Peach-leaved Agastache (Agastache scophulariaefolia)

Smoking Rabbit Tobacco

Pearly Everlasting/Rabbit tobacco (Anaphalis margaritaceae) – This herb actually has a history of various interesting ceremonial and magic uses amongst native tribes here, especially for protection.

Thimbleweed (Anemone cylindrica) – I had to grow this just because of the name

Spiked Wormwood (Artemisia genipi) – I’ve tried this a couple times before with no results. It’s an alpine mugwort used in Italy to flavor a liqueur. The seeds are very tiny and short-lived, and I got only a few. But looks like they all germinated with outdoor treatment. I will try growing them in a pot to reproduce alpine conditions. I won’t be able to harvest such tiny seeds, I don’t think, but I am looking forward to working with the herb. It looks like there are two plants at least with this botanical name, so I will be interested to see how it turns out.

Double-Flowered Celandine (Chelidonum majus flora pleno) – regular celandine grows like crazy here under conifers, so I think I’ve got good conditions for this plant. It’s a handsome fellow, and double flowers would make it doubly so.

Houndstongue (Cynoglossum officinalis)

Orange Horned Poppy (Glaucium flavum aurantiacum) -   I wanted to grow this just because it’s a poppy and I’m partial to the poppy family, but I found out recently that it’s antiviral, antitussive, and anti-inflammatory. I had no idea it had uses in herbal medicine. What’s more, it is being ingested recreationally for supposed sedating and hallucinogenic properties. I checked on PubMed to see what I could find about the effects of this plant or its major alkaloid, glaucine. I found plenty about the medicinal effects of glaucine, but there were only two reports about its hallucinogenic properties. Both had no abstract available and referred not to the plant but to the alkaloid, which is used for coughs in Russia. So this could be like people getting high from drinking cough syrup. Not that you can’t do it, but I am not sure how pleasant or useful it is. I was not able to find anything else about this plant being used for anything but coughs. Still, it is a poppy and apparently its alkaloid also appears in Yan hu suo (Corydalis cava), which is a very powerful painkiller whose alkaloids act on the mu receptors. I have used yan hu suo for kidney stone pain and also a spasm in my back, and it works darn good and definitely has mood-lifting, opiate perkiness effects. So it might be that orange horned poppy has something similar. At any rate, it’s a nice version of the plant. I look forward to getting to know it as an herb.

L to R: larger plants are salad burnet and celandine

Violet wood sorrel (Oxalis violacea) – about five of 15 seeds germinated, which I think is pretty good for this rare woodland plant. I hope I can keep these going. They ought to enjoy being in peat pellets.

Self-heal (Prunella vulgaris) came up like mad. I know I grew this last year, but I can’t find it in my yard. I saw quite a bit of it in the woods last year, though, so it should like this climate.

Pasque flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris) –  I’ve sold the red-flowered one for years, but this is the common wild one.

Field buttercup (Ranunculus acris Citrinus) – this was a real surprise. I’ve tried to germinate this in the past with no luck. I fnally gave up on trying, and what do you know, this year Chiltern Seeds gave me a pack as a freebie, so what the heck, I put them in Outdoor Treatment. I figured they’d never germinate since the Crowsfoot family likes extreme cold to trigger germination, and you don’t get that with Outdoor Treatment, but I guess our winter was just cold enough for them. Thing is, I really like the regular dark yellow buttercups best–this variety has pale yellow flowers–but if these plants ever bloom, I will certainly be grateful for it and will try to collect the seeds to share. I haven’t been able to find a good wholesale source for Ranunculus acris seeds.

Sweet Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia subtomentosa) – massive germination on this baby, like opening up an alfalfa sprouter. I’m growing this for my own pleasure, because black-eyed susan was probably the first flower I could identify as a child, and this is a fragrant version. They’re supposed to smell like anise.

Double Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis flora plena) – I didn’t expect much from this, either, as I have tried germinating this same seed in the past with no luck, but this time I lucked out.

I also potted up 18 white mandrakes, and I can see a bunch more mandrake babies are beginning to peek out of their pellets. Still nothing from the black mandrakes. I am not sure why.

It looks like the ma huang is a no-go this year. The seeds are just sitting there rotting. Ditto the bistort (Polygonum bistorta).  I’ve had one single blue poppy (Meconopsis lingholm) germinate. Pathetic.

OTOH, the belladonnas are ready to go into the ground! These are the best looking belladonna seedlings I have ever grown, so I feel good about planting them. They’re going into what was the Black Toad patch last year. I already planted two of the ground cherries, of the variety “Giant,” which sure has lived up to its name so far. Now to find out whether the fruit of this variety is as good as that of Aunt Molly’s, which I grew a couple years ago.  In contrast, my five henbane plants bit the dust. Something they just didn’t like about the fertilizer, I believe. It was a discontinued organic fert. I usually just use liquid kelp, but this has all the bells and whistles. I think it might be responsible for the way the tobacco has grown like it’s playing a role in a fifties movie about the effects of radiation.

One plant that really surprised me by coming through winter is the hops I got on sale from Logees last year. I thought that thing died last summer, but there it is! I am going to shift that over to the privet hedge; let them duke it out. The Chicago Hardy fig I got from Logee’s two years ago is already putting out new branches. It wintered over in a big pot on the south side of the furnace stack and was apparently happy there, where it’s warmer and protected from the north wind. I never thought I’d be able to grow figs in upstate NY.

I have been adding more seeds to Alchemy Works from a list I created of European culinary and medicinal herbs, herbs used in European witchcraft, Hoodoo, dyeing, fiber, and more. Right now I’m adding culinary herbs, like fennel, feverfew (regular and the gold leaf I grew), and a flax variety developed for seed harvest (I’ll be adding a variety for fiber later). It takes me several hours to create each page, since I research as many different folk uses as possible to go with accurate growing info.

I’ve already got my seeds for my own garden for next year. Besides the food plants, which I wrote about in the last post, I’ll be trying a bunch of plants for possible seed harvest. One I started already was a packet of mixed black-leaved angelica. The regular version of this plant is doing really well in my garden, so I am hoping that I can grow the black-leaved variety as well, since no wholesalers are carrying them. I’ve also got some seeds for a variegated angelica to start. However, even if those seeds sprout and the plants prosper, they won’t be providing a seed harvest for two years. Gardening with seed-grown perennials–it’s all about learning Saturnian slowness, I tell ya!

At the end of December, I’ll start cold stratifying not only a bunch of black and white mandrake seeds and belladonna for live plants in spring, but also rowan, agrimony, genipi mugwort (this is an alpine type of mugwort used to make a liqueur in Italy), dark-leaved forms of elderberry, a double-flowered variety of soapwort, Greek mountain tea, violet-flowered wood sorrel (I’ve been waiting so long for these seeds to come in stock with the supplier), scarlet globemallow, purple giant hyssop (a native I’ve grown in the past and which I like the smell of), rabbit tobacco/pearly everlasting, thimbleweed, long-headed coneflower, and sweet black-eyed susan.

Seeds I’ll start in spring include kidney vetch (lady’s fingers),  variegated borage (sooner or later I will actually get to harvest some seeds from this thing–this year I will grow it in tomato cages so it doesn’t flop over and throw its seeds everywhere), a double-petaled version of  celandine (the single version grows all the place here), autumn oxeye, ivy-leaved toadflax, ma huang again (my seedlings got lost in the shuffle this year), and wild pasque flower.  A number of these are British wildflowers with strong histories of folkloric use. I would like to obtain more such seeds, but none of the suppliers I have found in the UK of this type of seed will ship to the US.

I have been very much enjoying building a garden of perennial wild flowers and herbs.  I just wish I had more space!

I’ve also begun potting up–five named varieties of Nicotiana rustica have now gone into pots, plus angelica, black nightshade species, and Nicandra physalodes “Splash of Cream.” I swear this time I will actually get some seeds off the Nicandra–third time’s the charm, right? This plant always grows weakly for me and so it does not seem worth harvesting the seeds (a weak plant will make weak seeds). This year I will baby it.

It is such a relief not to be growing a lot of veggies, especially nothing that needs transplanting. Although I am busy, I have enough time to get all these seeds started and potted up, and get the plants I bought potted up or in the ground. I received my fruit plants the other day, and they are all either in new bigger pots or in the ground, from the Black Velvet gooseberry to the blue elderberry. The peas are already climbing up the netting on the bamboo poles against the patio roof and the side fences, and I put up extra fencing for them to climb in the “way-back.” I’ve also had time to select plants that I will move out front so they can enjoy true full sun. The calendulas I started from seed are ready to go in the ground; only the fact that the next three days will be hot is holding me back from getting them in. When it goes back to our normal temps, I will put them in. This weekend I was able to till up the borders of the front and clear out all the weeds so it is totally ready for direct sowing of zinnias as well as transplanting of the various things I want to put up there. Now the echinaceas just need to get off their butts and put on some size. Their purple rayed flowers will go great, I think, with the orange rayed flowers of the calendulas. Hot!

Finally, I felt like this picture kind of captured my garden work. The flowering plant is a white heliotrope. I bought that because I wanted to see what the white version smelled like and thought maybe I could collect seeds from it; I haven’t grown heliotrope for years, so I don’t know. It smells pretty good, much better than the purple, which can smell like cheap Kool-Aid. It’s more like Tahitian vanilla, with that Cherry Coke quality. I like having it on the patio where I can get little whiffs of it while I work on plants. So that represents the aromatic plants I love to grow (although lots of the ones I grow are not fragrant flowers but aromatic leaves). And it also represents my seed collecting efforts from unusual varieties. Growing in the same pot, where it wasn’t supposed to be but just turned up and is obviously very happy, is a black mandrake. That poisonous and mysterious plant keeps coming up and encouraging me and nudging me towards working with it magically and spiritually and with other nightshades. So that one pot pretty much sums up my garden!