SPRING
Like fair-weather gardeners, many perennial herbs hibernate in the cold winter months. But now they are both bravely pushing through the soil and there are new signs of fresh, lively herbs appearing every day. Chives and sweet cicely often make their debut in late winter, but they are soon joined by fennel, lovage and wild rocket/arugula and then mint, bergamot, angelica, lemon balm, buckler-leaf sorrel, garlic chives and savory. The salad herbs sown in late summer are still going strong, but I sow new seeds outside in mid-spring to guarantee a year-round supply. I find spring the most inspiring season in the herb garden.
Fresh, young chives encourage me to make Borscht (see page 30) and I serve this beetroot/beet soup with a blob of sour cream and snipped chives scattered on top. I also make vichyssoise at this time of the year and serve it cold with snipped young chives to give it even more flavour. I make wine vinegar with fresh leaves of salad burnet (see page 147). The Victorians loved the cucumber taste of this vinegar and I make a burnet salad, using the salad burnet vinegar to make the dressing. I also make wine vinegar with the chervil that is still so perfect after the winter months. Chervil vinegar tastes much like its more famous rival tarragon vinegar, so it is a very useful addition in the kitchen.
Spring is the busiest season in the herb garden. There is so much to do, including sowing annual herbs like dill, summer savory and coriander/cilantro, as well as planting some herb seeds in trays in the greenhouse to provide earlier crops. Why buy expensive, pre-packed leaves in “modified atmosphere” packaging that can strip out their vitamins, when they can be simply grown at home in the garden, on the windowsill or in pots and troughs? To achieve a mixture of leaf flavour, colour and texture, I grow a number of salad herbs. But you can buy a similar mix in one seed packet to make it easy to have a variety of tastes in a pot or window box, available to eat as you need them.
I sow salad herbs like rocket/arugula, purslane, Greek cress, basil, American land cress, red orach, lamb’s lettuce/corn salad, endive and chicory, mizuna, mibuna and mustards like Red Giant, Golden Streaks and Red Frills, planting them in a pattern of circles, triangles and straight lines to make the salad herb bed look interesting. In four to six weeks the leaves come through the soil. They are picked very young and by pinching off the lower leaves, leaving a rosette of a few small leaves in the middle, the herbs are ready to harvest again after a few days. These annuals also last longer treated this way.
When I started cooking in the 1960s, recipes were rich and rarely used anything green. Now herbs and leaves are the stars on our plates, with their looks, taste and healthy properties. I don’t go as far as the late Christopher Lloyd, the great gardener and cook at Great Dixter, East Sussex, southern England, who once served 27 different leaves in one salad. But I am getting close.
Edible flowers also make salads look special and in spring I use violets and primroses in salads, with fresh lovage leaves. I sow viola Heartsease, nasturtium, anchusa, and the marigold Calendula officinalis in the greenhouse. But borage – both blue and white flowered – always self-seeds all over the herb garden. Like unruly young children it can get out of control, popping up, full of energy, in every gap. The exquisite flowers decorate food and ice cubes, and the leaves make a chilled Borage and Cucumber Soup (see page 85). I like to try new ideas every year. Last spring I sowed Japanese chrysanthemum, Shungiku, for the first time, enjoying its edible flowers and leaves. This year several new flowers and herbs get a trial.
Seeds are sown outside 5cm/2in apart, in drills about 15cm/6in wide. They are covered with fine soil and a little organic fertilizer. Modules are used in the greenhouse to reduce the need for thinning out and the risk of damaging delicate roots. For a succession of herbs throughout the season, a few seeds are sown every month until late summer when all the salad herbs are sown again, to use throughout the winter. During the colder months, the leaves are never full of holes from the flea beetle and they do not bolt quickly, both of which can happen in spring and summer.
There are many other spring jobs. Herbs like sage, winter savory, bay and thyme need to be tidied up. Cut back old woody shoots and straggly growth, then feed the plants and they will soon freshen up. Rosemary should be pruned after its flowers fade and I like to use some of the cuttings on the log fire to scent the house while the younger shoots are saved to make rosemary syrup, (see page 213) which I use in many cakes and puddings.
This is also a good time to divide herbs like sorrel, lemon balm, lovage and marjoram. I lift and divide my chives every three to four years. Most of them grow around the small pond in the middle of the herb garden, but they also edge a bed in another area, so those can be used for cutting when the pond circle of chives are left to flower.
The hardy common sage, purple, golden and white sages grow outside all year round. But the half-hardy tricolour, pineapple, tangerine and blackcurrant sages are grown in pots because they have to over-winter inside. Just before bringing them out into the garden after the danger of frosts has past, I shape and feed them, as well as splitting plants when necessary.
Herb lovers look forward to late spring when the garden is full of fresh, new luscious leaves and everything looks and tastes wonderful. When Rick Stein wanted to film my herb garden and cooking for his BBC show Food Heroes, I asked him to come at this perfect time, when garden was full of edible herbs thriving in the late spring sunshine.
[ SPRING ACTION LIST ]
+ Divide herbs like lemon balm, sorrel, lovage and chives when necessary.
+ Take root cuttings of sweet cicely, tarragon, mint and bergamot.
+ Layer old, woody herbs like sage and thyme underground to produce new plants.
+ Cut back bay and rosemary; shape other evergreen herbs.
+ Prick out herb seedlings, pot on and eventually harden off.