chicken pieces in sesame or olive oil until chicken is cooked and onions are lightly browned. Add chicken, onions, and lemon grass and simmer for 5 minutes. Add chili paste to taste.

Coconut Lemon Grass Soup recipe from Dawn Cook:
1/4 cup of Mae Ploy red curry paste (Find at Asian markets)
2 onions cut into 1/2 in. strips
4 cans coconut milk
2 cans straw mushrooms
1/4 cup sugar (or to taste)
1/4 cup lime juice
1 LB. peeled and cut shrimp or cooked chicken chunks Cooking wine or sherry (optional)
Lemon grass stalks 2-4
1/4 cup chili garlic

Directions: Heat high sided sautee skillet or stock pot to medium high heat. Add curry paste and onion. Stir together till mixture heats through. Pour in two cans coconut milk and stir till combined. Once mixture is creamy add the rest of ingredients except meat and season to taste. Bring to a low boil and turn down heat. Let simmer until desired consistency. Add meat and leave on heat till meat is cooked through, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and serve with rice. Garnish with chopped green onions.

Mixed Use:
Lemon Grass Infused Oil: Lemon grass can be used to make a herb infused oil in a base oil such as Extra Virgin Olive oil steeped with wilted, freshly harvested or dried herbs. Lemon grass is high in antioxidants which helps infused oils resist rancidity. Use the infused oil for cooking, massage or lotion making. I often use lemon grass infused and essential oil in my Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon Balm for aches and pains.

Lemon Grass Extract: An extract or tincture of lemon grass can be made with 80-150 proof vodka or Everclear. Chop herbs coarsely, fill jar with herbs, then cover with alcohol and cap for 6 weeks in the dark. Strain through a coffee filter after 6 weeks and use for cooking or medicinally for colds. If you are out of fresh lemon grass stalks you can use lemon grass extract in soups. Add near the end of cooking. When fresh plants are not available for tea one can use up to a teaspoon of extract diluted in water medicinally for chest colds and sinus congestion for adults.