Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Autumn planting and strawberry mint

Autumn will soon be here for real. But garden season isn´t over just yet!

September is a great time to plant perennials. Most of the times it´s actually preferable to plant in the autumn because the plant will put all it´s energy into growing roots, making it strong and steady, rather than putting energy into developing leaves and flowers.

By this time last year I was busy planting dozens of plants creating a small medicinal garden in front of our tiny house. All summer we´ve been able to harvest almost everything we need for our home remedies, crunchy cleansing products and herbal teas from that patch.

This years I´m taking it easy with the planting. Mainly going for different kinds of mint - I love mint! I think We´ve got about 7-8 different kinds of it out in the garden. I  use it in toothpaste, deodorant, tea and almost anything else I can think about. Sometimes I just eat a leaf as it is (it´s good for digestion and great for the breath).

Last week I was super excited to find both banana mint and strawberry mint at the garden center (!). Yes, they actually smell like strawberry and banana! Funnily the scent and taste of the strawberry version really reminds me of a smoothie that I used to get from a local juice bar some years ago. I will soon try to brew tea from each of the mints, and I really hope they will be great for the purpose.

I learned the hard way that moroccan mint, chocolate mint and eau de cologne mint makes quite awful tea.

Tea of apple mint though, is absolutely delicious.

A bag full of mint and some flowers for autumn decoration... And as you can tell from the picture I also like colors and funny shoes.

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