Tuesday, December 22, 2009

For Those Long, Cold Winter Months...

After almost three years of procrastination (yes, I am THAT good), I finally managed to make it over to the library and obtain my library card! While I was there, I discovered that the Ruch Library has quite a respectable medicinal herb section! One of the books I stumbled across, Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West, by Michael Moore, is seriously one of the best stores of knowledge I have ever seen. I read the book cover to cover, and am now biding my time until I can afford to buy all three of his books! They are a must-have for any serious (or even amateur!) herbalist! So Michael Moore is my recommended reading for this winter.

I recently put in an order for some new varieties of herb seeds to add to my ever-expanding garden this spring: Arrowleaf Balsamroot, more Chaste Tree (for landscaping around my herb garden), Greek Mullein, Compass Plant, Peruvian Torch Cactus, Heimia, European Centaury (I'm already growing yellow gentian, and just thought I'd add another bitters herb to the mix!), and Agave. I'm really looking forward to this spring, and all of my fab
ulous plants!

Speaking of plants, my cactus seedlings are doing quite well, and have started to develop their "true" leaves. I had limited germination on my Dragon Fruit cactus (still trying to figure that one out - but they did seem, out of all three, the most susceptible to mold), but my pitajaya and San pedro seeds demonstrated explosive germination. I was planning to order more Pitajaya seeds fr
om HH, but it would appear that they are currently out of stock. I'll try and post some pics of my cactus seedlings soon.

(Cactus seedlings at roughly 4 weeks)

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