 And so let's get started. And we're gonna be talking about herbs in the beginning. Herbs will provide, I think, I love herbs in the garden. They're just amazing fragrance. Just gets high on those thick bed basil in your nose, get high on those wonderful herbs and they give great flavors to our foods. So let's learn about herbs. Let's learn about how to grow them, how to preserve them and how to cook them. And for that, we have Jackie Bochley. Jackie is the Morton County Agriculture Agency for NDSU. Let's welcome Jackie to the forum. Thank you, Tom. And I had a beautiful drive into Fargo this afternoon. And for those of you, I have several recipes and so please feel free to try any of those. I like to cook with herbs as well. And so it's fun to do. Also, it is really a lot of fun because then you can cut down on, especially your sodium use, by using more flavorful herbs in your diet. And so it's really a lot of fun. And herbs, like Esther talked last night, as I was listening, they can add a lot of diversity to your garden and your landscape. And so they can add color, texture, thighs and shapes. And so we're gonna talk a lot about that as we go along. Like with herbs tend to, they like adequate light and fertilizer. They can be grown in the container in your garden. And I know Esther talked about and in the container last night just a little bit. And they really like our long daylight hours, which is really nice. Urban spice storage, they need to of course keep them away from moisture. And then I'm just as guilty as everybody else is that my herbs are very close to my soul because we're handy and we think we can easily reach them. And those of us that are a little more vertically challenged like me, we wanna make sure that we can keep them handy. But we should not be storing them there because that deteriorates that flavor with the heat that they're exposed to. And especially paprika, red pepper and chili powder, probably in our summertime heat we should consider storing that in the refrigerator. A little few things about herb preservation before we get into talking about each individual herb. You can do air drying, oven, microwave, or you can freeze them. And so we'll talk about those very briefly. Air drying can be done very easily if you like, you wanna pick them, of course with any type of herb preservation, we're gonna want to pick them before they flower. And Esther talked about that last night, how important it is not to let those herbs go to flower before you use them, either picks fresh or if you're going to preserve them in some way. And so you wanna wash them, tie them up with a string and hang them in some way. I had an aunt that had some roses in her and at a funeral she attended and she just brought these roses in, tied them together and hung them from the bottom of her lamp. And so with herbs you can do that as well. As you can see on the picture for those of you at home as well that they're just hung from a wall. I've seen them from lampshades. I had found a picture with hanging them from a cloth hanger and just hanging them over that and let them dry that way. So that's some type of ideas that you can use for air drying your herbs. You wanna do about two weeks to make sure that they're good and dry. And that's the main thing with when you're drying herbs in some way, you wanna make sure that they're good and dry because if you put them in a closed container, we don't want them to mold if there's extra moisture in there. Oven or dehydrator and some of you may have a dehydrator at home and so you wanna follow the label directions that you have with your dehydrator with the oven. And those of us that have digital ovens nowadays it's easy to set our oven at a really low temperature. Before I moved, when I moved into my new house, now we didn't have an oven like that and now I can set my oven for as low as I want it to go and so we can use that. And they wanted at about 100 degrees. And so when we used to have those ovens with just a little bile on there from 200 to 500, it was pretty hard to dry herbs in an oven. And so it was probably easier just to air dry them as well. And so you wanna test them hourly to make sure that they don't burn on you and you have to watch so they don't burn on you as well. On microwaves, place bunches between the two towels, microwave and high for one to three minutes. You wanna check every 30 seconds and this really seems a lot of work to me. You know, every 30 seconds you gotta go in there and check them and so I guess I think I maybe would wanna try and find something a little bit different. You wanna cool them and test to see if they're brittle. If they're not, then you would put them back in the microwave and put them in for another 30 seconds and so on until you figure out that they're pretty dry and ready to store. Freezing, I think the easiest way to freeze herbs is to stick them and I don't know, not many of us have ice cube trays at home anymore because we all have automatic ice makers but if you have an ice cube tray, stick your herb in there, fill it with water and stick them in your freezer and freeze them. And I think Esther mentioned this last night as well, that you can use it, put them in soups. If you like a margarita or something like that, you could put it in there in tea. Something like that would be really nice and as you can see that they really maintain their color really well when they're frozen in water, much like when we keep our fish frozen in water, it'll keep much fresher. Of course, they won't have that nice crisp texture but at least they'll have the flavor that will still be there. And so we can just pop those ice cubes into soups or however we want to use them and they'll add some really good flavor to a lot of our dishes that we serve. Okay, storage life, okay, when we're seasoning types, our whole seasoning, two to five years, they'll keep really nicely if we keep them at the right temperature and if they're in a good seal container. Ground spices, six months to two years, leafy herbs, three months to two years and so that's a long time. I guess I found that they lose their color and they also lose a lot of their flavor by the end of the two years and so you might wanna keep them a lot less time than that. I've dehydrated vegetables about six months. Okay, here this chart is probably too small for many of you to see on the home audience but you should have the handouts printed and what this does is it gives you many of the herbs that we can grow here in our gardens in North Dakota. The second column is whether they are an annual or a perennial or a biennial in our garden and then also some comments as to what these herbs can be used for and what type of dishes that they can be used for. And those of you that are here and Tom knows that usually when I give this talk, I usually have dishes to share and today I don't since I came but I usually make a fresh salsa, and a fruit salsa and some other things to share with my audience but today I didn't have an opportunity so sorry not to disappoint you. Okay, how much should I use? And as we know with fresh herbs we have to use more, a lot more as compared to if we're going to use the powdered or the dried. And so two teaspoons for fresh, three quarters equals three quarters teaspoons for dried and a quarter teaspoons for powdered herbs and of course our stronger flavored herbs which my husband hates bay leaves so I don't use a lot of bay leaves, he doesn't care for it and so I sneak it in on my bar soup every once in a while but I make sure I take it out before I serve it so he doesn't get to see it. And then neither one of us are big sage lovers and so we really scant on our sage use as well. Some of our moderately flavored herbs, our basil, mint, marjoram, oregano and those are really nice to use and of course on a lot of our Italian dishes mild flavored chives and parsley and dill to me is very mild flavored. I'm of Ukrainian descent and so we put it in our breads, we use it on our fish and so we use a lot of dill in our cooking and so it's something that we really like to use and my husband's gotten used to that as well. Now we'll get into talking about some of the herbs that Anas hits up and of course as the name implies, Anas is probably more of a licorice flavored herb. It's a sweetener for teas and infusions. It likes stuns and it's a mint family so it probably will be kind of invasive. The mints can tend to be naughty when you get them in the garden as many of you probably know and also that when you feel a mint, they will always have a square stem and so the mints, spear mints, those type of things if you pick them and if you try and roll them between two fingers, they will not roll because they have a four sided stem and now that's something that you can use as an identification piece as well. The flowers of this plant are attracted to bees and butterflies and hummingbirds and so if we want this plant in our garden to attract for our pollinators, this would be a good choice. This is kind of what it looks like. It's very green and leafy as a spicy kind of a purplish flower. Anas hits up is good in cookies. Those of you that like the pepper noose that you might want to use some of that. Cakes, bread, candy, beverages, pickle soup, these two and also fish. Basil is one of my favorites and Esther made sure, I talked to Esther this morning and she said to make sure to mention that Basil may have a problem with powdery mildew in our gardens in North Dakota so you'll want to make sure you're aware of that and if you do find it, please let your expansion agent know because we want to do some tracking as to where it happens. I guess if it's been a nice, funny location where there's a lot of air movement, we probably won't have a problem with it but if it's in shade or a shady area, we'll want to make sure that we check for that. Basil likes warm temperatures and so we won't want to put it outside before really 60 degrees and of course it comes in many different sizes and shapes and colors and we were talking last night in Mandan with one of my people that was attending and there's a chocolate basil and so those of us that are chocolate lovers, try that one, it's good and of course Basil goes with a lot of our pastas once again and pastos and that sort of type of thing and it really has a nice flavor, eggs, cheese, however you would like to use it. I kind of covered this, there's a sweet basil, holy basil, red ruben basil as we talked about and it also can be used as an ornamental and as with all the other herbs, basil makes sure that you pick it before it bolts and flowers. Those of you that like a lemon flavor, this lemon balm plant might be for you, it's an annual herb, popular in both fresh and dried, you want to keep the flowers pinched for best production and you want to plant them in a sunny location. It does poorly in May if it's really chilly and so we want to make sure that we have some warm temperatures for this one as well. Trives is one of my favorite and if you need a confidence builder and you're not a really good avid gardener, tides are so simple that anybody can grow them and so you should be able to try them and it's a perennial, so it readily self-seed if it's not deadheaded and of course it'll spread by the root system as well. It doesn't matter what kind of soil it is, like full sunlight and can be container grown as well. Here we can see a nice bunch in your picture of tides and it's an allium family which is the same as onion and a garlic and both types of things and the alliums that grow in our flower beds, those nice big brown puff walls so this is a really nice plant and we always hear sour cream and of course sour cream and chives and onions on our potatoes is one of the favorite dishes of this one. There's also a garlic tide and so if you're a garlic lover, there's a garlic flavored one as well, very aromatic. It's with white flowers May through June, 12 to 15 inches and it likes full sun as well, just like the other ones as well. Now, we'll get into the coriander, cilantro and Chinese parsley. These are all the same thing. Those of you that like your Mexican dishes, the cilantro is something in salsa. When I first had salsa with fresh cilantro, I thought, oh, I don't really like this but you know it kind of grows on you. I really like it once you get, don't put too much in it first and try and get used to that different flavor and then you'll grow to like it and then you can add more and add more. Okay, so cilantro is the plant and then of course it can be called Chinese parsley and of course when the cilantro goes to seed, it produces the coriander which is the seed or the herb or the spice that we use, okay? And cilantro is one that we can kind of plant sporadically in the garden at different months to make sure that we have some for the entire growing season. I'm watching my clock, Tom. Okay, and so this is the coriander, what it looks like in your picture and of course it's like a round ball seed. It's not the cheapest spice when you go buy it on the shelf and then you can see that we have the nice leafy green vegetable and of course it goes with any of our Mexican dishes. I make it in, I use it in a fresh salsa with tomatoes, onions, green peppers, jalapeño and some lemon juice and some pepper and then however spicy and then I also use it in my fruit salsa as well and it adds a really unique flavor to that and the recipes are in your handout. Bill as I talked about is one of my favorites. I like to pick it and use it in salads. I like to put it in my cucumbers. I love it on fish and so it's very nice and if you have it in your garden it's a self-seeding annual as many of you probably know and so it can get naughty and be spread all over your garden and but you can pull it out. Don't be afraid to pull it out. It'll come back and we seed and then the best thing is that to pick these leafy, ferny, the branch is really early in your season. You can lay it out in a baking sheet and lay it out in the sun and it'll do really nicely as far as drying is concerned and of course everybody knows that we use it in our pickles, our dill pickles that's the best spice for our dill pickles along with some garlic and some other things that we have in our recipes. Just make sure, of course they're not gonna get into a canning food preservation thing but make sure that they're processed correctly and garlic is another one that is quite popular. It's gained as far as a health food and then we can buy it fresh. We can buy it many times in like our big box stores of course carried in big jars. For us to do well, to do the well of course we have to plant it in the fall of the year. I have a neighbor lady that is really in the garlic and she plants it in the fall of the year and she sells numerous garlic plants or produce every year at our market garden in Mandan and she does really well with garlic and she really likes it. Curly parsley, there's several different types of parsley and we always see this basically in when we go to eat to a restaurant they'll add this as a garnish. They say that you should use it as like a breast freshener after you're done eating. It's very decorative and adds ambiance to your dinner plate and most of the time it is used in salads or as a garnish. Okay, Sage Esther talked about this last night. She talked quite a bit about Sage and she talked about what the different colors were that she had a variegated picture. I've had grown in my garden, I've had it as a purple, purple and green color which is very pretty and adds a lot of texture and variation in the garden and then I've also had the dark green and so check your local garden senders what's available. Sage is usually a perennial and will live for several years in the garden and so if you like it in meat, of course we use it in our stuffing for turkey. I don't hardly put any in because I'm not a Sage lover but it really adds a lot of good flavor as well. I really like Paragon, that's one of my favorite herbs and I like to use Paragon in a lot of my soups, especially the ones with the cream base. So if I make chicken and wild rice and potato soup, I like Paragon in those, especially those types of soups. They see it really adds, it's a sweet herb, I find it to be sweeter than a lot of our other ones and it can be a perennial but there's two varieties, there's the Russian and the French and the Russian is the one that's probably, it goes to be about six feet tall I believe and then the French is a little bit shorter and so you wanna try and figure out which one you would prefer in your garden or in your landscape. And so Paragon is another one of my favorite. French Paragon is usually hardy in zone four if it's given some winter protection and so those of us that I don't know about Fargo, I'm not real sure, Todd, we'll use, okay? Okay, yeah, so it needs protection but since we're usually warmer in Mandan and it is here in Fargo so it'll probably do okay out more in the western part of the state. And Rosemary is another one, I cook a lot of lamb and so I like it in my meat, beef, it tastes really well, pork and lamb, I like Rosemary, now there's people that don't like it. Rosemary is kind of, it looks like kind of like evergreen type thing, it's got like little meat-a-like leaves as you can see in the picture. And it can be kind of strong for some people but just don't put so much on and then you'll probably like it a little bit better. Rosemary also can be grown inside the home and then I've also seen it pruned and decorated for those of you that like it for Christmas and don't have a Christmas tree, I've seen it decorated and then we were at a garden center in the fall of the year and they had them all decorated and pruned up like a Christmas tree and decorated and so it can be used as an ornamental for Christmas time as well, if you like Rosemary. And Esther talked a lot about time and she especially talked about this lemon one right here and if you like that lemony flavor on fish in your teas, it's one that will do really well for you and really will add a lot of nice flavor to your dishes. Okay, oregano and of course we all know we like to have that on our pizza. My husband and I, we used to own a pizza in a beer restaurant when we lived in Bowman and so I got to experiment with a lot of these herbs when I got to help cook the kitchen and so we would add, and we had a hard time finding a good sauce and so we experimented trying to add our own herbs so that we would get our sauce to taste just right and so oregano and it really makes a really nice decorative plant as you can see the leaves also are kind of like hairy and fuzzy, much like marjoram, which has an oregano-like flavor. It's also got a fuzzy type leaf, very delicate type. Marjoram prefers well-brained soil and room to spread and you can cut this back if it gets woody on you and it'll regrow and so it's kind of like your lilacs if you want to just get them to regrow for you. Fennel, I tried fennel for the first time last year I got, I have one of those memberships in a vegetable basket type thing and there was fennel in there and everybody when I went to pick it up everybody was asking, what is this, you know? And so I had a neighbor that had it in her garden when I lived in Bowman. This one can grow very, very tall, five to eight feet and she had it right on the corner, right inside by her porch as she walked in her house. It resembles dill, resembles dill when it's growing up and it can cross-pollinate with dill and so you want to make sure that you keep it probably separated and it's good in French and Italian cuisines and classes for fish and in mayonnaise. Spearmint, this is one of the naughtiest plants that you can put into your yard and so I wouldn't recommend it. It's one that just kind of takes away on you. It has a matted creeping root system that spends up the rec square stem for about two feet high but if you like spearmint and want to use it in many of your cooking or in your teas it can be used as well. Kevin Lyle, my mom used this when we were growing up as kids and we used it in tea, we made it as tea and we put some honey in it and when we had a bad cold that's what she would feed us and that was supposed to help us get better soon. And so you can grow herbs in many different sizes, shapes and locations. And if here it shows that you should probably mark them so that you keep straight what they are and then you can put some of them in containers, protect them so that they will live longer in your garden throughout our early spring. I mean our springs are not always frost free as our falls are kind of chilly sometimes too. And so we've had frost in the end and in June and so you might want to protect some of those tender ones and like I said, a reminder is that make sure you don't put your base a lot before it warms up. And I took a lot of the information out of the herbs and garden publication which is available and many of you have it. And then some stuff from University of Minnesota and things like that. And then the recipes that you have, many of them I've tried and used in many different presentations that I've had. And so I think you'll enjoy them and just kind of vary your dishes and your herbs so that you can get different flavors and tastes to get rid of some of that salt and sodium that we don't really need in our diet. Those of us that are on high blood pressure medication. So if there are any questions. Okay, Jackie, we got some questions out there and Keaton coming everybody. First of all, let's talk about chives. Can you eat the flowers on the chives or just the stems? Sure, why not? Sure, why not? Yeah, they should be. It's an allium, yep. Yeah, it's an allium, so they should be very edible. How about, what are some uses for lemon balm? Can you grow a lemon balm in North Dakota? Well, we can grow it here as an annual. It won't stay the perennial over the winter. And of course, anything with a lemon balm, lemon, of course, fish is an excellent fish that we can put in our lemon, for lemon balm. We could use it in peas. I've used lemon also when I've cooked lamb and used lemon rind and actually slices of lemon and you would also be able to use lemon balm with lamb. I'm sure that a lot of people are just kinda looking at me in the audience, like lamb, it's just kind of a dirty word. And it's a- A four letter word. It's a four letter word, yes. So careful. But if you cook it correctly and if you have questions on cooking lamb, I can help you with that. But it's a very delicious meat. You just have to make sure you cook it right. And so it's fun. How about, is there a best time to date, harvest your herbs? Okay, you should harvest your herbs earlier in the morning because that would be the most flavorful. We also wanna make sure we harvest them before they bolt or get blossoms. Or if they do get blossoms, you wanna pinch those off. And if you pinch them off or pinch that plant back, of course it's gonna get more robust, more bushy, and that sort of type of thing so that it'll look nicer in your garden as well. How about, have you ever started herbs from seed? I have not. I usually, I do, I don't because I don't have the window space to use. Some of them are easy, like I've made, I've done borage. I guess I shouldn't say I have not because I've had borage in my garden, very simple to grow, you can grow it from seed. And of course, dill is the one that you can easily grow from seed. Cilantro? Cilantro, yes, easily. Those three are very, very easy. Yeah, yeah, sure, why not give them a try, huh? Yes. Yeah. How about, have you ever infused herbs in any oils? No, I have not. Okay. Have you, Tom? I'm not an infused type of guy. Sorry. You know, I like, you know, when you go to some of these restaurants, sometimes you get herbs, especially garlic in some of these oils and it really tastes pretty good. Well, you like garlic, you're a pizza parlor owner. So there you go, what do you expect? How about, Jack, you've never heard of, of course you have, but what is borage? What is that thing? What is it? It is an herb. It's a green plant. I think Esther talked about it last night quite a bit. It doesn't get very tall, about 12 inches, and then it shoots out a flower that's purple and it's very easy to grow and you put it in your garden to attract pollinators. And so if you have issues with pollinators for your cucumbers, squash, that sort of type of thing, plant some boards and that will really help you out. It can get a little naughty, does it fell seeds, but just pull it out, give some to a friend. Okay, that's way, it's way to be friendly. Yes. How about, are there some chives that don't have flowers? Is there any difference using this? Oh, here, are there a difference using for chives? Is there a difference using chives with the stems, with flowers, versus the stems without flowers? Okay, any time you let an herb go to flower, the plant itself will be less flavorful, Tom. And so. Okay, makes sense. And so once it starts to reproduce feed, it loses flavor. It's trying to reproduce. I see. Here's a comment from Norma out there. A good way to dry herbs is to put herb leaves on a tray and turn on the oven light. Place the tray near the top of the oven and leave overnight. That might work. How about that? It might be warm enough in there. Yes, that probably will work. Thank you, Norma. How about do herbs grow well in containers? Some of them do, some of them don't do so well. And if they have enough sun, they will do just fine. And of course, you're going to have to pinch them back. And then you're also gonna have to make sure that they are correctly fertilized. Because if you are picking all the time and harvesting them, you will need to fertilize them to make sure that they come back as a robust plant or keep growing in a container. Have you ever tried chocolate mint? No, I haven't. It's highly recommended for children. How about have you ever tried lemon verbena or lemon basil? Yes. Lemon basil I really like. Yeah. Awesome. You can just pick it off and chew on it, it's good. Chew on it? Yeah. As I said, I get high on that kind of stuff. I just love it. It's a nice break in the garden. When you're pulling leaves and you just need a break, just go over to the basil patch and get a little in your nose. Yep. It's legal. Yeah, it's legal.