Harvest

Almost a year ago we took a series of classes from Urban Harvest on organic gardening. Urban Harvest is a local non-profit advocating and teaching community gardening. It was an incredible class. The main goal is focusing on the health of the soil and the plants and not combating every bug in sight with pesticides as well as gardening informed by the local ecology. So basically growing things in Houston that are native to Houston.

We gave it a try.

We started with some humble containers and focused exclusively on herbs. We created this garden just a few weeks after Hurricane Ike wreaked havoc throughout Houston. It was the wrong season for herbs, but our garden was successful just the same. We ended up with herbs throughout the winter and transplanted these into a raised bed in the spring.

We ended up with this crazy, wonderful garden of herbs and eventually chili's which has provided a ton of yield. This bush is lemon basil and I just could not harvest it as fast as it grew.

Today we finally harvested all the herbs and packed them up for use throughout the winter. This picture is everything we harvested - it is a LOT of herbage. We have a bag of rosemary, one of thyme and one of oregano frozen in parchment packets in the freezer. The basil is a little harder to freeze so I am putting it through the processor in batches of olive oil and basil to freeze in packets. I am hoping this method works.

The next step is consulting Bob Randall, Phd. and setting up our next patch. We have a lot of humus, organic soil, earthworms, etc so I am hoping we can grow some good winter veggies. Maybe some carrots . . . definitely some lettuce of some kind. Yum!