Just a few photos from the garden this week…..

It seems the garden grows on– with or without my TLC!

The Comfrey is now in full bloom. I never get tired of those sweet little pink flowers.

The Lemon Balm is just beautiful right now! I have been enjoying fresh Lemon Balm tea for the past couple weeks.

The Dandelions I only just recently blogged about are already going to seed.

Orange Mint looks so pretty coming up here and there at the back end of the garden.

I have strawberry plants scattered here and there throughout the herb garden and here are a few in bloom next to some more Lemon Balm.

These cute little flowers are from a potted thrift plant that I thought did not survive winter and was tossed next to the compost. I guess I was wrong because here it blooms while growing upside down! It’s root ball can be seen in the bottom right hand corner of the photo.

Hard to believe we are almost through Spring. How is your garden growing as we begin to approach early Summer?

I woke up this morning to patches of blue sky above the garden. It seems the whole month of March the garden was cloaked by a gray, wet, and cold blanket. I cannot begin to describe how nice it was to see the sun today! I took advantage of the beautiful morning and went for a stroll through the garden with baby in tow. We observed several signs of spring that I had not noticed due to the rainy weather keeping me mostly away from the garden the past few weeks.

We noted several ladybugs groggily clinging to the violas that have popped awake overnight.

{note the pesky signs of slugs- how they have been loving the wet March weather!}

We also took note of the comfrey that just a few weeks ago was only beginning to peek out from the soil.

After lunch, while the baby took his nap, my daughter and I went out to get some weeding done. I see I am going to have fun keeping her from my flowers this year! She wanted to pick every Johnny jump-up she could find. The garden is in shambles I am afraid. There is so much work to be done. I did not put it to sleep properly last autumn (weeding, removing spent plants, mulching like crazy, etc.) and it shows so badly. It appears I currently have a garden of weeds not herbs and flowers.

We are indecisive on moving at the moment. (We know we should but oh, so do not really want to. The headache, expensive, and we are TIRED already.) While we sit on the fence I am going to go forward with at least a small-ish garden. (Yeah right- once I get going I can’t stop planting till I run out of room!) I love it too much to avoid it while we decide where and when to move.

Until my next garden check in, Happy Gardening!

The comfrey plant I placed in the herb garden three years ago has been just amazing this year. I have already harvested it twice this year and it is once again huge and ready for one last harvest before fall settles in around us.

Notice the gigantic leaves it has!

Some of the first harvest of comfrey leaves this year went towards making a liquid fertilizer. While this stuff did seem to be awesome in regards to how the plants responded to it I do not know if I will be making it again for the stench was simply awful! Enough to turn my stomach and keep everyone away for several feet! I think when it comes to homemade liquid fertilizers I will stick to my favorite alfalfa pellets and molasses brew.

The second harvest of comfrey leaves was chopped up and spread about the garden as mulch. I really liked it for this. The leaves have all since been worked into the soil and there was nothing like growing my own mulch.

For this third and final harvest (and what appears to be the biggest) I am going to use most of the leaves and stems as mulch. A few leaves and stems I will use fresh to make a comfrey salve. Some of the leaves I am going to dry for multiple uses. I want to have some dried leaves on hand for making homemade cosmetics as well as my well-loved multi herb salve. The second reason for drying the leaves will be for use in dyeing my yarns. I have used fresh comfrey leaves as a dye over the years but have yet to try them fresh. It will be nice to have the dried leaves on hand for use during the winter.

Finally, I am going to experiment a bit with the dried leaves brew a tea from them for feeding all my potted plants. I plan on just placing a handful of leaves in some boiling water and allowing it to steep overnight before I strain and use it on my too large container garden.

This really is one useful herb that I just love having on hand. Being so productive is making it all the better too!