 Welcome to our Wednesday weekly webinar. We're really happy to see all of you here. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'll serve as the moderator today. I'm a food nutrition specialist on campus at NDSU. And today's speaker will be Holly Mabi and I'll be introducing her shortly. I have a couple notes of introduction before we begin. First of all, I'd like to invite you to upcoming webinars. Next week we'll have a session on the Food Safety Modernization Act and it will be led by Dr. Kim Koch. He has participated in a lot of advanced training on FSMA. So if you're even thinking that someday you might have to be following FSMA guidelines, please take this opportunity to hear from someone who's had a lot of training in that area. On the 12th of April, we'll be hearing from Dr. McGinnis and she'll provide an update on spotted winged esophila. Following that on the 19th of April, boy, the spring is flying by, how to tan low and high acid foods will be provided by Dr. Clifford Hall, who's a professor in science of the NDSU and rounding out this series of 10 webinars will be Todd Weinman and he'll provide an introduction of youth to gardening. So a very important thing that we all can do is to get this love of gardening down to the younger kids. A few logistics, if you haven't participated in one of these webinars before and if you have, bear with me a couple minutes. You're all familiar with the screen now because I've had you raising your hand and so on. If you have questions along the way, you can go ahead anywhere along the line to type your question into the chat pod. That's that little white area on the, usually on the left of your screen or it is on mine. And we'll try to track that so that we answer your questions as you go. And we will have time allotted at the end of the webinar for any questions and answers. And of course, I'm sure Holly would be okay with you following up afterwards. One special plea from Julie here and that's to fill out the short survey at the end of the webinar and that will be emailed directly to your email account where you receive updates on attending this. So you've probably received a little reminder. You'll get a reminder to take the survey and it'll take you two minutes and I've got some neat prizes to help entice you to take that survey. And now I am very pleased to welcome our speaker. I have a few notes about her. So I'd like to tell you a little bit about Holly Rose Moby. She is the director of the Entrepreneurial Center for Horticulture at Dakota College of Botanical. She also is the executive director of the North Dakota Farmers Market and Growers Association, a past president and current editor of the North Dakota Horticultural Society and co-owner along with her husband Barry and son Adam of Garden Weller's Farm. This is North Dakota's only culinary herb farm and it sells to grocery stores, restaurants and individuals across North Dakota and into Minnesota. Garden Weller's Farm has been delivering fresh cooking herbs and education to consumers for 15 years. So with that, welcome Holly and thank you for doing a webinar for us today. Thanks Julie, that's really nice of you to ask me really nice to be here. We have such a nice group of folks with us today so I'm kind of excited to tell everyone about the opportunities in growing herbs. This first slide here, it's my son and I in our high tunnel filled with basil and right now the high tunnel doesn't look like that, it's just a black dirt but it has been tilled and it's anxiously awaiting some seeds. Growing your old herbs can be a great way to enhance your home cooking or it can be a way to create additional sales for your agriculture based business. Herbs are a niche market so you have to know that you have the right place to sell them or the right market to market to if you're looking at adding them to your agriculture business. But they certainly, even if you are not selling at a farmer's market or pick your own or through a CSA they certainly are a great way to enhance your home cooking and they have great nutritional value as well. Besides your cooking there's a lot of other ways that you can grow and use herbs in your everyday life. Some of them besides the cooking include of course tea and beverages, there are a lot of herbal teas on the market right now to kind of give you ideas on what can be used but many of those things you see in those tea mixes can be grown on your own. There are of course medicinal herbs that can be used in cosmetics, in bath bombs, in facials and soaps and all sorts of cosmetic items. Just for the aroma itself, such as poperies or even we often have people buy bunches of basil from us just to take home and put them in a base and put them on their counter because the smell is so lovely. And of course just the beauty and aesthetics whether that is the beauty of growing them in your garden because they are quite beautiful or using them around the home such as reeds or door swags or decorations. So there's many uses for herbs that you can grow quite easily. Some of the common herbs that we think of most often of course are basil, sage, thyme and cilantro and that's what's represented in the pictures here. The upper left with my hands that of course is basil. To the right of that is sage. Below the sage is the cilantro and to the left of that is thyme. So kind of working clockwise around that picture. You know, it's quite interesting because right now where I'm at south of rugby close to Esmond, we still have lots of snow and there are places where there are three or more feet of snow on the ground still and we're just starting to get a little bit open space and bear dirt back again. But in my production field, the sage and the thyme because they were green and with the straw mulch like you see in the picture underneath the snow, they tended to warm up a little bit faster than the surrounding bear dirt. And so they are out there often looking good and sage and thyme are actually perennial. They will come back year after year and they're also evergreen or semi-evergreen. So if I wanted to today, I could walk out and pick some nice fresh sage and thyme and add them to my supper tonight, which is kind of an added bonus to having that really early green stuff in your garden is being able to taste that right away in the spring. Other common herbs, again, starting from the upper left, you might think that's dill, but it's not, that's actually fennel leaf. Many times when we're cooking with fennel, we think of the fennel bulb. Fennel bulbs are a little bit more difficult to do here in North Dakota because they take such a long season. It can be done, but they're long season. But the fennel leaf will add just as much flavor to your cooking and aroma and they make a really nice filler flower in arrangement. So we grow a fair amount of fennel leaf here at the farm. To the right of that is the rosemary. Our rosemary plugs should be coming in on Friday, so I'll have rosemary to transplant on Saturday. Below the rosemary and the lower right is a Greek oregano. It's another perennial, the Greek oregano is. And that also is out in the field, up green looking good. And if I wanted to make some spaghetti sauce this weekend, which I think I just might, I could run out and pick some fresh green oregano. In the left, then the lower left is mint, of course. And mint has many uses in cooking and around the home and in aesthetics. So there are a few general rules when growing herbs that kind of go across the board no matter what variety you're growing. Most of them like sunny locations. And if you think about herbs and their purpose and what they're like, we like herbs because they smell and they taste good and they smell and they taste good because they have a high amount of oil in them. And the more sun that herb has, the more concentrated that oil is going to become within the herb, so it's going to have better flavor and it will actually do much better in sunny locations for most herbs. Most herbs also like well-drained soil. Now, mint really kind of likes a moist soil, not soggy, but moist certainly likes its share of water. But other than the mint, most of them really on the dry side is fine for most of them. Most herbs do not need large amounts of fertilizer or need to be fertilized. Again, going back to what doesn't kill us makes us stronger and it's the oil in the herb that we want to be very concentrated to give it the best flavor and aroma. And you will get that in a plant that is struggling just a little bit. And we certainly don't want to plant them in hard pan clay, but you don't need to worry about too much fertilizer either. There are a lot of herbs that are well-suited for containers, so if you don't have a spot in your garden or a production lot or a large space and you just want to add them to containers on your deck or your patio, there are many, many varieties out there that are well-suited to container growth. Some of the myths or semi-mifts that are out there about growing herbs is that most herbs should be picked right away in the morning, right after the dew is gone. While I agree with that and it's a semi-mift for, you know, I agree with it to a certain degree, it's not always true. What you do want to avoid is the heat of the afternoon. You know, don't go out on a 100 degree day when the sun is blasting down on things and pick the herbs then because they are very much like us, plants are, they have stoma, they open, and in the same way we sweat, they transpire, and along with that moisture leaving the plant will be that oil that I've been talking about that gives it good flavor and good aroma. So picking them when it's a little cooler, whether that's in the morning or in the evening, is fine to stay away from that heat of the day. There's another myth out there that says, oh, you know, it's blooming, so I can't eat it or it's not gonna taste as good. Honestly, most herb flowers are edible. We make a great sage pesto with sage flowers when it's in bloom here and it really would take an extremely refined palate for a person to taste the difference between an herb that was flowering and one that was not. So if you keep harvesting, of course, it's going to delay that flowering, but actually, if you've gone on vacation and you come home and you find that your herbs, oh my goodness, while I was gone, they started flowering, don't let that stop you, go ahead, continue harvesting and using and eating those herbs anyway. And the last one, the downright live, when using the flowers, pick them before they're fully open. Honestly, they will have a better flavor if you pick them a little bit more in bud stage with any flower, the longer it's open, the more it declines and loses vigor and flavor. So if you are going to eat the flowers, actually eating them or picking them, choosing them when they're on the more of a bud stage, is better, excuse me. So growing herbs for season long sales, what you need to consider is you will need to plant them in succession. A lot of times people with our other garden plants or flowers and things, they go out and we plant our marigolds in the spring and that lasts us all season long. And that's great, but if you are actually in the business of growing herbs for sale, you're probably going to want, especially culinary herbs, you're probably going to want them to plant them in succession. In other words, you're going to plant the seeds or the plants more than one time. And this is specifically true of annual herbs, not so much the perennial ones. But annual herbs and we're talking about the basil, dill, cilantro, those sorts of herbs that are very fleshy. They grow very fast and you want them to be nice and succulent. Keeping records is extremely important. Those records will help you from year to year. Remember, okay, I planted my first basil seeds on May 15th and I planted the next seeds three weeks later. And oh, guess what, that was a little too close together. Maybe I should move them. Now, everyone's growing situation is a little bit different. So it's extremely important that you keep records of your own planting so you can gear it towards your microclimate and your soil. One of the things I like to express to people is don't overbuy seeds. Although most herb seeds will last several years without losing a great amount of germination power, it really is unnecessary, it adds unnecessary expense to your bottom line to overbuy those seeds. We did, for years, I've overbought seed and I've carried seed over from year to year. But this last year, we really couldn't get a couple of our varieties to grow to save my soil. I kept succession planting and succession planting and they just were not doing well. And finally, I kind of ran a germination test on the seed I was using and looked at the package and went, well, no wonder it's a couple years old. I ordered fresh seed and for the rest of the season we did fine. So I really would suggest ordering only the seeds that you need for a year. With herbs, you will always have a time when you must either find an alternate use for them or compost them. It's the nature of things. I prefer when I can to find an alternate use for them, of course, you know, at the end of the season we might have a whole lot of basil left over. It's just been that kind of a good growing year. I would go out and gather bunches and make up a lot of pesto and freeze it. There are some of our other herbs that I'll gather together and make reeds for around the house or sell them at local trade shows or craft fairs, give them away for gifts. We've done that a lot. We've gone out and harvested at the end of the season everything we could before the first frost and dried them and made all sorts of holiday gifts with them. But if you can't do that, you're gonna end up composting them. It's just kind of the nature of the way it goes. You end up with more green matter than you can take care of or find a market for. So being creative in finding those new markets for leftovers in the field is really important. And being creative, you may be like us growing and selling culinary herbs or cooking herbs, but you might just find yourself at the end of the season or the middle of the season making some potpourri or making some other products so that you are using what you're growing to the best advantage for you and your business. When you're looking at season long sales, you might find that it's not profitable to begin your sales until your biggest seller is ready. And I'll give you an example of that. With Garden Dwellers Farm, our biggest seller is basil. And although as I mentioned, I have sage and thyme and oregano out there that are looking good. And you all, if you've grown them before, you know that those chives are gonna be up and looking good in a few weeks here. You know, so we would have product to sell in a matter of two to three weeks. Our biggest seller is basil and that won't be ready for another month and a half to two months. And so it's just not worth our time and the travel to get to our markets. It's not profitable for us to begin our sales for the year or for this season until our biggest seller is ready. So you wanna capitalize on the season of the year that works out best for your production method and your crops. You can also use your herbs as an add-on sale to other products or someone else's. And it's a great way to increase your profit. When we were selling at farmer's markets, we loved being next to the big produce vendor next to us because we would talk to them and say, okay, what's coming into season next week? And they say, oh, the next week is gonna be the first week for broccoli. So you can bet that that next week we would have a recipe along with us for broccoli and some herb. Or, you know, we have a recipe for corn and corn and tarragon when that came into season. And always playing off of what else is in the market can increase your sales. Another way to do that would be if you're maybe growing and selling home decorations like slags and reaps and things like that, many herbs have dual uses. You might only be doing the home craft or home decorations, but and a hip-up is also a great tea herb. And maybe your neighbor or someone else at the market is selling dried tea mixtures and you could work with them to sell them your product that they could make into theirs. Or maybe there's somebody that's making soap and they want mint in their soap. So work with others around you for those add-on sales or those additional sales that you can use your product in more ways than maybe what you're just focusing on. So if that's your goal, remember to focus on only those that are well-known, easy to grow and easy to sell. It's difficult sometimes with herbs that are gonna give you trouble to get them to grow and make them extremely marketable. I do wanna say a little bit about medicinal herbs. I stay away from medicinal herbs and most medicinal herbs have not had clinical trials and you use all herbs at your own risk. Some herbs can have adverse reactions with other medications. Standardized doses have not been set for herbs and so you're never sure if you are taking too much or too little. The potency of herbs can vary greatly depending upon the growing conditions and the environment. These are some of the reasons that I personally have kind of stayed away from the medicinal herb market. I really encourage you to have a great level of knowledge and education if you're going into that area. However, there are a few herbs that have been scientifically proven to be of health benefit. Echinacea is one, it boosts the immune system. Garlic is good for the heart and cholesterol. Ginseng is also good for the heart. St. John's or Ginko and parsley, believe it or not, which contains very high level of iron, have all been proven to be of benefit to your health. So I encourage you if you are going into the medicinal herb area to have a great amount of education, a great amount of knowledge. Do your scientific research and be very careful about any claims you might make. We don't want to be out there making false claims with anything that we're selling. Now when we're talking about the culinary herbs, the cooking herbs, we know from TV and magazines and all of the media around us that cooking at home and being more adventurous in your cooking is really grown in popularity lately. People are maybe doing a bit more home cooking than they used to and they're getting more adventurous. So they're trying new herbs and new things. On the left-hand side, I have a list of the common culinary herbs, basil, dill, sage, thyme, rosemary, garlic or chives, savory, parsley, oregano, marjoram and cilantro, which of course goes well with almost any tomato-based dish. On the right-hand side are maybe those that are not quite as common, but they are still, they have great value in the culinary world. Fennel, as I mentioned, we use the dill leaf instead of a bulb. Lemon balm or lemon grubina is not only good with chicken and fish, it's also great in teas. And as hyssop cakes and candies and also tea, stevia, that's come on the market and gotten very popular within the last, oh, seven, eight years. It's on the market as Truvia, the natural sweetener and you'll see a lot of stevia. That can be grown from seed and actually does quite well here in North Dakota as an annual. Colendula is often thought of as a flower in your flower beds. Very easy to grow, but the petals are great. We have some wonderful recipes for cookies and baked goods with the colendula and the petals add wonderful color to salads. Nosturtiums, if you've never eaten a nasturtium again, which is thought of as a flower in your flower bed, but if you've never eaten the leaves or the flowers themselves, I really encourage you to try them. They have a wonderful peppery flavor to them that adds just so much to a first salad. Not only the color of the flowers, but also the leaves themselves. Celery Act, if you like celery, boy, you can add Celery Act to just about anything. Same with Lovage, it has that kind of celery sort of flavor. Mint, any of the mints of course, and then tarragon. Those would be some that are a little bit more uncommon and might not, if you were selling them, sell quite as well as the list on the left-hand side, but certainly would be easy to grow offerings that you could have as part of your sales. So a little bit more about some of those easy to grow ones. Basil, it is an annual, it grows from seed. Some people buy basil plants, I honestly don't see the need to do that. Basil seed is very inexpensive and it grows really fast. You do want to make sure that you have a ground temperature of 55 degrees or more, but if your ground is nice and warm and you put that seed in, you will see little seedlings popping through within two to three days. That's how fast it is. And so that's why I guess I've never seen the need to purchase basil plants. It is an annual and it is very frost sensitive. So you want to make sure all danger of frost is passed in the spring and that you do everything you can do with it before the first frost in the fall. Time, most times are perennial. Here at Garden Wellers Farm, I like to plant a variety called German winter time. German winter time has proven itself to be not only the most flavorful of the varieties, but also the most reliably hardy in our winters. So I like that kind. There's lots of different kinds of time, although everything from creeping to woolly time to other taller white blooming varieties. Excuse me. Sage is also perennial, but I do have a question mark there because I have in extreme winters with no snow cover, I have lost sage plants and tend to only get three years. Yeah, around three years out of a stand of sage. So I kind of plan every third year as a new planting of sage. So even though it does make it through the winter most years for me, I do plan every couple of years to rejuvenate that bed just to be sure I have it on hand. Winter savory is one that it's not very common. In cooking, you will see just the word savory. Different recipes will just call for savory. There are two kinds of savory. There's summer savory and winter savory. The winter savory is listed as a half hardy perennial, but my winter savory comes through every year. I mean, it's just for me at least has been hardy attack and shows up all the time. I see we had a question about in your comments about replacing the sage every couple of years is that in your high towers, my high tunnels are outside. That's outside. The only thing we put in our high tunnel is basal because it likes it warm. And that's one way we can get a jump on the season is to put the basal in the high tunnel. And I will also put some about half of the rosemary I grow in there only because my rosemary plugs come in so early in the season that I just don't have a lot of room in the house for them. So I end up putting about half of them out into the high tunnel. That's the only thing we grow in there. The rest of our herbs, we put out in the field. So they're out in the field. So the winter savory, to go back to that, it's a really well-behaved plant, nice sturdy stalks. Hardy for me, reliably hardy for me, has a good peppery flavor to it. Great whenever a recipe calls for savory. It's very tidy. It stays in a nice round ball and it doesn't runner all over and very well-behaved in my garden and my production lawn. Chives, of course, also perennial. And you can also get garlic chives. They grow very fast, very early, very reliably hardy. Parsley is truly a biennial, which means that the first year it's going to put out a lot of greens and the second year it's going to try and go to flower or seed. In our area, we grow it as an annual. In other words, we till it under at the end of that first year because in my experience, when it comes back that next year, you're not going to get a lot of leaf off of it. It's going to try and go to seed right away. Now if you're seed saving, you may want to keep some of those around that second year to collect that seed. But if your goal is the leaves themselves treated as an annual and grow it from seed, my parsley seed, I put out as early as I can. In fact, as soon as my production lawn out there, the snow is gone and the soil is dry enough to work, I put the parsley seed out there. Even if I know it's going to frost several more times, I still go ahead and plant because parsley can take a frost and not have any issues with that. And so by planting it really early like that, that's one less thing I have to think about planting later on. Parsley also takes up to 20, 21 days to come up from seed. So it's going to take its darn sweet time. So I get that in as early as possible. I talked about the winter savory. The summer savory is an annual in comparison to it's winter savory cousin, which is a perennial. So an annual, as an annual, you would want to seed it every year. And that I also grow from seed. That one's not quite as pretty. It tends to fall over in the wind. It doesn't have quite as strong a stem. And it does have a bit of a different flavor from the winter savory, but it still has a very good flavor and is still very good for cooking. And the last one on this slide is lemon balm. It's a relative of the mint family. I have found it again to be kind of half-hearty perennial. Some years it comes back really good for me and other years it doesn't. Kind of depends on how much snow we've had, how cold it got. The good thing about lemon balm is it does grow really easy from seed. So if you have some seed packets or a seed packet that you can pick up for lemon balm, it really, you can replace it quite quickly if you were counting on it to come back over the winter and it didn't. Some of the culinary herbs that are more of a challenge are rosemary. I've mentioned rosemary several times already. And I've mentioned that I get in clubs where little plants, they're little rooted cut-ins is what they are. Rosemary is not hardy in North Dakota. And so you need to either bring your plants inside if you have them in a container or if you're growing them on a larger scale, you need to replant them every year. You can purchase rosemary seed and it's not that hard to get it to germinate to come up, but after it germinates it just seems to languish and sit there and I haven't had really good luck on all the years I've tried to get it to push past that initial germination point to really end up with a good looking rosemary plant. So I just go ahead and order rooted cuttings. Another way that you could do that would be if you had a place to overwinter in your home or a greenhouse, a large rosemary mother plant, you could take cuttings because they do root quite easily from cuttings. Lavender is another one that I know we've all seen in our seed catalogs, those beautiful pictures of the rows of lavender and oh how pretty it is. Lavender really is not fully hardy in our area. I know Sage Garden Herbs up in Manitoba, they'll tell you they can get their lavender to overwinter just fine. They really know some secrets and some tricks because I've never been able to get the lavender to reliably overwinter. I'll put in a row of 50 foot row and maybe 10 plants will come back and that's all. So it's not really reliable. However, that said, there are some varieties out there that you can purchase seed for that we can treat as an annual. One such variety, the variety name is lady and you can grow that from seed and get it to bloom quite well in one season. It's gonna be later in the season before it blooms, but if you're looking for those blossoms to use in pulperies or in soaps or that sort of thing and you're counting on them to be ready in the fall, you should be able to manage that. We've all seen or heard of using bay leaves in cooking. That needs to be a house plant. It is a tree or shrub-like bush. It needs to be started from cuttings. So if you want to have some bay leaves around, you can treat that as a house plant in the winter, move it outside in the summer and you can have bay leaves, which is kind of cool. Fennel, I've talked about that several times. We don't do the bulbs. There are some folks in North Dakota, especially the Southern part, there's Mark Mandan, Jamestown, Vargo, that can get some fairly decent sized fennel bulbs in one season, but up here in the North country, botanal rugby up in our area, it's just really difficult to get any bulb of any size, but the fennel leaves are awesome tasting. And if you're not going for that crunch of the bulb, you're just going for the flavor. Fennel leaves is pretty easy to grow. Oregano and marjoram, they are very closely related plants. That's why you'll see both of them quite often in Italian cooking or in cooking that has maybe a tomato base to it. They both grow really well here. My one caution, and this is why they're on this slide as being more of a challenge, is because they are so closely related and there are so many varieties, it's difficult to find a good culinary variety. An example of that is I grow two kinds. I grow Greek oregano and I grow Italian oregano. And I had always sourced my Italian oregano from one place. And one year I thought, you know, I'm ordering rosemary plugs from this other greenhouse. Maybe I'll just go ahead and order the Italian oregano at the same time from that same place. And I got it in, even though they called it Italian oregano, it was not the same variety, it was not exactly the same plant. And that 280 plants of Italian oregano that I was looking forward to ended up being more like the Greek oregano and just really didn't have the flavor I was looking for. So you really have to know what you're ordering. Taste it if you can, see it, smell it, and be very familiar with what you want before you order it. Because there's lots of varieties out there that are not the best flavor. Lemon balm, as I mentioned, may not over winter. And then tarragon, only being a challenge because it's hardy here, it's a perennial, it grows quite large, it'll take off and just be crazy all summer long. And that is probably the challenge is that it can get quite large, that it can sucker or runner itself out and not be the nicest guest in your garden. And so it's a little bit more of a challenge only in that way. It grows like crazy, and it is a perennial. You want the French tarragon for cooking. That's the kind there's Russian and there's French, you want the French, but it is quite prolific. So harvesting, storing, and using your herbs, you can dry them. I recommend drying them in an oven if you do it that way. You want them to be at 100 degrees or lower as low as it will go until they're very crispy. Some people, if they have a gaff oven, they will not turn the oven on at all. They'll just use the ambient heat of the pilot light in the oven. It takes longer, of course, to do it that way and you don't want to forget that they're in there when you go to make supper that night. But the lower temperature that you can drive them at, the less chance you will have of cooking them instead of drying them. Because the purpose is to remove that moisture, that water out of the plant without removing those oils that give it its good flavor. So the lower temperature, you can go the better. Now, alternative way to store them or to preserve them is to hang dry them. Very easy, simply just bunch them together in small bunches, not too big of bunches, and with a clip or a rubber band and hang them in a warm, dark place out of the dust until they're dry. Now, if you live in the country or on a gravel world like I do and you say, yeah, that's great but we're really dusty around here, you can put a paper bag over them to kind of keep the dust off, which is a nice way to do that as well. Excuse me. You can freeze them and this happens to be one of my favorite ways to do this because it's quicker. And to me, it seems easier. When I freeze my herbs, I rough chop them. So in other words, they're bigger pieces, not teeny tiny pieces. Put them in an ice cube tray. Fill the ice cube tray up with water or butter or oil depending on how you're going to use them later. And I put them in the freezer. And once they're frozen, I pop them out of that ice cube tray. I put them in a freezer bag, an appropriate Ziploc freezer bag and label them because once they're in ice cube state, they all kind of look alike, green little cubes. So make sure that you label them with what they are and pop them back in the freezer. The interesting or the nice thing about doing it this way is an ice cube tray, once you've added some water, is pretty much equivalent to like a table spoon depending on your ice cube tray, a table spoon or two table spoons, which is just about right for a lot of your recipes. So it comes out being really convenient in the end. If you're going to dry them, whether you dry them in the oven or you're hang dry them, when you are stirring them, you want to keep them as low or as whole as possible until you use them. When you start to crush them up and crumble them up, you're releasing those oils. And again, that's what gives it its flavor. And I thought it was interesting because within the last several months, the very well-known and large seasoning manufacturer, McCormick, has started that trend now. They've really started that marketing push to say, you know, we're putting everything we have in grinders now because the more whole it is, the better it is. Suzanne has asked a question about dehydrators. Dehydrators are great. Again, you want to make sure you're dehydrating them at a low temperature, 100 degrees or under. And then dehydrators, yes, of course, work wonderfully. Herbal teas are really, they're good for you. They are low in calorie, higher in nutrients, and they just taste darn good. Some of the common herbs for teas or drinks are of course the mint. The hiccups, if you're not familiar with hiccups, it has kind of a licorice flavor. So if you like licorice, you might want to consider some of the hiccups. I particularly like anise hiccups, which has a beautiful purple flower and works well as a substitute for lavender. Bergamot or bee balm, lemon burbino, lemon balm, chamomile, and lemon basil are all wonderful in herbal teas. Lavender, orhound, beaver pew, angelica, sweetgrass or lemongrass, and rose hips. They're all common herbs that you can grow. We don't often think of roses as an herb, but they are. The hips, of course, are actually seeds, not the herb parts of the plant, but they fall into that herb category. Lemongrass or sweetgrass is one that you will want to have in a pot so you can take it in the house because to get the good base or bulbous end of the plant, which is what's best for tea, you will want to have a very long season or keep them as a house plant. This is a picture of anise hiccups. I mentioned that it works really well as alternative to lavender, and you can kind of see that in this picture. This is a bunch that I had harvested for some tea way back in 2004. We look at that beautiful purple color. It isn't that gorgeous. It also looks really good in the flower bed. Can you imagine how beautiful that would look next to other colorful flowers, yellows, oranges? It really is a standout in the garden. It tends to be, for the most part, perennial, again, like lemon balm. If we have one of those really bad winters, you may lose it, but it grows really well from seed, and for most cases will be perennial for you. But it's about two and a half feet tall, and it's really beautiful. And it's really pretty, in my opinion. What a nice addition to either the flower garden, herb garden, or a vegetable garden. When you're making herbal tea, we do not recommend sun tea because leaving things out, what a great way to grow bacteria. Let's take some moisture and put it in the sun where it's warm and leave it there. So I don't recommend sun tea. The best way to gather your herbs, put them in a tea cloth bag or a tea holder, boil your water separate, and then pour the water over the tea leaves. Don't put them all together. Then you're gonna let it steep for three to five minutes, depending on what you like to taste, and then enjoy. One note here, though, currently in North Dakota is not allowed by the State Health Department, or any of the local health districts to actually sell the beverage tea. At farmer's markets or other markets. However, you could make the tea bags with the dried tea and sell those. Of course, you can make all sorts of home cosmetics, baths, disease baths, soaking bags, lotions, soap, massage, and body oil. All of those things can be made very easily with your herbs and the recipes are all over the internet. So it's not something I'm going to spend time going into here, but that's a potential outlet or potential market for herbs that you could be growing at home. Herbs just for the aroma. Sweet Annie is a type of Artemisia that grows very tall, five to six feet tall. Has a beautiful golden color in the fall, and it makes great reeds and swags and decorations. Lavender, as I mentioned, we talked about that. Heliotrope has a very vanilla scent and is another purple flower. You can find that in your local nurseries and garden centers. Bergamot is also bee balm and is wild around here. Artemisia or wormwood. And I see we have Michelle has asked to any of these herbs repel insects like box elder bars. Now the sweet Annie and the wormwood have been said to repel insects. And in fact, I used to sell a fair amount of the sweet Annie and wormwood in reeds when we were in Minnesota to people that had cabins, because they would put them in their cabins to keep kind of the spiders and the bugs out over winter. The patchouli that's listed on this slide, lemon verbena and rosemary all kind of have that same insecticidal properties to them. But I'll be real honest and say, some people say basal oil does the same thing, repels flies. I will sit in my high tunnel surrounded by thousands of basal plants and be covered with insects. So I think there's room for improvement on any of these, but if I had to recommend trying any of these for repelling insects, it would be the sweet Annie and any of the Artemisias and the patchouli and maybe the rosemary. Uses for aromatic herbs, stirring herbs, if you're not familiar with stirring herbs, that's they used to when they had dirt floors, they would put the herbs down on the floor and walk on them to make it smell good in the house. Of course, pulperi, wet or dry, sachets for your closets and in amongst your linens and your towels. And of course, I've mentioned wreaths and swags many times. Some herbs to think about, winter savory, chives, dill, basil, sage, bergamot, lemon balm, thyme, anise, and the mint. When you can contain them because they will get away from you, they like to crawl and be friendly with other places. But those are kind of my favorites. And if I had to choose what to start with, that would be my list of where to start. My least liked herbs, comfrey, chicory, oregano, only because it's like I mentioned, it's tough to get a good tasting one. Mints, when they're not contained, when you can't keep them where they belong, they're not my favorite. Summer savory, I mentioned, it's just not pretty. It kind of falls over in the wind. And cilantro, only because it's a challenge to keep cilantro from bolting in the heat of the summer. And here's the cilantro. I know we're running out of time, but I just want to take a couple of minutes to talk about the cilantro to do it well. You need to plant cilantro in succession. Here at the farm, we plant cilantro every two weeks. And it only gets six inches tall, and we're cutting it. And it only lasts two to three weeks. And then we take that whole roll out because once it gets hot, once we start getting into the heat of summer, the first thing it's going to want to do is form flowers and seeds. And that's not what you're planning it for. You're planning it for that wonderful aromatic leaf to use in that summer's also with those homegrown tomatoes. So my suggestion, people ask me very often, how do I grow good cilantro? My suggestion is to just keep planting it every two to three weeks. Deb says that her cilantro gets bugs. Now, honestly, I have never had my cilantro get bugs. If you happen to know what kind of bug it gets, please let me know because then I could probably give you a suggestion on what to do about that. But I've never had that issue. So I'm not sure what kind of bug would be bothering it, although it is kind of in the same family as the parsley and some of the monarch butterfly caterpillars may like it. Here's just kind of a list of things that we grow. I've talked about all of these throughout the presentation in different forms. Just giving you a list to maybe kind of spark your interest in growing something new or something different or going down an avenue for add-on sales or for sales for your home agricultural business. When harvesting, as I mentioned, avoid the heat of the day. You want to cool down the herbs as quickly as possible. High humidity is the key to fresh, long-lasting herbs. You do not want them wet just in kind of a humid environment. Most herbs will regrow for a second cutting within two weeks. So plan to plant twice what you need if you're cutting every week. If you're taking them to the farmer's market every week and you think, okay, I'm going to cut 20 feet of cilantro every week to take to the market, then you're going to want to plant 40 feet. Make sure you use clean utensils to help prevent the spread of disease. Here is what it looks like when we are harvesting our basil. You know, it's kind of back breaking work. You're down on your hands and knees. I have a little stool that I use quite often to sit on and go down the row and cut. We cut each piece, each tip by hand with the basil. And then they get dumped in this cooler. And this cooler is full of very cold water. We don't want it ice cold, but you want cool water. What you are trying to do is shock those stoma into closing, first of all. And second of all, you're taking the field heat out of those herbs so that it starts that cooling process. And then you want to get them, we put them in plastic tubs or totes, like you can see there, we put the lid on and we put them in a cool, dark place. The plastic totes with the lid on will hold the humidity in. And that's what I was saying is you want them humid but not wet. Packaging at a farmer's market, how you display and package your herbs at the market really depends on your market customer preferences. We like large tubs with lids because we, again, can keep the humidity up. But if you're going to package them because that's what the customer is at your market like, make sure that you package them in a breathable package and package as closely to sale time as possible. Because, again, water is the enemy. If you're packaging to wholesale to restaurants or institutions, most of them will take them by the pound or an increments of a pound, half pound, quarter pound, and we'll take them in just a plain bag, a plain clear bag. Make sure that you are using bags that are specifically for food and that's what they're intended for. Food grade bags are good. Vented ones, ones with holes in or a way for Eric's change is our best. And purchase the bag that fits the most usual quantity you are selling. If what you sell the most of is a pound, then purchase bags that will hold a pound. And I say this because, again, as a business, you don't want to spend a whole lot of money buying up a bunch of inventory such as four different sizes of bags when really you only need one size of bag to make do for most of your customers. It's going to save your business money and inventory. Packaging to retail stores such as grocery stores is a little bit trickier. You want to visit with them and talk to them about their expectations. If you're in a grocery store and you think you want to sell herbs to them, take a look at what they have. Some grocery stores just have their herbs package in a clear plastic bag with a very simple label on it. Others have them bunched in bunches that are tied with rubber bands or twist ties and others have them in soy or plastic based clam shells, what we call a clam shell. The best thing you can do is to look at their packaging and mimic things that as closely as possible. Some stores may require you to have a UPC label or a PLU, which is a product lookup. Packaging can be your most expensive cost in herb sales right after transportation and distribution and finding labels and packaging materials can be really difficult. If you're interested and you intend on packaging your product, be careful to have the equipment or facilities necessary to store it before delivery. And when I say that, what I mean is, if you put one ounce of herbs in packages, they're going to take up a whole lot more room than if they were in the tubs like I showed earlier. This is a picture of our product on the grocery store itself. You can see that we do use the plastic clam shells. And I will tell you, and we have a UPC label. You can see that down in the lower right. And I can tell you that the packaging and the labeling of our product is the part of our product that takes the most time and costs us the most money. So you really want to do your homework, lay out your business plan before you go down that road, but it can be very enjoyable. Going organic, remember not to use sprays or chemicals on food products if you can avoid it. If you do need to do that, be sure you're following all of the label and manufacturer instructions. Menure is a wonderful soil conditioner as well as fertilizer when applied appropriately. So be sure that you understand the food safety rules for applying soil amendments. And most herbs are relatively disease and bug free. I can honestly tell you, other than grasshoppers, I've never really had an issue with bugs on our herbs at all. I know I've done a little bit over the time for questions asking, but certainly would be available. Here's our website phone number and our Facebook page if you wish to ask me any questions now or you don't feel you have time would like to come and visit us at our website or our Facebook page and ask questions later. Please feel free to do that. Thank you so much, Holly. That was very interesting and I'm sure everyone enjoyed it. We have time for a couple of questions. You can go ahead and type at your question in the box if you are interested. And I'll put the slide back in case you want to write down Holly's email. Here we have a question for you. How well do cold frames work around here? They're in Mandan. I love cold frames. They work really well, especially for those things that are kind of cold-tolerant to begin with. The dill, cilantro, fennel, parsley, all of those things are fairly cold-tolerant to begin with as well as many of the perennial ones. They're also a great way to get, as I mentioned, basil likes it warm. And while you wouldn't be able to start basil in your cold frame now, you certainly would be getting a jump on having them planted in the garden by putting them in a cold frame. You could get at least two to three weeks jump on them that way. Next question was, how well does stevia grow for me? Stevia grows really well for me. The stevia seed is a little bit expensive, but it's come down a lot in the last couple of years. I always start mine from seed, put it out in the field, and it grows like crazy. I mean, it gets 20 to 22 inches tall, and if you pinch it when it's young so that you are encouraging it to branch, you can get more branches, which of course means more leaves off of it. And I've really never had any disease or insect issues with the stevia at all. I really had good luck with it. I will bring our session to a close, even though I think we could go on all afternoon. Thank you again to everybody for attending today. Please fill out the survey that you'll get the link to, and join us again next week. You'll hear all about spotted limb drosophila. So there you go.