Gardening

Herb Your enthusiasm

WORDS LYNDA HALLINAN

Summer does funny things to my tastebuds. Especially this summer. The comfort foods that got me through the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic—the mashes, smashes, slabs of sourdough, slow-cooked stews and steamed puddings—are long forgotten in favour of simple salads, stir-fries and minty mojitos.

At my place, summer is also notable for the seasonal return, heralded with David Attenborough-worthy excitement, of Homo erectus var. chargrilleus, aka my bearded husband brandishing long-handled barbecue tongs to blacken bits of protein on his Weber.

When the weather warms up, a more subtle flavour shift happens in my herb garden, as the folksong favourites—parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme—now go largely unpicked. (Unless, of course, my husband needs a herbal smudge stick to bung in the fish smoker or we run out of kebab skewers, in which case woody rosemary stalks, stripped off their lower leaves and soaked in water to stop them catching alight, are a fragrant alternative.)

Perhaps it's familiarity that breeds our seasonal contempt for the evergreen and biennial herbs that are our winter mainstays. Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme are rarely in short supply, unlike fairweather fly-by-nighters such as dill and coriander, which seem to take the first official T-shirt day of a summer as a sign to bolt to seed.

Herbs come and herbs go. The annuals, including basil, chervil and summer savory, are sown in spring and farewelled with the first frosts, while herbaceous perennials, such as mint and oregano, return like migrating birds when the weather warms up. Forget avenues of cherry blossoms and fields of daffodils: I know spring has truly arrived in my garden when the slumbering clumps of broadleaf garlic chives sprout to ankle height within a week.

Annual herbs are best sown direct. Generously scatter the seeds where you want them to grow, in a garden bed or a large container, and lightly cover with a sprinkle of seed raising mix. Keep moist under a plastic sheet for 7–10 days to speed up germination. Sometimes I raise herb seedlings in trays until they are a snail-safe size to transplant, but this is risky: who can resist snipping their tiny tops as microgreens instead?

Coriander should always be sown direct, preferably in a spot with afternoon shade, as it resents transplanting and, if allowed to get stressed by heat or a lack of watering while in seed trays, will sprint to seed in a couple of weeks. When its lacy white flowers appear, take it as a cue to sow more, but don’t pull it out. Let the seed heads mature until brown and dry, then harvest the large round seeds for your spice rack or save to resow. 'Slowbolt' and 'Picante' (both from Kings Seeds) have been bred to be more heat-resistant but in my experience, neither is a slowpoke.

Dill is even harder to halt in its tracks. I've never managed to keep its feathery foliage going past Christmas, though most people don’t notice if you serve your salmon blini topped with tiny sprigs of fresh fennel. (I have the opposite problem with fennel. It seeds like a weed and I'll never be rid of it.) As with coriander, when dill runs to flower, just let it be. Its big, umbrella-shaped golden blooms are great for casual flower arrangements, the bees love it, and the seed heads mature just in time to pack into jars with cucumbers and gherkins in late summer.

I’m a more recent convert to chervil, which looks like a dainty cross between Italian parsley and coriander but has a sweeter, mild aniseed taste, unlike the slap-in-the-face flavour of leaf fennel. I’m not ashamed to admit that I planted chervil for one reason only: so I could follow the recipe for Auckland restaurant The Engine Room’s legendary twice-baked goat’s cheese soufflé. My container of chervil overwintered unexpectedly, only to go to seed in September, but I'm told it reliably self-sows so hopefully it gets a hurry on soon.

The hotter the summer, the better most Mediterranean herbs taste, as the volatile essential oils that give them their flavour are concentrated in the foliage. That gives us a licence to largely neglect the lot of them, bar mint and basil, which sulk without regular watering, while sunning ourselves.

Seasonal Checklist

Plant everything, except brassicas. In summer, white cabbage butterflies are at their most promiscuous. Foil their chubby green caterpillars with a physical barrier of insect mesh, spray with Yates Success Ultra or simply skip planting broccoli and kale again until autumn.

Repeat sow beans, radishes and salad greens each fortnight for a constant supply.

Sow mesclun salad greens in tubs and buckets for portable holiday season salads you can pack into the car boot.

Feed tomatoes weekly with specialist liquid fertiliser, such as Yates Thrive Tomato Liquid Plant Food, as soon as they start flowering. You can also use liquid tomato food to boost the growth of dwarf beans, capsicums and eggplants.

Lynda Hallinan

Waikato born-and-raised gardening journalist Lynda Hallinan lives a mostly self-sufficient life at Foggydale Farm in the Hunua Ranges, where she grows enough food to satisfy her family, free-range chooks, kunekune pig and thieving pukekos. She has an expansive organic vegetable garden and orchards and is a mad-keen pickler and preserver.