It’s cleanup herb season in my house, all the pots need redoing, fresh soil, dividing herbs for another garden. Ongoing for last few weeks, due to bad weather actually took time to do some reading about herbs.
Now I started with four herbs originally, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Adding herbs, knowing their uses, side effects of any herb is vital. Growing herbs is an easy place to start. In my garden I have wild herbs such as wild garlic and sweet cicely.
I really wanted sweet cicely to grow in pots so I can experiment with it as a sweetener to the sour fruits and maybe as a replacement to sugar and honey for people who are diabetic in some of my medieval recipes.
For those who are just beginning, parsley is used in many recipes, I will take cookbooks and list recipes that include parsley.
Bucknade a pottage, two fifteenth century cookbook
Lamb or veal or mutton stew Curye on Inglysch
Parsley sauce The Culinary recipe of Medieval England
Menadach is a mixture of fat like dripping, butter,suet, mixed with fine oats which can be flavoured with any chopped herbs in earthenware jars
Parsley butter or parsley stored in melted lard
Will make a menadach out of wild garlic, lard and oats as an experiment to see how it works
The use of herbs add flavours that brings different element to simple dishes, flavour base for pottages, bring out flavours to pulses like savory, lovage replaces the flavour of celery, three leaves for a dish for 5 people. Now you may wonder why celery flavours, so allium, leeks, onions , green onions and celery had its place in any medieval kitchen garden, lubswort, so my kitchen garden entails pots at the moment and some plants in the ground along with raised beds
It’s also time to plant some edibles, my granny was a firm believer in using what ever space available to grow lettuce, bunched onions etc so whether it is in a pot, garden flower bed, patio, window box give it a go
In my other garden sorrel and spinach are going well, more seeds sown for edibles,herbs and flowers, experimenting to see what seeds grow well and where
So the other garden has a lot more edibles as of this morning including lettuce, beets, kale, parsnips, some more herbs, intend sowing lots of spring onions, hyssop, tarragon,awaiting seeds to grow in some cases.
In fairness the herbs sown last year in garden two are doing well, these include tansy, Angelica, rosemary, sweet cicely, thyme, lovage, hyssop
The other garden is an old garden, long and narrow, the plan going forward is to sow Irish native trees that provide fruit, wild flowers and wild herbs in the majority of the garden, low maintenance, natural and appealing to the birds and insect life
Remember if you must weed that the Dandelion is the first decent nectar that the honeybee needs to make beautiful honey , the nettle and wild garlic make a serious healthy pottage/soup
However from an Irish perspective getting my hands on proper documentation regarding what herbs were grown is improving. Archaeology and science have come a long way, more and more information with some archaeological reports containing archaeobotanical reports, I have a fondness for a paper by Susan Lyons which discusses Food plants, fruits and foreign foodstuffs . My first archaeobotany paper in Food and Drink in Ireland
UCC has an Irish Meteria Medicia translated by Tadhg O Cuinn is worth a look at regarding medicinal uses of herbs. The list of herbs is long.
It has been a busy month, but a lot done herb wise, so hoping the seeds for the herbs will sprout and I can share the love of herbs with my friends.
John Gerard gives descriptions of onions, lettuce,beets,hyssop,lavender,mint, marigolds, borage,violets, strawberries,fennel, chervil,valerian,sorrel, rue, roses, blackberry bush, rosemary, the Dandelion and nettle also earns a mention, all the above visible Gerard’s Herbal was first published in 1597
However I was advised to get this book for Irish context, it is modern with historical information,good for reference on the expensive side.
So now I want a Jerusalem artichoke and aspargus, I think my garden is now moving towards edibles that are historical, I now have an aspargus plant and globe artichoke in my poccession which will take between seven years and five years respectively to mature as plants, definitely another story for another day.
The Irish ages 