Plant: Culinary Herbs

Having some culinary herbs growing in your urban space is perhaps the easiest and most efficient way to grow edible plants. Here are four of our most recommended herbs to plant in our Dallas area (USDA Hardiness Zone 8a). The leaves of each of these can be used fresh or dried in your home cooking.

Oregano

Rosemary

Thyme

Chives

Why do we like them so much?

1.     They’re “perennial”, which means they grow year round. You have a constant source of herbs for cooking all year long!

2.     They love sun. In fact, they need to be in a sunny location with ideally at least six hours of sunlight every day.

3.     They don’t need a lot of water.

4.     Summarizing the previous two points, these herbs are very low maintenance and easy to maintain. You can basically leave them alone once established (occasional watering and pruning).

5.     They can also provide flowers that are attractive to bees and butterflies and other good pollinators in our environment.

So, plant these perennial culinary herbs in your urban space (even a pot on your patio will do!). Give them sunlight and some room to grow. Keep them water till they get established, then water occasionally if they are very dry (that shouldn’t be often).

Cook: Berries

Nothing says spring time like fresh berries! The most common selections are strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Whether sweet or tart, the vibrant colors make a great treat for breakfast lunch or dinner. Berries are normally purchased in bulk so there are times that all of them aren’t eaten which means waste. So to eliminate waste, here are five ways you can get full use out of all the berries.

1.     Parfaits: If you’re always on the run but need a quick breakfast, the parfaits can be made in advance. All you would need is yogurt, granola, and fresh berries. Not only are parfaits great for you but it’s a great way to get your kids to have a balanced breakfast and eat fresh fruit. 

2.     Salads: Nothing says healthy eating like a salad full of flavor and color. There are numerous salads that can be made with berries only or a green salad with some berries. You can even make a pleasant vinaigrette dressing to top the green salad.

3.     Smoothies/Shakes: You can make a healthy breakfast triple berry shake with strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, ice, milk, and sugar to taste. My preference would be a good strawberry shake alongside a cheeseburger with onion rings.

4.     Condiments: Make a jelly or jam that can be easily used for toast and biscuits. I love strawberry jam on homemade buttermilk biscuits fresh out of the oven. Mixed berry jelly is good, too.

5.     Compote: If the berries are starting to go bad you can easily make a fruit compote. Any kind of compote is perfect for waffles, French toast, pancakes, oatmeal, pound cake or ice cream. My kids love blueberry compote on pancakes. I enjoy strawberry compote on pound cake served with vanilla ice cream.

Recycle: Grass

Cue the Vivaldi and Rolling Stones…Spring has officially arrived! Your plants are waking up after their long winter nap, and so is your landscape grass. You are also probably scheduling your home yard service to start cutting your grass again on a routine basis (or perhaps you’re flexing your muscles and doing it yourself – good on ya!).

In this Garden to Table to Garden blog, we’d like to remind you of two important things:

1.     If you are using the right mowing height and frequency, you don’t need to bag your grass clippings. They can be mulched right back into your grass, which will help it retain moisture and nutrients. To further chop up long clippings, use a mulching mower or run the lawnmower over an area twice. Read more about that here from our friends at Texas A&M Water University.

2.     If you DO choose to bag your grass clippings, remember that fresh cut grass is a wonderfully important nutrient in your backyard compost. Green grass is a pure source of nitrogen in your backyard compost pile. Reminder, the four main ingredients in compost are: brown stuff (carbon sources like mulch, leaves, pine, and branches), green stuff (nitrogen sources like grass, food scraps, and coffee grinds), air and water…Even if you just saved your brown leaves and fresh grass clippings and layered them at home in an outdoor container, you will have easily created a rich compost for your soil by recycling what nature provided you.

Most of us are used to thinking about bagging grass clippings and leaves as waste for the landfill. We want to challenge you to rethink these natural resources in your home landscape.

PS, does your landscape turf need a little TLC after winter? sprinkling a fine layer of compost (called “top-dressing”) will surely help. Read more about that here.

Plant: Blackberries

I’ve been growing blackberries in my urban backyard for the last several years and they have become one of our favorite edible items to maintain and harvest at home. Our family loves it so much, we can never quite make it to a pie or jam…Everyone just picks the fruit straight off the vine and eats them as they ripen (the biggest consumer is our toddler who now knows how to see which ones are dark and ready to eat!).

Blackberries are easy to grow in North Texas in a home environment. We trellised ours against our fence, with a bit of simple wiring. You can also make even more creative trellising if you have the time and interest.

Here are several important tips for planting and growing blackberries:

1.     Find the right space (think about sun, soil, water, and air flow)

2.     Choose the right blackberry variety (type) for our area

3.     Plant at the right time

4. Use Earth-Kind techniques for growing and maintaining your blackberries (what’s Earth-Kind? read more here…)

For a more detailed and thorough researched explanation of how to grow blackberries at home, check out this helpful tip sheet from Texas A&M.