Even kitchen-challenged gardeners like me appreciate fresh herbs in our (spouses') culinary creations. I've got parsley, chives and basil growing. For Ben.
But during the steamy summer ahead, Florida gardening expert Robert Bowden suggests I crank up my cool factor by going bold. The foodies taking cooking classes at Orlando's Harry P. Leu Botanical Gardens, where Robert is both executive director and chef-in-residence, go for big, robust flavors.
"Hot peppers, fennel, culantro — people love that in-your-face, here-I-am flavor," says Robert, author of several excellent how-to books, including Florida Fruit & Vegetable Gardening: Plant, Grow, and Harvest the Best Edibles.
Those herbs can also stand up to Central Florida's hot, wet summers. (Newcomers take heed! —most of your back-home warm-weather staples don't stand a chance here come June.)
Robert shares three with give-a-darn attitude and flavor that packs a punch.
Culantro
Cilantro lovers, meet culantro. The former grows in Central Florida only during the winter; the latter you can pluck all summer long.
"Use it in salads, salsa — no one will know the difference," Robert says. "It does well in herb containers and mixed with annuals and perennials; it's quite ornamental. The hotter it is, the more sun and the more sandy the soil, the more culantro likes it."
Culantro shoots up a thick stem, which blooms. Snip the flowers to keep the plant's energy directed to the leaves.
It grows easily from seed, so forget hunting for plants. Just order seeds online — cheap!
Eight to 10 plants in containers should keep you spiced until (or if) cold weather hits. Fertilize containers with a 10-10-10 fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, respectively), In the ground in Florida, phosphorus occurs naturally, so the second number should be zero.
Fennel
Robert's a big fan of fennel, and so am I. One of the few dishes I've mastered includes fennel bulbs among roasted root vegetables. The feathery foliage does double duty as seasoning. (It's Aunt Tempi's recipe — easy, but too long to reprint here. If you want it, shoot me an email.)
A larval food for swallowtail butterflies, this herb grows joy from garden to oven.
Look for Florence fennel, also called sweet anise, the celery-like plant with a bulb.
"It's a strong base flavor in Tuscan bean soup," Robert says. "If you're cooking a turkey breast, loosen the skin and put the fennel up under it."
It likes full sun and a good soil prepared with compost. Plant 10 to 12 inches apart — the plants can get up to 2 feet wide and planting them too close can lead to leaf rot.
If you really want to go crazy, try bronze fennel. Robert promises the copper-colored leaves will give you yet another reason to adore this herb.
African blue basil
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Explore all your optionsGrowing sweet basil used to require little to no effort. But the rise of lethal downy mildew, which can knock many basil varieties flat in the time it takes you to walk from the kitchen to the garden, has more gardeners reaching for African blue .
A hybrid, it thumbs its purple-veined leaves at this relatively new plague and offers even more benefits.
"African blue gets to be a good friend; it comes back year after year" unlike the common varieties, which tend to be annuals in Central Florida, Robert says.
It forms a big, sturdy bush that, whacked back every now and then, will continue to fluff out. Its pale lavender and violet-colored flower spikes attract one of our favorite pollinators, honeybees, but snipping them off encourages new growth — and you can toss them in your salad as well.
African blue's leaves have a tad more bite, flavor-wise, than sweet basil and it makes a bold statement as an ornamental in containers or flowerbeds.
• • •
If you try more traditional herbs this summer and they don't make it, don't give up! Florida herb gardens really get cooking in the winter.
"By August it's time to start thinking about fall," Robert says. "A lot of herbs do well in the winter here. Consider thyme, cilantro and pennyroyal, which makes a nice ground cover and an excellent mosquito repellent."
No matter what the time of year, you can always have something fresh to throw in the pot. Even if you can't cook.
Contact Penny Carnathan at pcarnathan49@gmail.com; visit her blog, digginfloridadirt.com; and join in the chat on Facebook, Diggin Florida Dirt.