Organic. Period.

Have you priced nuts in the stores lately? I cannot believe that pecans are $8 a pound or more. That’s shelled, of course, but even nuts in the shell are expensive.

My woods is full of hickory trees, among other species. The hickory trees are towering homes for squirrels, and the shagbarks provide roosts for the common brown bats, who devour thousands of insects each year. Brown bats have been maligned as carriers of rabies, but the incidence is no more than for other wild animals by most estimations. Anyway, I like to watch the acroBATics of these little guys on a summer evening as they dip and dive after mosquitoes (which are extremely dangerous carriers of West Nile Virus and other diseases that plague humans, not to mention heartworm in dogs.)

Back to the hickory nuts . . . I pick them up for free. Crack these open and you’ll find nutmeats very similar to pecans.  In fact, I prefer hickory nuts to pecans. Use them instead of pecans in any recipe. I crack them and freeze the meats, keeping them fresh until the next fall. The nutmeats are a bit smaller and the shells are harder than pecans. It takes a bit of picking sometimes to get them out of the shells, but they’re worth it.

And it’s great finding free food.

These zinnias were very pretty this year. They were a good mixture of singles, doubles, pom types, and the firecracker or aster types. And they were all in reds and pinks and lavenders, with a couple of whites mixed in. The plants grew to about 3 feet tall, and all had numerous branches with loads of flowers on each branch. I didn’t even need to do much deadheading, they just kept on blooming!

I’m saving a selection of seeds from several different flower heads. I’ll mix them all together in a bag and plant them next year as a surprise.

There is one problem with these particular varieties of zinnia, and that is the powdery mildew you can see on the leaves of the plants. Perhaps it was due to the abundant rainfall and  (normal) high humidity last summer.  It is fairly easy to control using MILK. Yes, spray the plants with milk mixed about half and half with water. Generally, the lower the fat content of the milk, the less aroma you will have. Regular milk can get pretty rank on a hot summer day. Even powdered milk works, mixed half strength with water. I just didn’t keep up with the spraying on my ornamentals last summer.

Milk is the easiest way to control this unsightly problem, and it works on squash, pumpkin, and melons, too. Any plant that can host powdery mildew can be sprayed with the milk spray to control it.

Back to the zinnia seeds . . . if you don’t get them cleaned up and composted, the birds will eat them. Goldfinches and other small birds love them. So do mice. Hang bunches of the dried seedheads upside down from a bird feeder pole or fence, and you’ll see some little birds out there picking away.

Lamb’s Ears are another favorite plant of mine. This will establish itself the first year from good transplants. It prefers a sunny location, and being on the dry side is better than too wet.

The plant gets its name from the unbelievably soft and velvety leaf texture. The little hairs really are like fur.

Bees love this. The flowers are on a long spike, and they bloom over an extended period in the summer. The plants have an ethereal quality in the garden. They look misty and soft, with no bright colors or sharp contrast. Lamb’s Ears grow about 18 inches tall, but the stems tend to tip sideways and fall onto the ground and root. This spreading goes on all season long, and you will have to contain this plant or it may get out of bounds.

After the bees finish pollinating all the flowers, the autumn flower spikes are filled with seeds. I usually trim away the dead flowers, because I have plenty of Lamb’s Ears, but you could plant the seeds if you wanted to.

Basil is one of my favorite herbs for cooking with fresh, for drying, and as an ornamental plant in the garden. There are several varieties of basil, all of them fragrant and tasty. And I think they are equally pretty growing in the garden or in a pot.

This is a purple basil called Purple Ruffles. It has an aroma and flavor very similar to regular sweet basil, but just look how pretty it is! The leaves are shiny and dark, and if you let it slip past the snipping stage, it has lovely little pinkish flower clusters. It grows about 24 inches tall in my garden if I don’t snip it back.

I like to add a bit of purple ruffles basil to anything I would use sweet basil with. It’s even good added to a pesto.

The culture of all basil varieties is the same. I like to plant basil interspersed with tomatoes and peppers. I tried potting a plant this fall to bring indoors, but it didn’t appreciate my efforts. I’ll have to use what I have dried and plant again from seed next spring. Sometimes it goes to seed and volunteers in the garden, but I try to keep the seed from all of my basil varieties separated.

Rosemary is another woody herb that grows very much like lavender. It is not quite as hardy in southern Indiana, but it does survive most winters. Grow it outdoors in a sunny but somewhat sheltered location, and it does fine. I add extra mulch over it when a winter storm comes, just to provide a little extra protection.

Grown outdoors, rosemary can develop into quite a pretty little shrub in warmer climates. I keep mine clipped because I use it in the kitchen, so it doesn’t get very large.

Make cuttings of rosemary, and plant them using rooting hormone powder. Snip the growing tips for rooting. I use about 8 inches or so to have plenty to root underground and plenty of leaves above. Carefully strip off the lower leaves a couple of inches or so, and dip the bare end into water, then into the rooting powder. The purpose of the water is to make the powder stick. Insert your cuttings into planting holes you have already opened in the pot. Don’t just push the end into the potting soil, because that will scrape off the rooting powder. Just make a planting hole with your finger, and then be sure to press the potting soil snugly around the cutting.

This is a 6″ pot with three good sized rosemary starts in it.  I’ll have nice plants indoors this winter, and nice plants to set outside next spring.

Just in case we have a hard winter . . . it’s always good to have some backup spring plants.

The fragrance of lavender is lovely outdoors, and indoors dried it is a sweet reminder of summer. You can root cuttings of your lavender plants and have pots of it indoors during the winter, providing you with fresh fragrance.

I made these cuttings in October, when it was just a little warmer and the days were still a little longer. You can actually take cuttings to root from lavender anytime. I use the powdered rooting hormone to help the cuttings root quickly, and using it will also help you have more, stronger roots.

Lavender will root right in the ground in the summer. Take a long branch and bend it down to the ground level. Use a branch that will bend easily, one that is not woody. You can use one of those wire pins to anchor it into the ground, or just place a stone to hold it in contact with the soil. It should root enough to separate from the mother plant in a week or two. You don’t have to separate it; this is one way the plants spread.

Snip a growing tip of the lavender the length you want for your pot. For this 6″ pot I used 5 or 6 cuttings. Some of them were nicely branched, so when they take off growing, this will be very full.

Once in a while if the winter is really severe lavender will not come back as strong the following spring. I can separate this pot into 5 or 6 new plants next spring, and I’ll set them out to increase my lavender.

Marigolds are in my garden every year. They grow like weeds. Really. I have a patch in the garden where I just let them reseed, and then I transplant the seedlings.

I started out with some kind of huge-showy-double-ruffle-flower packet of hybrid seeds about 15 years ago. I’ve been letting them reseed since that first summer. Some of the plants have lots of green foliage and small, single petal flowers.

Most of them bloom as nice, medium-sized flowers with pretty ruffled petals.

I use marigolds in companion planting.  I put a plant every so often along the row with both  tomatoes and peppers. Marigolds are beneficial in keeping harmful root knot nematodes away from the roots of tomatoes and peppers. It works if you grow the plants nearby, but you can also chop up leaves, stems, and flowers and mix them into the soil around your tomatoes and peppers. I’ve been using pieces of marigolds as mulch, or mixed in with the mulch around my tomatoes and peppers, and I haven’t had problems like I used to.

Select some seeds from the prettiest flowers to save. You can start them indoors, or let them overwinter and come up on their own. They always seem to know exactly when the weather is right for germinating!

Burning Bush is one of those shrubs that has something going on each season. Spring, the new leaves are bright green, and the drooping clusters of blossoms are pretty. Birds love to nest in these; they are protected by the twisty dense branching habit, which is even more pronounced if you have pruned and shaped the shrub. Summer brings the dark green glossy leaves. In autumn, of course, the leaves turn brilliant RED and the previously inconspicuous berries ripen to red also. And in winter the berries are a treat for the wild birds. The bushes are a safe place for birds to shelter, too.

I have cardinals that nest in my burning bush shrubs every year; sometimes two sets of fledglings are raised.

There’s something wonderful about having fresh herbs at your fingertips in your kitchen, and that is especially true in the winter. If your herb garden fades with the rest of the world outdoors as winter approaches, bring some herb plants indoors in the fall and create your own little container garden. Even a couple of pots of your favorite plants will feel good.

Select some nice sized plants and either make cuttings of them to pot, or divide them and transplant them into your container. Be sure to get plenty of roots and some vigorous looking sections of the plants so you will have fast growth when you get them indoors.

Besides yesterday’s oregano, I chose chives, sage, and basil. I’ll make cuttings of rosemary and lavender for individual pots, too.

Sage is a biennial and will bloom with blue flowers next summer.

These chives have well developed roots and are really tall this summer. I’ll trim them and dry the greens, and the rooted remaining plants will send up shoots quickly. Grow chives from seed or from established transplants.

This container will be filled with herbs.

Oregano is an herb that grows wonderfully outdoors. Oregano seeds are very tiny, like ground pepper, almost. I planted seeds about 20 years ago, and I’ve had new plants continuously for myself, plus I’ve had plenty to pot up and give to friends and neighbors all these years without having to buy another seed or plant.

Oregano is a great windowsill herb. It is easy to grow in a pot, and it thrives on a windowsill. It will spread and vine over the edges of a pot, lovely to see. And it is an herb that you will snip fresh and cook with just because it’s handy.  Then there’s the pleasant aroma that is released when you happen to brush against the plant.

Here is a small oregano plant growing near the fence where my husband is working. I  cut it back a couple of weeks ago and layered it in my dehydrator. You can see in the picture that it is growing back already.

Oregano spreads by runners.

Look at all of the tiny hairlike roots  growing all along this runner stem.
When I pot oregano to bring indoors, I get lots of underground roots like this and plant them. A couple of weeks indoors and they will be ready to snip and use in a lasagna.

Oregano also has tiny white flowers. They bloom by the hundreds on clustered heads. Some of the tiny round green  leaves you can see in the soil above are the seeds that have sprouted this fall. If you’ve never grown fresh oregano to use in your Italian dishes, please put it on your 2009 seed list.

Or better yet, find a gardener who has an overabundance. It’s a great plant to share.