Newsletter: 14th September
We love to grow our herbs
On most days you’ll find Jekka in her glasshouse, carefully and lovingly propagating her herbs by taking cuttings from her favourite plants and nurturing them for the upcoming spring.
For over 40+ years, Jekka has mastered her craft of sustainably growing herbs and is passionate about sharing these skills. The future of our plant diversity hinges on our ability to propagate locally instead of relying on imports. Sadly, many have lost this invaluable skill.
To promote the growing of herbs, we're excited to offer a series of full and half-day master classes covering a range of Jekka's techniques: from division to root cuttings, hardwood and softwood cuttings, sowing seeds in winter, stratification, scarification, and much more!
Curious about how to take successful cuttings? Join us for our How to Grow Herbs Master Classes!
This autumn we are hosting a series of master classes and Jekka is teaching different techniques of How to Grow Herbs in:
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Jekka's How to Grow Herbs, Friday 3rd October, 9am to 4pm, which is a full day master class focusing on different techniques to successfully take cutting and sow seeds.
- Jekka's How to Grow Herbs: Division & Potting up, Friday 10th October, 1pm to 4pm, which is a half day master class focusing on dividing perennial herbs and rejuvenating tired herbs.
Read more and book a place through the link below
Jekka's Myrtle cuttings
Growing Herbs in September
This week has been busy on Jekka's Herb Farm as this is when we start preparations for March and we have:
- Cut back all of the Mints to encourage a flush of new growth for autumn dishes.
- Pruned all our Oreganos, to encourage them to put on new leaf and form green cushions, ensuring they will survive the winter weather.
- Shaped all our Lavandula x intermedia's and our Winter Savory.
- Cut back the Lemon Balm to encourage new growth that we can use to make herbal teas.
- Harvested seeds from the Wormwood, Cardoons, Red Orach, Anise Hyssop and the Japanese Szechuan Pepper.
- Started the seed cleaning!
Read more of Jekka's tips on maintaining your herb plants in autumn through the link below.
At Jekka's we are advocates of harvesting your own seeds and have been doing so all summer. However, as a sustainable herb farm, we always ensure we leave enough for the birds to enjoy.
On days when the rain is coming down like a monsoon, we hide in our seed shed and start the seed cleaning. We try to harvest as much seed as possible from Jekka's Herbetum and Jekka's Herb Garden, which we then clean by hand and pack into our seed packets. Read more about harvesting and clean your seeds in Jekka's blog. The seeds we are preparing for autumn sowing are Angelica and Sweet Cicley, both of which require stratification.
We are proud to be able to offer a range of over 144 varieties of herb seeds, which you can browse through the link below.
Cleaning Angelica seeds
Cultivating flavour, creating experiences.