daisy, daisy...

"I love daisies. They're such a happy flower". So says Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail and I agree. Our herb patch is full of plants with daisy-like blooms at the moment and they are, quite simply, a delight.

This one's a double chamomile. I love its shaggy appearance.

This is a camphor plant. Its leave smell of, yep, camphor. I'm hoping to dry a few and use in pot pourri over the winter.

This is a poor picture but it is a wonderful flower. Creamy white petals surrounding a neat, butter-yellow centre. This is English Mace and it has grown tremendously well this year. It's an often overlooked herb, we often get bemused looks from people at our plant markets but it's actually great in soups and warming casseroles.

And now for something completely different....

Viper's Bugloss. The bees have been all over it today (in between the downpours). It's a biennial so we'll soon be collecting seeds.

Time to wake up

The garden is beginning to emerge from hibernation and it feels as though we are, too. Mints are starting to send up shoots, so is the tarragon and the elecampane. The sweet cicelies are starting to push up from their shady spots and we are on the lookout for the first of the ramsons.

We are sowing like mad, including quite a few new species that we are trying this year, such as horehound, mugwort, motherwort and red orache. We are also adding a new type of basil a blue, to go with the African blue that went very well last year. This new variety is supposed to have an excellent flavour. We will report back.

To give us the space we need, we have taken on a Victorian greenhouse at our friend Sandra's farm. This is a very exciting development for us - a major expansion that means we might finally get our patio back!

Sales are being finalised. We will be at Leicester Farmers' Market on the first Thursday of each month and Kibworth Farmers' Market on the third Saturday. That's a change of date and there is also a new venue - the old Grammar School in the centre of the village.

We will be at the University of Leicester Botanic Garden plant fair on July 3 and a range of fairs and events to be comnfirmed.

Seeds, plans and mainlining rosemary tea

One of the (many) things I love about herbs is that they are so easy to get free plants from. Half the time you don’t need to do any work - they’ve done it for you.
Evening primrose, borage, alchemilla mollis and marigolds all self seed like mad so most of the work is making sure you can pot them on before they get too big and get grumpy about being transplanted.
Borage, especially, seems to get the hump if you let it get a hold then go and dig it up. It’s best to get it while it’s just putting out its first, bristly leaves, about the size of your thumb. Dig it up and pot it on, give it plenty of water and it will soon romp away.
We’ve left it far too late to do any potting on of the white borage in this border but they are just so pretty when they flower that I can‘t say I mind too much. You can see what I mean about the self-seeding, though (at least, you can if the picture's uploaded properly).
We had flowers on ours in October last year, so you never know. At least the weeds don’t get a chance to get a look-in and if they don’t bloom we will just make a liquid feed out of them.
Elsewhere in the garden, it’s all about harvesting seeds and renovating. I’m fed up with the way our garden looks - it’s too staid, too flat. Need more levels, or focus, or…something. Pity that I'm utterly rubbish at garden design. Hey ho. I’ll have a think. Or leaf through lots of books and steal ideas, more like.
Seeds from our once-stately angelica plant have been harvested and are being dried. Felt guilty about not leaving any for the birds - they love them - so bought a fat feeder to make up for it. Richard’s planning to make candied angelica from the stems. Hmm. Let’s hope it fares better than his yarrow beer, which exploded in the kitchen last year. The place smelled like Everard’s Brewery for a month.
I’m keen to try root cuttings for sweet cicely, it will be interesting to see if they do better than the seeds which I’ve just collected.
Right, back to work. Have taken to drinking shedloads of rosemary tea with honey. It works a treat. Better than pro-plus, I can tell you.