 Welcome. Happy Summer Stride. We are here today for a presentation about herbs and edible gardening, and this is a partnership with the UC Master Gardeners of San Mateo and San Francisco Counties. This is Summer Stride and it is not just for kids, it's for all ages all over, and you need to just do your 20 hours of reading and get your iconic San Francisco Public Library tote bag with that beautiful art you see there by Kailani Juanita, a Bay Area children's book illustrator and our chosen artist this summer from Chronicle Books. We cannot have a Summer Stride without our friends in the San Francisco Library for supporting all of the amazing work we do and continue to do. Thank you, friends. We want to welcome you here to the unceded land of the Ohlone Tribal people and acknowledge the many raw, Mutish Ohlone Tribal groups and families as the right of stewards of the lands on which we reside. Our libraries committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations. We encourage you to learn more about first-person culture and land rights, and are committed to hosting events and providing educational resources on these topics. In that link that I put in the chat box which I'll put in again, you can find a great reading list about land rights and native culture. I'm also putting a little link to a map that tells us what native land you are on. You can look that up wherever you are and I'll let you know what treaties are there and what native land you're occupying. A couple of campaigns and quick news about the library. We have a new book club in downtown, Total SF, part of San Francisco Chronicles, Heather Knight and Peter Hartlove, Total SF, and we will be discussing the end of the Golden Gate, writers on loving and leaving, and sometimes leaving San Francisco, and we'll be featuring Daniel Handler and Gary Kamaya on August 24th. We have a bi-monthly read called On The Same Page, and this has been going on for years, years, years, years, and this July and August, we're celebrating the author Jacqueline Woodson and her book, Red at the Bone. Jacqueline Woodson is typically a YA and children's book author. She will be in the virtual library, August 12th, discussing her youth and focused books. So come check that out, read the book, come to the book club, it's very fun, it's very intimate and a great way to connect to each other and our loneliness of sheltering in place. Later today, 2 p.m., please come back, come on back. Our San Francisco Public Library has a jail and reentry services department, which we are so proud of the work they do. It's a small and mighty team, but this program is in connection with this department, and we'll be screening the prison within, and this is about a San Quentin program. Our neighbors and citizens of San Quentin go through a social justice and reform program, and this is all about that. And we will be joined after the screening by filmmakers and Troy Williams, who is one of the participants of Prison Within, and also has now just become an amazing community leader. So 2 p.m. today, one time only, will not be recorded, so you must come in person. Every Tuesday throughout summer, we've been having author talks, and that's straight up from June till the end of August, July, August 31st is our last author talk print season. This Tuesday, we have Cheney Kwok and Oscar Villalon of Zizava in Convo. Later in the month, we have Chronicles McLaSalle, the film critic with a new book called Dream State, California in the Movies. And then I'm gearing these couple last events for people who might be in the audience today and want to enjoy this. If you don't know who Shanta Nimbark Sharoff is, you should, she's a co-founder of Other Avenues and one of the hugest food justice people in our Bay Area and started a lot of the food movements here in our Bay Area. She's a powerhouse of a woman and just an amazing, sweet human being too. So come check her out next Saturday. And then September, it's coming, but September 21st, we will have a drought tolerant gardening and with our friends from the San Francisco Native Plant Society. So on with today, I'm so happy to have today Kathy Fleming and Cindy Morris. Kathy Fleming loves creating a balance at her peninsula home by growing culinary herbs and flowers in containers and her perennial landscape for more than 30 years. She uses the herbs and edible flowers in many recipes either fresh and or dried and loves sharing them with friends and neighbors. Fleming has been a SMSF U-C-C-E master gardener for 15 years and has always enjoyed speaking and sharing ideas about this passion. Cindy Morris is a member of the master gardeners of San Mateo in San Francisco. She began her affair with plants in the fourth grade while visiting the Ferry Morris seed company where her father worked. Morris loved peeking into the labs and seeing all of the experiments. The best part was picking out some seeds packets to take home and grow. Morris has worked as an interior plant scaper for several years, placing plants and commercials home settings. And we will be doing Q and A. Please use the Q and A function. We also have Maggie Ma here today to help with our Q and A. So please try to stick your Q and A in the Q and A function and YouTube viewers, I will help bring back any questions that you would have. And with that, I'm now going to turn it over to Kathy Fleming and Cindy Morris. Well, thank you for coming everyone and thank you so much, Anissa, for the great introduction. First of all, a little bit about our program before we get started about herbs and edible flowers, but we're members of the master gardener program. We were educated by them and fall under the San Mateo, San Francisco master gardener program for the UC cooperative extension. We volunteer our time to provide research-based knowledge and information on home horticulture, integrated pest management and sustainable landscape practices to the residents of both counties. So without further ado, let's go to our first slide and this next slide is about some topics we want to cover. And so what I want to also tell you is the photos on the slides, you'll see there's usually names of the particular plant or flower. Cindy and I both use common names. So you'll find this one in particular is borage. The one on the cover slide was lavender. That wasn't labeled, but it was background. So you'll be able to see those. Many of these photos were taken in Cindy's backyard in my backyard in Elkis branch in Pescadero, where we like to go sometimes. But so that's a little bit about us. And so you can find our website and everything on the last page here at the end and we can talk to you about that. And if you want to become a master gardener too, we can answer some more questions on it. But as you can see from the slide, we have a lot to cover, but we have fun with it. We go from one to the other. Usually in a seamless manner, we will take questions. So we'll ask, are there any questions related to this section that we just talked about? So Cindy will say that and I will say that and continue to put your questions in there and Maggie will field them for us. So we'll go to the next slide because just like vegetables and landscape plants, herbs are divided into three different groups. Now as gardeners, you probably already know what those three different groups are. We can start with the first one, the perennial. So an herb basically is any plant, what it just says there, any plant, season, flowers for flavoring food and beverages. Herbs have been in man's life for hundreds, probably thousands of years. I don't know the exact year, but we all know they've been used for centuries. So your first section is perennial. And when you think of a perennial plant or a perennial herb or even a perennial edible flower, you think of the Mediterranean herbs because those grow on a hillside. They come back every year, they get lush and full. So the perennial plant is a plant that continues growing for several years. It goes through repeated yearly flowering and seed producing and cycles before it weakens and you might cut some of the back and it may grow again. So just think, like I said, the Mediterranean herbs, thyme, oregano, rosemary, enolavander. So, and all of these herbs get flowers on them, believe it or not. So we're gonna go back to that first slide though at the slide before and go with the annual. An annual plant, we know what that is, is one that grows once a year. It completes a life cycle from seed to flowering, to reseeding in a year. And some of you may say, but my basil comes back or my aniseps comes back, which are two annuals that for one growing season, they come back because they drop seed before the fall and they rejuvenate again, but usually you have to replant. They die back the end of the first year and then you start over the following year. And some of the examples, like I said, were basil, aniseps, cilantro, borage and dill or some more. And then the third one is a biennial, which is the rare, it has the least varieties in its category, but it requires two years or two growing season. The first year it grows leaves, stems and roots. And then it goes dormant and then the next year it grows again, but the next year it will flower and produce seeds before dying. So that's a good example of that in our area is parsley, because parsley is a biennial in a temperate climate. And you can find some lists of a couple of the others that are like that too. So now it's time to switch. Okay. We switch the next slide. We switch the next slide, gardening growing basics. Thank you, Cindy. I just love herbs. I'm so happy to be talking about them. I really like herbs because they're just so versatile. You can eat them, you could dry them, you can craft with them, and you can make little gifts. I don't know if you can see this little bouquet I made, but I make it and I give it as a hostess gift. I have some yarrow in here and mint, oregano, verbena, California fuchsia, hummingbird mint, I have mint. It just, it smells incredible, and it makes a really nice hostess gift if you're going to a party with a bottle of wine. Anyway, the location of our herbs is probably the most important thing. We need our herbs to be in six to eight hours of light a day. The light is important because the sun is what activates the volatile oils in the herb that gives it its taste, and that's really important, of course. So some people say, I can grow it in less light, but the flare might be a little less. So six to eight hours of sun a day, and if you're making an herb garden in the ground, you wanna make sure you put the taller herbs in the back and the shorter ones in the front, and it's really nice to put it next to the kitchen if you can. So when you're cooking, you can just run out and snap some basil or thyme or whatever you need, very nice. And plus, you know where the herbs have been. You know what's on them. You know that there's no poison. It's great, nice fresh herbs. Herbs like a nice soil. They do grow, well, not all herbs, but the herbs that we consume around here, oregano, thyme, sage grow in the Mediterranean. They grow on the side of the mountain, so their soil requirements isn't very fussy, but they do like a nice soil. They don't resist it, and a little compost on top with a little mulch on top of that is perfect. Herbs are drought tolerant, the Mediterranean herbs anyway, and they don't require a lot of water. I water mine maybe two times a week in containers. They're very well suited for containers because they have small roots, so they do very well in containers, which makes it nice because you can move them wherever you, you know, closer to your home. I don't use a lot of fertilizer in my herbs because fertilizer makes herbs grow, and when herbs grow, they create flowers, which is not, we don't want flowers on our herbs because it takes away from the taste of the herbs, which we'll talk about later. But it's not really necessary to fertilize herbs, just give it a good dose of compost, that's all they need. They like, you could put in a drip irrigation into your herbs, that would be great if you can. And there's a lot of native herbs that are very good, native sages, and I have a little herb garden at St. Carlos Library, and I have a little section with native herbs, and it's really fun. I have some really nice native herbs, and they smell wonderful. And I think that's basically it. They're pretty easy, really. They don't require much, and I think you'll have great enjoyment with them. So, Kathy. Thank you. Before you go to the next slide though, I wanted to say one part about this photo, I didn't label it, but as you can see on the photo, that well, that is lavender there, and that's all in the ground. This is one herb or edible flower that doesn't, we don't recommend really, you don't have to put it in a container, because it grows beautifully in the ground, like Cindy said, with barely any special care or anything. So, you can see it out there in front of, that's in front of my front door, kind of with the lavender and already choked, and then a perennial, Heather, I think that is, I can't remember what comes after it, but. Lavender is considered an herb. Yeah, and it's a hardy herb. These just love it, so we'll get to that in a minute. So, let's check out some more edible flowers as we go to the next slide. Okay. Edible flowers is kind of a special passion between both Cindy and myself. We started with this, so it's gonna have to be a separate talk all in its own later, but to add it on this was a no-brainer for us because herbs grow special flowers anyway, but like Cindy said, we don't really want them if we're using the herb. But first, let's identify some edible flowers and do that first. So, you might have seen these as you're walking in your neighborhood garden or something, a calendula. Calendula, the petals you can take off of them and use them in salad. Any flower, I tend to take the stamen out, the middle part, I eat the petals mostly, and that's how that works. So, you wanna treat flowers as delicate greens, as a delicate salad. You would cut, if I was gonna use this in a salad tonight, I'd cut it off and come and rinse it in some cool water in a bowl and let it air dry on the countertop, put it in the fridge until we're gonna have dinner. Then the next slide, you'll see it's sage and the sage has flower on it. So, that's a purple flower and I love it in salads too. I love the flavor of it. So, usually in my garden, I have two sages and I have two parsley. First of all, the sage is there. I want the flower because I use it for foods and things like that. So, this is the one that won't be that good next year. So, I will change it out. Don't tell him that though. Anyway, and within that pot is a scented geranium. Again, scented geraniums we love. This is a rose scented geranium. I got it from my auntie and it's a very special one to me and we use it in our salads, the petals only. I don't use the greens on the scented geraniums unless they're for a show or something, but they don't eat that. And an assertion is super common and you've probably seen these around. This is the Alaska mix. Again, my favorite, the photos only get my favorites in there and the flower is delicious, I love it but that leaf is amazing. You take some of the leaf off and put it in your salad greens. It has a slight peppery flavor, similar to a watercress, but it's delicious. So, we have that with edible flowers. You know, the Calangula I believe is a poor man's saffron. Yes, you can use it as like you would a saffron. It's got a peppery taste. It's really very tasty, a little bit of information. It is and you wanna make sure that you grow your flowers so you know like Cindy said, there's no spray on them or anything or you purchase from a farmer's market where you know the farmer and it all works out. So for use on these mostly delicate flowers like you use in salad or cold foods or at the end when you're plating something and you want to add a pop of color to your plate to that, the Palaeus solar cauliflower or something. So that more fibrous flowers like lavender of course, you can bake with and put in sugars, lemon thyme or something you can use in a shortbread cookie. So there's all sorts of things you can do with all these wonderful little flowers. So culinary herbs are little gems of the garden for pollinators. So we'll see from the next slide. How are we? Kathy, before you go on, I wonder if there's any questions about growing herbs. Magical flowers too. It might be applicable at this time. Yes, we have several. One is someone would like to know what herbs and edible plants can grow in pots in a San Francisco apartment? Almost all herbs can grow in a pot. Just thyme is really good in a pot. Oregano can grow in a pot, but you need to give it a kind of a big one because it's mint. I grow mint in a pot. Rosemary in a pot. Rosemary, basil, strawberries, chives, parsley. And then there's persimmon too. Grows in a pot mixed with those. You can mix like three or four things together in one pot. Yes, you can make a little garden. And it's beautiful. Is there another person, Maggie? Yes, we have several. Someone else would like to know what kind of herbs attract birds. Well, that's kind of our next slide, but they all do. Okay. They all do because they all have color and scent and things that all the pollinators love. Okay. Someone else would like to know how often do you harvest herbs and how do you keep the plant going? We're gonna talk about that as time goes on. Yeah, we have a little section. I wanted to say about the birds, that hummingbirds like tubular flowers. Mm-hmm. If you are interested in feeding birds, if you're interested in feeding a hummingbird, make sure you have some tubular flowers in your garden. Okay. Also, the hummingbirds tend to favor my flowering sage. When it is flowering, it's not exactly a super tubular flower, but they go to that and maybe it's just... It is a little bit tubular though. I mean, they can get their beak in there. Yeah. So sage, let's say sage for hummingbirds. Someone else would like to know if lavender is a native herb, I'm assuming that means California native. It's a Mediterranean herb. It's native to the Mediterranean area. Yes, definitely. Okay. Then we have someone who would like to know how you control bolting. This might be something you're gonna be getting to. I can talk about bolting. One of the big problems is cilantro. And cilantro and parsley, they bolt as well as basil. Kathy will talk about harvesting and what to do with basil a little later. But the nursery cell cilantro in the summer, you'll see it on the shelves now. And cilantro does not like hot weather. Cilantro grows in cool weather. It does very well on the coast and in the city. And so when we try to grow it in the summer, for our summer fruits and things, it bolts. And so the secret to that is first, grow it in the fall or the spring. And second, you have to keep it cut. You have to constantly be cutting back your herbs. So we'll talk more about that, but that's my bid on cilantro. Okay. That sounds great. So is it time to move on? Yeah. Thank you, Maggie. We'll come back with more questions in a little bit when Cindy reminds us. But this part about pollinators, I got a little crazy nuts with the butterflies in the larvae and everything with the sheer slides because I just love them in the garden. I love them all over. I'm looking outside my window right now and I kind of see a couple of them. They cruise around. The butterflies do. So they're looking for a place probably to lace mages. I'm not sure. I try to follow them really closely, but you can have all sorts of this particular plant on the right is an anus hissum. It is an annual, but it does come back because that flower there that you see is dropping seeds. And that particular flower isn't dried yet, but it's getting there. And the anus swallowtail, which that butterfly is, and a couple other butterflies really just love it and love all the flowers that happen on the herbs or in your garden or the nasturtiums. So every one of these herbs and edible flowers has color to it, has scent to it, has something to it that attracts all the pollinators, not only the butterflies and its larvae, which is over here. And I love that little guy's face. That's how he got in there. But the birds, the bees in the front of my yard with the lavender plants, two to three kinds of bees all the time in that full now because it's summer. So they're working it hard and they're gonna make honey to all the neighbors, right? So I love mixing these herbs and edible flowers with the rest of the landscape. And that's kind of what we do. And that's what my pollinator, our pollinator slide is all about because the beneficial features help you create a balance in your garden, front, back, side, or a container on the balcony. It doesn't matter. You'll see the balance there once you get going with it. So help create your balance and plant some and we'll learn to use them. This Anasissa is used beautifully in salads. Whether it's the leaf I do use on this, I slice it like I would a basil leaf if you're gonna put a knife on it, you slice it that way or you can take the flower and just flip it back and get some pretty flower on top of your salad or for garnish on a cheese plate or something like that. So I'm really into how, I love the way food tastes, but I'm into what it looks to as my friends know. So with that in mind, we'll keep this one if there's questions on pollinators to go with the propagation part. And before Cindy starts with her stem cuttings, I just wanted to show you that there's several ways to, and in inexpensive ways to get more plants out of the ones you have or get more plants out of the one your neighbor has is by propagating. So today we'd like to show you two particular ways, even though I have four up there, this stem cuttings and the divisions, sowing seeds we'll do a short version of and transplanting is basically the end part of the divisions which I'll remind you of when I talk about that. So Cindy's gonna show us how to do some stem propagating and that's lots of fun. So... And if I could have a full screen so everyone could see what I'm doing. Is that Kathy? Hi, Kathy. Could we get me on full screen? If not, it's okay. We're just working side by side. I have a piece of mint here that, thank you. I have a piece of mint here that I'm gonna propagate. I picked this piece of mint because it has a lot of lovely growth at the nodes. So before we start, should we show the picture of the node? So back to the next slide. The next slide will show what we're gonna be doing. So if we could, could we show that? If not, it's no big deal. Okay. So I have this stem and I want to show you, I want to be close up so I wanted to show you the nodes. So when we propagate, we wanna propagate on new growth. We wanna propagate on new growth because that's where all the meristemic cells are. The plant sends its growth material to the growth area. So obviously that means it's got a little more juice than the old stems down here. So let's cut this off. And I'm going to take some of the big leaves off. Oh, there we are. There's, if we could blow that up a little bit. When you said. There we go, thank you. Okay, so you see there, there's a node, a couple of nodes, and there's a couple of leaves on top. So that's what we're going for right now. That's where the meristemic fluid is, the cells, and that's what we need to start growth. Okay, so back to me. Sorry. So what I'm gonna do is take all the big leaves off of this stem because when we propagate, there won't be any roots. So we don't really need a lot of leaves to bring energy into those roots. It'll overwhelm the cutting. So here we have, as you can see, these are little nodes where the green, little green leaves are coming out. I'm gonna remove those with my shears because instead of leaves, I want roots to grow out of them. So here we go. I'm sorry, my sheer stick. Okay, and then I'm gonna cut it right here. So now I have a node and leaves and I might even take some of these leaves off. So remember that there's no roots so we don't need a lot of stems. The next thing I'm gonna do is I'm going to take some root hormone and I'm going to drench the node in the root hormone which is additional meristemic cells. So now I have my stem full of root hormone and I'm going to take my four inch container with perlite in it and make a hole with a chopstick. Chopsticks are great gardening tools because I wanna drop this in without losing the meristemic powder that I put on and then I have my cutting and then I'll water it, keep it watered. I'll keep it in a cool area until it starts rooting. We use perlite because perlite is very porous and it lets the air circulate around the bottom of the node so that we can develop roots. We need air to develop roots. So that's basically how you keep it watered. I like to put water underneath and just keep water underneath and it's constantly wet. And it'll start to grow. One thing about stem cutting is that you have to be patient because it will take, it'll take, could be six months before it starts to grow. Okay, back to you. I don't think it takes mint six months to start to grow. Mint's growing pretty easy. I mean, it has to go through a lot. It has to develop roots and excuse me. The edible geraniums or scented geraniums, they're easy to propagate with nodes. Lavender we've done before, a little pick here with lavender and several others we've done with stem cutting. So we can get that. So we can get that list later if there is a list or write one up for you. So let's talk about dividing a little bit. We'll go to the next slide. So dividing is something you do with your perennial plants. So a perennial herb is no different. So you want to keep it fresh. It'll need to be divided or separated probably every three years or so. Some people do it two years. Some people wait to five if you forget about it or some people wait till it just overgrows in the container that where it is. So if you can get it at two to three years, it's optimal. Then that's for its overall health. If you don't do that, the herb will stunt. As you've seen, oh my oregano died out. I don't know why it weakens. It loses flavor. So that's why you want to do it. The best time to do is in the spring because like everything else in the spring, the hormones get started. The plant's going, all right, it's warm. We're gonna start to grow now. Let's see how many branches I can put out there and things like that start to happen. The division on the plant is less stressed. So we're gonna start here when you're going to divide a plant, whether it's in the ground or in a container like this one was. And as you could see, I let that little picture there, that little one stay in the container a little too long but that's okay. But you wanna make sure a couple of days before that you water it, that you just water it well, especially if it's in the ground because you wanna work with a plant that's gonna keep its soil intact where it's coming from. You wanna carry some of that to the new, to the new vehicle container, whatever you wanna call it. So what I think I'd like to do on the second picture here, you see a root system at the bottom of that plant and that shows you that's way overdone and you see a little tool right beside it. So what I'd like to do Anissa is to go live if that's okay and I'm gonna show you this with example I have here at home in my kitchen of course, because that's where I'm best. And this is called a Hori-Hori knife. This is what I use to divide or you can use any kitchen implement that has, that is sharp. As you see it has the serrated on one side and it's just sharp on the other side. This is pretty much mine in the house and my husband uses it. I always keep track where'd you put my Hori-Hori knife because I always wanna get it back because it's important to me, it's the only one I have. You don't really need to sharpen these because they have that kind of blade and I can't think of it right now. Let's stay sharp. What is it? The raided. The raided, thank you, or carbon steel or something, stainless steel. I'm not sure. This is my herb de jure, my herb of the day that really needs to get out of its pot. So I've been slagging a little bit, busy with other things and not doing some of the gardening that I was hoping to do. As you can see, this is a lemon thyme. This is probably one of my favorite, or top 10, I'm not gonna say favorite anymore because I get enamored with a lot of them. But lemon thyme is super for me. I love it. It's great on fish, it's great on veggies when I dry it or you can lay fresh stems across the top as you're cooking. So we're on that in our cooking show. But anyway, this is lemon thyme and I'm gonna pull it out to show you. I'm not actually gonna divide it because I'm not into making a mess on the kitchen table here. But as you can see, when I pull it out, do you see that root system? Oh my gosh, I waited way too long, but never fear, it's gonna get divided like the other plants. So let's go back to the slides and I'll show you the second slide of dividing and show you how you do the separate little pieces. So we already watered it and we took it out. Kathy, would you divide when the plant is blooming? Until it's... Usually in the spring, it's not gonna be blooming. Okay, so no, I would, but I don't wanna wait till next year to do this because it's ready and it's a lemon thyme and I like you Cindy, work with herbs enough where I can make it happy. Okay. And I'm not making it happy with anything special besides the next steps. Okay. Yeah, normally I wouldn't do that. So my lemon thyme right now is similar to this oregano here. So we'll go to the next slide and show you what to do. Again, like Cindy said in Growing Basics, the soil that I'm gonna put, I'm putting this in another container because I'm making it into four plants. This oregano I did and put it in containers and gave to friends and neighbors, that kind of thing. So my soil in there is just basically my good soil that I get from down the street where I get my soil and put a little bit of compost in, just like a little quarter of a cup maybe, if that in mixing with the dirt and then get it already. So you wanna make sure your hand is on top of that hori hori knife or your kitchen knife or anything like that because we don't need accidents in the garden when we're working. We don't use gloves and we do this, my husband and I just cause we can feel it better, but a good medical glove that we have out now because there's been so many things with last year in place. We have a lot of thin gloves now so we could put one of those on, but I would cut right down the middle. And then on this particular one, we cut it in four pieces. We wanna trim the roots a little bit because there was a lot down there in this lemon time there's roots as you saw. So we'll trim some of those off or loosen them up a little because these herbs, the Mediterranean herbs are pretty party for that kind of action. Also we trim some of the top off, the crown. You place it in the soil, I said with a little compost and I really didn't mean a little compost or put it in the ground. You wanna backfill or put your soil mixed back into the pot or the ground, check it for evenness, that kind of thing and water it well. You water it well the first time and then you let it get a little dry because like the herb, I mean, you don't wanna let it dry out but you don't wanna overwater it too. So there's a fine line there and once you start working with the herbs a little bit you'll get to know, okay, it does need water. It's not like a tomato where it's gonna completely juke over on the third day because it has a lot of moisture but it will let you know when it needs water. So what I'm going to do with this lemon time when I trim the foliage is trim all this flower off. So it's gonna go back down to it's little, it's a little piece of plant. You don't need to show me, but here's the flower. I'm right behind it. Ooh, that looks good. And cut it off and I'll have a couple of new starts if anyone wants a lemon time. So let's see. Kathy and Cindy, we have several questions that are with regard to the pollinator slides that you showed earlier. So I thought we should perhaps look at that. A number of people wanted to know what the name of the purple plant is but it showed on the photo with the butterfly. Okay, it's one of my top 10s. It's called Anis Hissa. It is in January or actually Augustache is a botanical name. But it go by Anis Hissa. What can I say? So it's one of my top 10s. And in my yard it comes back, not necessarily the same plant because in the winter when I do my maintenance on my herbs and flowers, I cut back to the top of the wood. So this will grow from that. Or you can keep it and let it regrow the next year because all of those, that flower has seeds all throughout it. So as that flower dries out, leave it in your garden. I mean, if it gets pale purple, it's okay. It doesn't look like super fresh. It might even turn gray, but that's the seed that's going in your soil if you want no more plants. Now I will tell you one thing though, this plant is not like mint where it gets rampant in the garden but it shows up a lot of places that you're not sure it might show up because it does reproduce easily from its seed at my house. I live in San Bruno. I have a not so foggy temperate climate cooler than where Cindy is in St. Carlos. So we have different things happening in our gardens. This is particularly good up here. I originally got my first plant from a master gardener who lived in South San Francisco. So that's kind of how that works. Is there a number of questions, Maggie? Those, there were a number of questions about that. We have others that you maybe are going to be addressing shortly. One is with regard to scented geraniums. A person who's asking the question doesn't know what type it is because it came from slips from a friend and she wants us to know if all scented geraniums are edible. Well, I'll take this at first, Cindy, sorry. Well, the flowers are. So as long as it's scented, so the way to tell if you don't know what it is, is to take the leaf and rub the leaf, smell your fingers and what does the aroma come up? Is it an apple smell? Is it a minty smell or a rose smell? There's different fragrances of them. And so I have the rose scented geranium is my favorite. I also have a lemon scented geranium which gives off a purple flower which right now I cut back a month ago so I don't have any in my garden to show you. But the rose scented is definitely rose. Now, there's another one in the backyard that's mint, apple mint it's called, and it has a big leaf and it is a scented geranium. It has a big leaf, it's kind of soft and the flower is white and wispy. It's very pretty, but what we do with that is you can use the flower if you want but I use those leaves because they're so large and I put them on a platter or plate because remember I'm a lot about visual too. And I make it into a cheese plate or for appetizer plate or something. And the leaf lets off a little slight apple mint flavor and your friends or family, relatives, whatever don't know what hit them when they pick up. What is that that I'm eating? Well, it's a piece of Gouda that has the apple mint flavor from the leaf below it. I would recommend because there's lots of different what we call geraniums and it couldn't be confusing because I have small geraniums that look like they should be edible, but I don't think they are. So when you buy a geranium or in your case you got a slip so I would research that and make sure I know what it is before I ever ate it. Yeah, they're the wide variety of geraniums and... If it's got fragrance on the leaf though it should be one of the... Well geraniums have scent too, all geraniums have scent. So anyway, I think always with edible flowers research what you're eating before you eat it and then you'll be safe. Okay, so should we move on a little bit or what? Do you have another question, Maggie? I think that's good for right now. And is there any propagation questions? Let's see, we have... We still have one more segment. Okay, one person wants to know, do you plant... How do you plant according to what becomes invasive? What you put in pots versus the ground? So which plants... Plants versus plants. Anything in the main family is invasive. Sorry, anything in the mint family is invasive. The mint family. And you will find this out by when you buy it, you will put that into the computer, that name, and you'll look it up and it will tell you what family it's in. Many herbs are in the mint family and are aggressive. Oregano is one. Mint, of course. The herb that Kathy showed is in the mint family. So the mint family is the one you want to keep in pots. Okay, something... A clarification of something I believe you said, Kathy, is what did you mean by putting it on a cheese plate? If I'm putting... If I have friends over and we're having cheese and I put the different cheeses on a plate, I put the leaf underneath the cheese. Kind of like it's sitting on that on the plate. It's not getting eaten, it's not... It's there more because it looks nice. That's what I meant by cheese plate. Does that help? So we should really move on to a little bit on seeds. Okay, let's move on. And it's finding really quick because we have a whole another section to go through. Okay, we're going to talk a little bit about seeding. We'll see if we can get our computer to seeding. Move ahead. Well, I'll just start talking. Here we are, sowing seeds. Really great way to grow herbs is to sow seeds. Some herbs don't really grow well by seeds. Anything in the mint family is better grown by cutting than by seed. So my first recommendation is to read the back of the seed packet and all the information you need for growing seed, the depth of seed, how much water it needs, what time of year to plant, how long it will take before you get a fruit or vegetable or whatever. And so once you get that planted, you will grow, like in the picture, a cotyledon. Now the cotyledon in this picture is not the top leaves, but it's the two little leaves coming up the stem. Those two little leaves are sent up by the ovary, the seed, the ovary in the seed to nourish the seed so that it can grow roots. So when you start growing and you see these two little leaves pop up, you do not wanna pull it out of the ground and put it in a pot. You wanna wait for true leaves to grow, which are totally different than the cotyledons. So be patient, let the cotyledons come up and then let the true leaves grow. And once you get about three or four leaves, true leaves, then you can pluck it out and put it in a container, a bigger container and let it grow from there. Okay? Okay, let's go to transplanting and then we'll finish up the propagation section. And transplanting before we even get to the slide is okay because it's similar to the division to planting it. So let's move to the next slide to transplanting. And you'll see that these are just simply little plants that you get from a nursery or a friend. These happen to be from Elkis Ranch when we were doing our spring garden market. So we wanna transplant these, we wanna take them out, put them in a bigger place. You just wanna make sure it's watered well, just like the division one, lift it out of the container on the day after you water it. And it comes out in one section usually. Your soil is going to be all prepared where you're going to put it. If it's in the ground, the hole should be twice the size, same thing with the container, the little bigger so it has room to grow. We place it and refill it. Maybe put some mulch on top, which I failed to say with the other ones is we use mulch a lot on top of everything. So it works the soil, it might have to replace it in a year, but we'll talk about that on maintenance and you water it again. So that's all about transplanting because you're gonna wanna know how to transplant. So you can look at the next slide that Cindy and I have for you to see how you can grow herbs and containers. So you'll see that these are simply, my rosemary got cut off, these are simply herbs and containers, time at the bottom, there's oregano down there, there's a sage in the middle and there's a rosemary at top. But these are just three separate pots that we were having a party in the backyard and needed more space. So I just took them and stacked them. So you can do anything with your containers, group them, make them spread out, however you like it. Both Cindy and I love to do containers and Cindy likes, like me likes to mix them in one container at a time too and just make it really showy. So you have a really thriller, thriller of a container, right Cindy? Yep. Okay, so that's containers. So how do we take care of these plants? Should we go to the next slide? And then we can take some more questions. So the next slide shows us, how do we maintain these? Or Cindy talked about it a little bit in the growing section. This particular plant is called Lovage. It's one of my favorites. It's also where the anise, swallowtails where the butterflies like to lay their eggs. So their little larvae grows in there. That's where those caterpillars were that I took the previous picture for propagation from. So basically being 10 year herb garden is to use your herbs. So this, I'm gonna go back to this again, this lemon thyme. I didn't use it. I got it from someone and I kept it out front and I ignored it. And this happened, it all flowered. You can tell I didn't use any of it because this time of year, I don't usually, these aren't flowering at my house yet. So use them. It's so important to, it's so important to add that and take it down when you use it. Or it's okay to get a three or a five inch sprig from your basil to use it. Cause it looks so pretty, but you want to use it to keep it pretty too. So the perennials you want to divide them, just what we talked about, have a plan for flowers. Because like I said, my sage, I have one that flowers and one that doesn't. I have a plan for flowers on that one. And this is kind of my, what my anulness that I do annually, it's like, okay, what's going to flower this year? What am I going to replace the parsley? I always have a flowering one because the butterflies and bees, everybody loves the seed heads, which you'll see in a little bit on the parsley. And so that's what you do with that in it. So flowers, you either want to prune them or use them. Over winter, usually in the late fall, everything is cut back, not to the ground, but it's cut back if it's a time. It's on top of the wood like lavender, it's cut to on top of the wood. Any Mediterranean herb gets cut back and gets just, it's going to sleep for a little while. It's going to get a rest with, and you put the mulch on top of it. So you're promoting growth for next spring by doing this and taking care of your herbs, whether they're in the container or the ground, you want to keep them from getting woody. So this is what you do. So you have a great plant next season. The annuals, you want to plant the spring, of course. And at my house, the basil is done when it's done. And it's usually in September, in the September. But you want, if you're living in an area where the basil gets really big and lush and beautiful, which are a lot of places on the peninsula and some in San Francisco too, I usually stick with the rule of cutting back by a third. So if your plant is really like four or five feet high, I'm not sure, you take it back by a third and you can cut it back successfully and it will grow new stems as long as it's during the growing season. So that's how we work with annuals. I keep mulch on those in the summer too. But maintaining my thing is to use them. And it's important to keep them, if you want to use the leaves of the herbs, you need to keep the flowers trimmed off because the energy will go to the flower, not to the wonderful flavor in the leaf. If you're done using the herb and you wanted to go to flower for insects and so on, great. But it will affect the taste of the leaves. Yeah, so let's see how to use the seeds that we're going to get from these cindies. The seed lady, next slide. Next slide. So one of the wonderful things about herbs is they produce seeds. Many of the seeds we eat like anise, cilantro, I can't think of the other ones, caraway, flax. I love growing flax flower. Not only is the flower beautiful, but I get beautiful flax seeds when I'm done. But it's also nice to be able to save the seeds and use them either in your cooking or you can use them next year to replant your annuals. So what you want is for your seed pods to get really brown like these. These are really brown and they're dry. So you wanna pick them off. Here's another one. This is fennel. You wanna pick the seed pods off and you want to put them in a brown paper bag and you just let, you make a little bundle and you hang it upside down and then put it in the bag and the seeds will drop out. And I have a bag here and it's full of seeds that I will plant next fall or next spring. It's a great way to collect seeds and it's really very rewarding to be able to reseed your plant from the year before. I have plants that I propagate every year and bring back because I like them so much in their annuals. So every fall I start my propagation routine and either take the seeds or cuttings or whatever. Okay. That's neat. So before we even move on, the sunflower there that's on that slide too is petals. You can use the petals in your foods if you want and the seeds are right in the middle. So seeds are for the birds and the humans, right? If you have to research how to take the seeds out there, it's kind of... You have to let it dry though. And the seed heads on the parsley here, you can recognize that and that's what the butterflies and everybody loves. So let's go on how to harvest to you. They're a good thing. I mean, from start to finish, they provide us, they provide insects. They're really wonderful. Okay. So let's see how to harvest to use your herbs because remember I'm all about using them to maintain. So you wanna harvest for use, I do it in the morning. I like the morning, it's the dew dries off of it and then go out and pick what you're gonna pick. So right here we have some chai flowers which let's go back to that slide to dry in herb, I mean to harvest for use. We'll go back two slides, three slides. Thank you, Anissa. And chai flowers are right there. That can just be picked and have for lunch on your salad, right? Or garnished. First time I had a chai flower was at Cindy's house. We were first meeting each other. It was quite a while ago, I won't tell you how long but she served a salad and there was chai flower sprinkles in there and it was, I just went nuts for it. So I loved it. This is a chai growing with a strawberry plant. So everything's mixed at my house. The picture next is tarragon. Now I go out and use that because, you know, tarragon, I like it better fresh than dried. So I use this. I have two of these plants going at a time so I can use it. This is the one that I get to use this weekend in a dish, probably something with fish. And then next to that is from the St. Coralas Library herb garden is lemon verbena which is another one of my favorites. So they have some lemon verbena tea in my refrigerator right now for my break after this class. So I can't wait to use these things. So in other words, if you wanna choose a time, herbs are a peak flavor before they flower. You'll notice if you can look closely at the lemon verbena, the larger picture on the end, at the very top, it could start a flower up there. So that's where that will start. That's how you see that. And pick them in the morning and just use them and have fun with them. So that's how that works. Okay, I'm gonna move on, Kathy. As we use them, the next slide will show you. It doesn't show you an example of really what to do. This slide is here because I wanna show you what I work with and how I do it. But this is the very first photo you see is a parsley and that's a parsley that I had all year and it's the second year of it I think I can't remember but I kept cutting it back. You see how big that stem is? That's really a thick stem for a parsley. So I kept cutting it back because I was fighting the flower. I didn't want it to flower, I didn't want it. But I finally had to give in and cut it off but I wanted to show a class how that gets so thick and woody. So you really should have a new parsley each year to work with it for your foods. The next one is a lemon thyme, a variegated lemon thyme that I just loved and I let it go. It was in a big wine barrel pot and I didn't pay attention and it got kind of crazy and lanky so I cut it way back into the wood. You don't normally wanna cut into the wood like that shows right there. That's a good example of showing how to kill part of your plant is to cut it right into the wood. And the next picture is something I was just drawing that's something that Cindy and I call cutting celery and it's the leaves of the celery. We use it for an herb, she dries it. Cindy dries the cutting celery and puts it in a little jar and I sprinkle it on my fish and things like that. It is really good. So to rinse in there and dry. That's how that works. And Cindy's gonna show us another way to drying herbs instead of hanging them in your kitchen. Could I have a full screen? I started drying herbs as part of my herb experience. Drying herbs is really a really fun thing to do and it's part of the herb experience. So I kind of experimented and I didn't really know what I was doing and I happened to be at the thrift store and I found this wire basket and I thought, you know, I think that would be a good place to dry herbs. So I came home and I got some oregano and I washed it and I took it off the stem because I want it to dry really fast because I don't want it to lose any flavor. The faster it dries, the less flavor it loses. So I put it in my wire basket and it dried. As you can see here, it's dry. And so then I take my dried herbs and I rub my fingers over it with this wire mesh basket that lets a lot of air circulation in and I get the perfect size herb for cooking. Look at what I get. Perfect. And then I put it in airtight container and mark it and label it and then I use it in my cooking and it's really great. You could do basil, thyme, parsley. I dry bay leaves in here. It's really great and they're great gifts. If you don't want to take a bouquet of herbs, take a little jar of your dried herbs for a hostess's gift or mix herbs. Take the Italian herbs and a training herb, excuse me and mix them together and make a little Italian seasoning. And you have, I mean, you know, you could have a lot of fun with this and gift it. So it's very easy to do and I totally recommend doing it. So enjoy your herbs. And so maybe we could switch to me so I could show a couple of things that I do with herbs too. I dry herbs similar to Cindy but I don't have a screen like she does. What I do is I put on a jelly roll or a cookie sheet pan and I have parchment paper on the bottom like Cindy had the paper towel there but with a rack on top, like a cookie rack. So when I put the stems across there or the sage leaves or larger leaves on it and let it air dry there. And that works for me. Instead of hanging them in the kitchen and stuff, the thing about that is you want to dry your herbs like Cindy said, the quickest as possible. You don't want a room that has smoke and people action and stuff in it because it affects the herb. You just want it to dry and get it in your little container. This is Greek oregano and I always put the year on there. I have lavender because this is culinary lavender. So I cook with this one and I have a bigger jar of this too. I mix this with sugars or I wasn't into making these lavender cakes but it got way too fattening. But anyway, so lavender, I have a big thing of lemon verbena and this is for, well, that's backwards. This is for teas. I love this better fresh, fresh tea but this is going to be my fall version for this year. You can make lavender sachets with your dried herbs and when you use dried herbs in your food you want to take it out. I put it in the palm of my hand and I crush it with my thumb. It lets out all the aromatic oils. It lets out the scent is stronger. You put it in that pasta sauce or whatever it is you're going to make and it really lets it off great. If you're using fresh herbs, I use them when I'm cooking towards the end of the cooking process so it doesn't get all burnt and everything. It depends on how long the item is that you're cooking. You could put sage leaves in when if you're roasting cauliflower or something put the big sage leaves in there and you mix it with whatever your olive oil or seasoning and then it's in the oven for maybe 15 minutes at the most and they get really good with the cauliflower but anything like that, if it's fresh use it more towards the end. So we have a couple of, I think we have time maybe five minutes and we can show you like, Cindy can talk about one thing she likes to make and I'll talk about another thing that I like to do which mine is vinegars but and then we can take some questions. One thing I like to do is I like to use my herbs in beverages. You can really get some interesting flavors like watermelon and sage, lemon verbena and lemons and another fun thing to do is to take some ice to make mint herb ice cubes. You can take some water and boil it so it's the air is out of it, put it half of it in ice cube tray freeze it for about a half an hour, put your whatever you're gonna put in edible flowers or mint or whatever and then fill it with water and freeze it. And then when you're having company you put your floured ice cubes in the glass and people are very impressed that you went to the trouble to do this. So that's really fun to do. Kathy, what do you do? Yeah, that's so cool. So I'll show you if you want to pan to me. Sorry about all this back and forth Anissa but we're pretending like we're live in your library. Yeah, so what I'd like to make are vinegars and I do this with all sorts of different jars that I either, I usually collect them or I don't know somebody gives me something and I clean it out. But what you do to make a vinegar is I get about two cups of the herb that I want to use. So this one in particular is a tarragon white vinegar. I have one back there, which is a pineapple, pineapple mint cider vinegar but the tarragon vinegar and like all of them I take about two cups of the herb itself. I put it in a big jar, put it in there and I take about, I don't know, two cups of vinegar or whatever I think I'm gonna need to make it and then you put the seal on it and put it in a dark cool place for about a month and just let it sit in there. I check on it now and then. Hopefully I don't forget about it but and then bring it out. I strain it and I put it in a nice bottle like this and I can give it to someone or use it for dinner and people say, what is that flavor in the salad? God, you make amazing salads? Well, it's really the vinegar. It's really the herb outside that I brought in but I don't give away all my secrets just to you guys. So we do that and what I do because you notice there's a sprig in here. So this sprig is a decorative sprig. It wasn't used to flavor the vinegar actually but it's there so I can, I like to serve it. We'll probably move on Kathy to questions. Yes. Since it's a bus 12. Okay, we have lots of questions here. Okay, one of them. Okay, we have several questions with regard to growing herbs in San Francisco. One person wants to know their location is in a windy area on a hilltop facing northeast in San Francisco. They don't get eight hours of sun ever in summer and would like recommendations about what herbs could be grown in this location? I would recommend growing mint. I would recommend growing cilantro and parsley. The Mediterranean herbs really need sun to develop the oils in them. Thyme, oregano, basil needs a lot of sun. So you could grow those three and I'm sure there's others. You might even be able to grow dill. I think dill grows everywhere. Do you have any answers, Kathy? Yeah, Bruno. I think those are my choices. I say like Cindy gave you three examples, maybe start with two or three and see what works. Let's see what works for you. That's the whole thing about this gardening is I'm experimenting. See what works in your property. I know you said your space space is east. So the west side must be someone else. So there's no way to get that setting sun area, but just see what works. Yeah, just experiment. That's what I do. I know that's not probably what you wanna hear, but try those three first and I think you'll have success. Do you have another question? Yes, we do. Someone else says that they've been trying since April to grow lettuce and parsley in a vase located in a place with morning sun for four hours. No parsley has come up and only two lettuce plants came up and they want to know what they're doing wrong. Did you say a vase? A vase like with water in it? It says a vase. I don't know if that means a container with soil or I'm assuming that means a container with soil in it. So the plants never came up? No parsley came up and only two lettuce plants came up. I would guess that it's too cold that the seeds did not germinate. That's why you don't have plants. Where do they live? The house. This sounded like it was inside in a window sill. Ah, a window sill. I would bet that it still does not get enough sun and heat to germinate. I have a thing about growing things indoors, especially herbs, because I think it's kind of off the point but I think that growing herbs inside on a window sill, they do not get the amount of sun that they really need to develop a really good flavor. I believe this person referred to about four hours of sun. So that's half, it sounds like. It's a little bit of direct sun though. Plus we don't know how hot that window sill gets and there's variables that we probably can't answer this properly with the information given. If it didn't have enough water, it wouldn't germinate either. Seeds need to be damp. That would be one of the things. This could also go to our helpline where we'd have more time to go back and forth with the person with individual questions. That idea. Okay, someone else would like to know what your top 10 list of herbs that you could grow in and around your kitchen might be. Oh, well, if you have sun, you could grow anything. Basil, thyme, oregano, chives, tarragon, mint, flax, fennel, dill, is that enough? My favorites, my favorites. I said a few of them during the presentation. Lemon verbena is great. I love it. Plant that in the ground. That doesn't have to be a container. And it's bigger though. It's bigger. It's a garden, a landscape plant, almost. Not quite that big. But you use it so you cut it back. So it's not pretty all year round because you're constantly using it. And lemon thyme I love, anise, hissep, tarragon, marjoram is kind of a new thing for me. I like it. I like the flavor of it now. Different things pop up. Basil I love in the summer. Cilantro, if I could keep it growing, I'd love it. But again, that's more when the lettuces come out, which should be not too much sun or a cooler like Cindy said. It's not a summer that this is. You use the right growing conditions by your back door. You can grow anything. Well, yeah. And the edible flowers too. Don't forget about them. Calingiola can stay in your garden. Yeah, can stay in your garden. We both have a good friend in St. Carlos that has Calingiola all out in the front. It has, she cuts it back once a year, I think, but it comes back beautifully. Next question. Hey, with regard to some, this is with regard to seedlings. Someone wants to know what causes seedlings to be leggy. They've tried to grow cypress vine for hummingbirds, but one after another got one and a half inches tall and died. Hmm, I don't know if that's two questions or one. Probably, and then that's probably has something to do with her environment. What kind of plant was she growing? It said cypress vine. Cypress vine. I don't know that. If the plant died, it has to either be too much water or not enough light, I would think, but it really, that would be a question to go to our helpline because we need to ask a lot more questions to really determine the cause of death of those plants. Yes, right. So someone else wanted to know about removing the leaves when you're transplanting from seed. Just to clarify, if you had removed a couple of the leaves when you transplanted the sprouts. Remove the leaves. Go for it. Cut the leaves before you cut back the leaves before you transplant. Is that what you mean? I believe so. Yes. You just don't check. Well, if you cut the roots, you have to cut the leaves because Kathy cut the roots on those plants. So the plant isn't gonna require, if the plant has a lot of leaves, it's gonna produce a lot of energy and that small amount of roots isn't gonna be able to handle it. So if you cut the green back, you'll get less energy to go with your smaller roots. I hope that's the question. Let me just double check this question. It says, did you say to pluck out the first few leaves before putting in a container? And why? Are you talking about propagation? Yes, about growing from seeds, yes. The reason that it takes the leaves off the stem to propagate is because there's no roots. So the leaves take in energy and they send it down to the roots and the root disperses it through the plant. But if there's no roots, then we don't wanna take in a lot of energy. I do leave a couple of little leaves on top because once the plant does start growing leaves, it will need to start getting some energy. That's why I take the leaves off. I hope that explains it. That I believe that does it. Someone else would like to know if lilacs grow well here. They've been seeing a lot of recipes using lilac syrups and wants to know also if they grow well in containers. Well, I'm not familiar with that because I don't grow it and I don't believe it grows well here. I'm not sure what you think Cindy, so anyway. They need to freeze before they can get into full bloom. So they grow in cold areas where it freezes and our temperature is not cold enough for them. I mean, they'll bloom, but not very hardly. A couple more questions, so. Okay, there's, I wanna say a little bit of time because a lot of people have asked if the presentation is downloadable and the handouts and pages will be available to the people that have tuned into this presentation. Is that something that we're gonna be doing? I also have been on that. This is available on YouTube and you can watch it again. And I've put that link in the chat box many times. So yes, please watch it again on YouTube. And also we have two links on one of our back pages that Anisa was gonna put on the chat form also that goes to horticulture notes from UC. So there's one that, I can't think of the name of it, culinary herbs it says. So it'll give you what's, what's a perennial, what's a perennial, all things like that and some growing conditions. There's another landscaping with herbs that's in there too. Well, I have a back page that you'll see as we're thanking everyone at the end. It has- What do you need to know about all the herbs? All the information, no growing. I think if you're just getting started to do a little research to find out or what do you love? Do you like the taste of oregano in your spaghetti sauce? Then try to grow that. Things like that is how to start with herbs. If you're a seasoned gardener, you kind of know the ropes. Try something a little more esoteric. Try it if you don't have an anesthesia or agastachia whatever we want to call it, a different herb than what you used to. Try growing flax, ooze. Yeah, growing flax. I think I'm gonna try it if it'll grow in San Bruno, you know with our different micro climates we just don't know till we try it. So that's what as master gardeners what we work with a really large area here from Northern San Francisco to Rowan City, I think, or Memo Park and then over the coast. So there's so many different micro climates that we work with. So- Couple questions more. One, two questions about vinegar. One is if you use fresh or dried herbs for the vinegar and also what type of vinegar you use. So I always use fresh and that's the little recipe thing I use is two cups of fresh herbs. Sorry if I didn't say that and pack it down. So you really get a lot because you want it to really pack a punch in that vinegar because vinegar can be strong in its own way. So you wanna make the herb give that background flavor to the vinegar. As far as what vinegar you use, again, I totally experimented with this. I tried white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, red wine vinegar, red wine vinegar and marjoram or oregano is a really good combination. Thai basil and rice wine vinegar is really good. I've basically used all the vinegar, it's set balsamic. I leave that to the olive oil and vinegar stores to flavor that. But probably my favorite is a, oh, I just went blank, apple cider vinegar because it's still a little mild but it has the vinegar flavor and it takes on an herb flavor really well. Let it sit the month and strain it out and you can tell that you did your job. Don't leave it in there indefinitely. Just leave it for a couple of weeks and then take it out. Well, I do four weeks, I do a month. So it's four weeks really. Any other, the last question? A couple of questions about lavender. What, first of all, what is meant by culinary lavender and which lavender is best for cooking? Oh, well, I say culinary lavender because I grow a special two plants that I use just for cooking. So I keep those in a separate part for some reason. I don't know, I look at them more often. It's usually a smaller variety. What are those? It's like grozo, grozo lavender. I also have a tiny. All lavender is edible. Yeah, and so what your taste is. The bigger plants that you see in my very first slide or even in that other slide with the two or three lavenders in the Artichoke is just a lavender and gustafolia. It's got a nice head on it. I use that because my family and I, my husband and I more, we cut it back. We cut the lavender back once a year and it dries in a big tub. And I make sachets out of it and I give it to everybody. Everybody knows me, Kathy's coming with a sachet. So, and the sachets last for years because what you do with this, this was made a while ago and it was given as a baby shower gift or something, you know, those little favors. But all you do is squish it and you have new aroma all over again. So it's just like we picked it. And I don't know how that works but lavender is amazing that way. So I hope I answered your question. We're not really picky. I grow everything but Spanish lavender, Spanish lavender is the one that has the little head on the top and it's the one that blooms first in the year. What's the next question, Maggie? We have a question about a sun. We have several people who are living in sort of foggy areas. And one person would like to know is indirect sun which they're defining as filtered through fog. Is that considered sun? You could. I would consider it some light. Because we get sunburn in those conditions. Yes, uh-huh. Okay. Related to that is someone who lives in Pacifica who asked about growing lettuce and parsley. And they have four hours of morning sun which is stronger sun but would have not had success. That should be good with parsley and I think it would be okay with lettuce too because lettuce is a fall blooming plant and so it's, it doesn't really, it wants to be cool. So the morning light should be great for it. Give it a try and see what happens. The person says they're not having success and it's in a vase with drainage with four hours of morning sun. So maybe there's something about the container. Maybe that should go to the helpline so it can be a little bit of a support with more questions because we really do a good job once we can pinpoint what actually the issue is. Yeah. So we probably should move on only because I hate to take up everybody's time. I know there's a lot of folks and walks to go on and things to do on our Saturdays, right? So I did put that helpline in there many, many times. Okay. And I will send all of the participants today a follow-up email that will include links to, I tried to keep up. Is everybody's going? I added some great book lists. Thank you. Helpline, your socials and ways to connect with the UCC e-master gardener. So we look at those last two slides or what? Does it matter? Sure. We can pull those last two slides up. We'll just show you. I really wanted to thank Anissa and the San Francisco Public Library, her team behind her. However, all this worked. Maggie Ma for helping us, a master gardener, helping us with all these questions because we couldn't have done it without her rights indeed. We just couldn't have done it. And, you know, we do hope to do Edible Flowers presentation and we hope to be able to present that sometime soon or beginning next year. And whether it's in person or on Zoom, we love it either way. So just to make sure that we thank Anissa because she was very patient. That's me. Thank you all. Thank you all. And here's that helpline question. And again, I put the link to my master doc has all of this stuff in it as well as my email if you need to get ahold of me and the YouTube of this completely informative presentation. And, you know, something that rang to me today that has been reading throughout many of the things we've done over summer is experiment. So experiment and find out what you get. And if it doesn't turn out what you want, it's not a fail because you've learned something and you can try something different the next time. All right, my friends. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, friends. Kathy, Maggie, master gardeners. Thank you so much. Have a wonderful Saturday. And anyone who wants to join me at 2 p.m., I'll be right here. Have a good day.