Fun at the Herb Forum

I want to say thank you to the Herb Society of America’s Pioneer Unit in Round Top for their spectacular herb sale and forum at Festival Hill last weekend.

I’ve been wanting to attend the sale for years. I ran into Round Top ambassador Sally Reynolds a few weeks ago, and she sang such high praises for the event. So I just had to make some time for it.

Janessa and I braved the trip through Warrenton and Round Top on the opening weekend of the Spring Antiques Show to attend the herb sale on Saturday. The trip seemed to take an hour due to the “finger-poppers,” as Janessa calls them – those outof- towners who slam on their brakes and point fingers out of the window at every piece of random junk laying in a field.

Finally we made it to Festival Hill. I wish we could have came on Friday, the first day of the two-day event. They were already sold out of many plants. Yarrow, known for its blood-clotting abilities, seemed to be a big hit with the shoppers. It was completely sold out, probably due to it being one of the main topics of the Herbal Forum taking place inside the Concert Hall that day. Lucky for us, we didn’t need any yarrow. Janessa planted a patch of it next to our front porch several years ago, and this hardy herb has survived with little care.

We bought several culinary herbs for the garden – parsley (I already have some growing, but one can never grow enough, it seems), thyme, marjoram, a variety of oregano called “Hot and Spicy,” Mexican mint marigold (the best substitute for French tarragon in our hot and humid environment), Cuban oregano (a beautiful, variegated succulent plant from the tropics that really tastes like oregano), a variegated variety of sage and rosemary.

We also purchased a few other strange plants, such as rue, mint-scented geranium (which can repel insects) and wormwood (a supposedly hallucinogenic herb used in the making of Absinthe, but it also repels insects).

Some of these plants are hardly ever commercially available, so I really appreciate the Pioneer Unit for putting on this sale.

I took some vacation recently and got a lot of work done in the garden. I moved my cattle from a pasture where I’ve been feeding them hay. Actually, I’ve been feeding them hay in the same spot for several years. So there’s a thick layer of composted hay, manure and urine in this spot. It looks so rich that it has turned my light, sandy soil almost black in color.

Naturally, I’ve been eyeing this spot to turn into a garden. Last week I disked it with my tractor. But there’s one big problem. Most of the hay I’ve been feeding comes from my dad’s field of native prairie, and he hasn’t sprayed it with herbicides in many, many years. But I purchased some hay last year and the year before that, and I do not know whether it has herbicide residue.

From what I understand, the herbicides used in hay fields only kill broad-leafed plants, which includes most of the vegetable crops like tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, beans, peas, etc. These herbicides do not harm plants in the grass family, which includes corn, sorghum and most of the grain crops. Curiously, these herbicides do not seem to affect onions, either.

So if there is some herbicide residue in this spot, I can only grow corn and onions. I don’t really want to eat crops with herbicide residue, so I’ll pretty much limit myself to ornamental corn. We’re conducting a bioassay to determine whether or not I have an herbicide problem.

I’ll tell you how we’re doing the bioassay in next week’s column

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