2024, Family, Food, gardening, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

The Power Of Tarragon

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Last summer Husband bought four tarragon plants to put in the big front garden bed. We had never grown tarragon before, and I hadn’t cooked with it that much. We found it a delightful addition to the garden and to our cooking. I was sad to see Autumn come and the plants die in the first freezes. I also thought the same thing about the spinach, a late season Italian variety called Gigante d’inverno, that we plant once the peas are done in August. It is a dark green, highly savoyed spinach with large leaves. It is pretty fast growing and cold hardy. It doesn’t like heat, but likes it cool, even if it gets snowed on.

Much to our surprise, all four tarragon plants survived the winter and are growing nicely. The same is true for the few stray spinach plants we didn’t harvest last year. I never realized that a tender herb like tarragon was hardy to Zone 4, and that if well mulched, the spinach can winter over even in North Dakota. I find that amazing.

Husband plans to have lots of herbs in the garden this summer. It is also a basil summer, as we are getting low on pesto in the freezer. Can you tell I am excited about getting into the garden?

What herbs do you like to grow? What do you like to use tarragon for? How are your garden plans coming?

33 thoughts on “The Power Of Tarragon”

  1. Our tarragon comes back after the winter even without careful mulching. I use handfuls of it in a chicken tarragon pasta salad.

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    1. This is random and seemingly unlikely but chewing on a tarragon leaf always reminds me of the taste of root beer popsicles. Do they even still make root beer popsicles?

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  2. We’re trying rosemary this year… along with our customary basil, chives and cilantro.
    We went to a party on Saturday night where there was excellent focaccia so we were inspired!

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    2. We have lemon thyme that is cold hardy and comes every year. Husband is growing winter savory, winter thyme, chervil, marjoram, dill, and basil. We have oregano spreadng all over the yard, and Italian flat leaf parsely that comes every year. I like how random it is.

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    3. We used to have a big rosemary plant in a pot that we dutifully brought into our enclosed front porch each winter. Toward spring it would start looking sad and we would trim it back a little and move it outside, where it would revive. After several years of doing that we realized we seldom used the rosemary for culinary purposes, especially from late winter to summer when its vitality was compromised but even the rest of the year there just weren’t that many things we make that call for fresh rosemary. We decided to set it free.

      I use a lot of cilantro but have never had any luck growing it. It’s always feathery and insubstantial and bolts quickly, so the window of its usefulness is brief. Your experience?

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        2. As I recall, JacAnon, cilantro is one of your nemeses. The other is rabbits. I saw a rabbit on our front lawn this afternoon and it occurred to me that rabbits could earn a lot of forgiveness if they would only learn to eat dandelions.

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  3. We have lots of cat mint in our flower beds on the south side of the house. We don’t mind as it fills in where other more noxious weeds would be. The only downside is that we sometimes have neighbor cats doing drugs in the yard. Our cat loves it when we bring some in for her.

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  4. After reviewing our seeds this morning, I need to order more Swiss Chard seed. We get Argentata, which is a white stemmed chard. I freeze it for winter use, and we are all out of it now, so this will be a chard year as well as a basil/pesto year. We also put a row of chard in for the next door neighbors who love chard but don’t have a vegetable garden

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  5. Timely.

    Yesterday, I rearranged the furniture in the living room/Bird room.

    There is now space for some indoor plants.

    The selection process is on with two essential elements. Firstly, the plant cannot be toxic to The Birds. Secondly, it will have to grow without sunlight.

    This morning, I’ve whittled selection down to three possibilities. Snake plant, spider plant and money plant. I’ll need to research the care needed for each. I’m hoping for each one. Snake, Spider, Money has a nice ring to it.

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  6. I haven’t used tarragon much, I should try something like that pasta salad of Bill’s.

    Maybe because of our unusually warm winter, a nice French thyme plant made it through the winter. I moved it to my newly revived herb garden – I had tried putting goldenrod there as a “screen” from our neighbor’s driveway, but it was spreading elsewhere, so Husband dug it up.

    So far I also have oregano and chives/garlic chives that all winter over, and we’ve put in parsley and basil. And Husband has almost finished putting the rest of the garden in.

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  7. Basil, thyme, parsley, chives that are slowly taking over the patio garden(!), rosemary, I think we have some oregano going crazy in that garden too. We used to do a few more, and had some indoor pots in winter, but mainly stick with these basics.

    Chris in O-town

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  10. I love growing herbs. I always have a rosemary plant. It overwinters indoors in its pot nicely, and it’s so nice to have a sprig of rosemary when needed. It’s so aromatic. I just brush it a little with my hand and enjoy the fragrance. I agree they like a lot of sun. I water once a week or more if it looks thirsty. When I went to Ireland, I put some water in an ice cream bucket and stuck the pot in the bucket. It was just fine without any other watering.

    I grow basil, chives, parsley, and my rosemary plant. I don’t have much room for more. I’d love to grow thyme. I try to grow Swiss chard every year but sometimes I have trouble finding seeds. Spinach and chard grow well together. I’ll definitely grow both this year.

    Tarragon is good with fish or chicken.

    I bought a new Earthbox. I need to set it up. I bought the first one last year and decided to get another. It’s a nice container garden for the deck. Of course I will have some peppers and tomatoes but vining plants are too big. I usually put marigold around the perimeter of the box.

    Still jet lagging. I was wide awake at 2 a.m. My body thought it was 8 a.m. I hope I don’t fall asleep to early tonight. I think I’m over the food-borne illness. I suspect the fresh oyster I had at Fitz’ in Doolin. Doolin was amazing. I’ll write about it. Give me time.

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  11. Rise and Shine, Baboons or Better Late than Never–JacAnon,

    I had a busy day and kept trying to weigh in on this one. Then I would get distracted. This year I have a raised bed right outside my back door where I am planting spinach, lettuce,1 or 2 basil plants, parsley, chives and thyme–the herbs I use the most. In the larger garden I have lavender, sage, dill, and oregano and more basil since there is never enough and you can always give it away. 

    I am extremely proud to say that I also fixed my electric rototiller today after it would not start. I was pessimistic, but I called customer service, they told me what to do. I did that and it worked to my shock. Saturday when I want to use the thing it better still be working!

    Krista, hope you feel better. Traveling is wonderful, but it is also easy to get sick on the trip.

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  12. I used to have a small patch of oregano that gradually took over about a third of the front yard, and then abruptly died off. Not a single leaf remains. It’s feast or famine.

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