Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Lemon Balm

With all the damp weather we've been having in Itawamba County, plants are really doing well. Pictured above is a clump of lemon balm in my garden. Crushed leaves of this herb have a strong scent of lemon. I've always planted lots of herbs within my flower beds. Not only do they add an interesting texture to the garden, they're quite handy in the kitchen as well. I have basil, tarragon, lemon balm, bee balm, mountain mint, chives and two twenty-year-old rosemary shrubs. This year I've added peppers to my flower beds as well.
 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It must be a "bumper crop year" for herb growing. We have both spearmint and peppermint that almost died out last year, but they are poking their tips above the vinca minor that is invading our herb bed accidentally. Someone had been to a nursery some years ago and a gallon bucket of the vinca landed in the curb of our driveway when it apparently fell from a truck. We watered it as a bucket and left it in an obvious place for a couple of days and no one stopped to pick it up. My husband determined it to be "finders keepers" and planted it in a small bed around a sycamore tree where he kept it in control for a few years, but one spring morning we walked out to see little "runners" everywhere! All of the herbs we had in the bed are now lost to the vinca except the two mints that we discovered this week. bettye