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♪
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast.
If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well, you've come to the right spot.
♪
One joy of having a garden are aromatic plants.
Annuals, perennials, shrubs, and trees that emanate a pleasant smell while you're walking through the yard,
especially in the afternoon and evening.
We call them shows for the nose.
We talk with New York-based aromatherapist Amy Anthony about the power that various aromatic plants can instill in us,
plants that can make us happier, calmer, and braver, really.
Plus, Master Gardener and Chef instructor Andy McDonald shares her recipe for vegan split-piece soup,
whose ingredients you might be growing in your garden right now.
We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon jungle in suburban purgatory.
It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast brought to you today by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery.
Let's go.
♪
I sure love shows for the nose.
Plants that have a wonderful aroma.
I remember as a child, growing up, we had an oleander bush in our front yard,
and I just used to love that smell, especially when it was in flour.
Growing up, I've just always been attracted to plants that just smell great at a certain time of year at a certain time of day.
One of my favorites right now is the Michaelia Figo, also known as the Magnolia Figo.
It's a common name as banana shrub, but it does not grow bananas,
but it produces these little flowers in late spring that they're fairly insignificant flowers,
but they smell like juicy fruit gums, just a wonderful aroma.
And of course, in the summertime, you can grow tuberosis here.
Well, there's all sorts of aromatic plants.
My favorite right now that I have growing in the greenhouse,
and I'm looking forward to transplanting it out in the yard, is a lemon verbina in a lysia,
and it just has this wonderful aroma when you just touch the leaves
and put your fingers to your nose.
It smells just like lemon.
It's excellent.
So I thought we'd talk with a smell expert.
Somebody who knows her aromatic plants and aroma therapy,
and of course, aroma therapy is much more than essential oils.
It's an experience when it connects you with nature,
no matter where you are, one that inherently connects mind and body.
Amy Anthony is with NYC aromatica, and she has a podcast called essential aromatica.
So whether you are new to essential oils and aroma therapy or well versed in the subject matter,
essential aromatica can inspire you,
elevate the possibilities for you of aroma therapy.
So Amy Anthony, it's a pleasure to be talking with you.
And I talked about some of my favorite shows for the nose.
What are some of your favorites?
Oh my gosh, what a beautiful introduction.
I don't think I can keep up with that.
But you mentioned lemon verbina, and I'm in the Long Island area,
so we can't grow what you have in California,
but every year I buy two to three lemon verbina plants,
and I grow them or I ask them to grow,
and then I harvest their leaves to make tea.
I got sold on it when the master gardeners were growing a lemon verbina shrub.
It really is a shrub out at the Faroaks Horticulture Center.
And one of the people in charge of the herb section had taken some of the leaves
and made lemon verbina cookies.
And that was just so delicious.
I'm going to get this plant.
So I'm looking forward to cookies.
Yeah, and you're just touching on something that's amazing about aroma therapy
and the aromatic plants, the ones that give us essential oils
and we can go down that road about the nuance about that if you want.
Sure.
The essential oil is great and I have so many bottles here with me,
but just going and knowing the plant and touching it and smelling it.
And like you were saying about that,
not only under the Magnolia with insignificant flowers.
The banana shrub, yeah.
Banana shrub.
You're making me think of Korean boxwoods that have these incredibly insignificant flowers,
but they're all over the place when they're in bloom.
And you just hear the buzzing of all the insects as you go by the Korean boxwoods.
And then you smell that smell of it, of the plant, of the flower.
Just when you're really, when you're by the shrubs and it's a certain time of year,
like you're saying, it's sent takes us to a sense, if you will, of place and time,
which is really powerful.
Oh, yeah.
Aromas can remind us of and bring to mind great memories.
I mean, as a vegetable gardener myself, the scent of just gently rubbing my finger up and down
a tomato plant stem and smelling that, I go, oh, it's spring.
Yeah.
I love the reminder of what time of year it is in these golden nuggets we get to look forward
to that are ephemeral and they're gone.
Some sort of interesting relationship between how the nose works and how those aromas play
on the brain.
Like, I can still recall, this is a little gross, but it's true, in grade school, you know,
when you're in grade school, kids throw up a lot.
That happens.
Well, Mr. Stevie was the janitor at St. Charles Borromeo Elementary School in North Hollywood
and his job was to clean it up and he used this concoction of, it looked like, green mulch
that he would put on the spot and that had this very significant aroma.
And sometimes I get a whiff of that and I'm immediately transported back to St. Charles.
Yeah, it is fascinating, a part of a Roma therapy study and beyond that, but the sense of smell
is intimately linked with the hippocampus and memory, formation and retention.
So, and that hippocampus can grow and still, we could still retain the form of new memories
as we go through life, but you're really drawing upon something powerful and I think you're
guests will appreciate this.
Like, we formed scent memories really deep ones when we're younger.
And when our brains start to mature in our 20s, that sense of like immediate connection with
scent just starts to diminish ever so little.
You know, like, so we get these strong memories from childhood and it's, you know, it's
just the way the brain is working.
Yeah, it might even be more powerful than what the I see or the ears here as far as how long
it lasts with you.
I'm just fascinated by it and the fact that there are so many plants that have wonderful
aroma.
Now, I noticed that in your latest podcast, Essential Arimatica, you talk about the Juniper
Berry.
Well, certainly Juniper plants grow in a wide variety of areas, the bane of most landscapers
because they're rather prickly to work with.
Yes, but there are junipers with a noble, a noble, old soul.
I don't know, we can go, we can wax poetically about that.
But yeah, Juniper, I'm inspired by this time of year here in New York State.
It's cold still, ish.
Keep me on track here because I'm like, it's actually kind of disgustingly warm here for
February in New York.
But anyway, Juniper, right?
Juniper is around the world.
There's so many different species.
It is a giver of its gorgeous berries that we can cook with and it's an incredibly cleansing
plant for the mind, cleansing for the spirit.
The berries are just so powerful.
And before me, I have like three bottles of Juniper Berry essential oil.
And you're inhaling it.
Yeah.
What about these diffusers?
I mean, I got to confess, I got onto an aromatherapy kick and I bought three different diffusers
for to scatter around the house and put different essential oils in them to enjoy.
It turned out to be more work than we were willing to do.
But still, it was a nice experience.
Yes.
So diffusion aromatherapy is very interesting.
It could be incredibly powerful and depends on the kind of diffuser you have.
So you can buy a nebulizing diffuser.
You could buy one as a non-arromatherapy enthusiast, but that you just put in a chamber in vibration
happens where it just a mist comes out.
So it permeates the air and could go deeply into your lungs actually.
And then there's the water diffusers, ultrasonic diffusers where you put just a couple drops
of essential oil on and you get that mood kind of situation.
I'm making this distinction because diffusion aromatherapy when you use that nebulizer.
You get the more pharmacological effects of inhaling the oil deeply into your body.
And there's a distinction between that.
If you don't mind, we can go down this road of essential oils, but it's a multi-layered
cake of essential oils when you're working with the pure, genuine, authentic, concentrated
essential oils.
So what happens is like you and I touched upon you smell something and you were like,
ooh, I recognize that.
I know what that is.
Oh, I like that.
So there's already that happening.
And then you might have a memory that you remember elementary school or grandma's cooking.
And then essential oils are antimicrobial in nature.
They're heavily anti-inflammatory.
Many of them have affinities for the respiratory tract.
And when you inhale this stuff, you are taking in that antimicrobial properties.
You're also working with the nervous system, you know, neuroendocrine system.
So it is true that lavender can make you sleepy by working with your nervous system
receptors.
I think that's the reason I got it originally was to put me to sleep quicker.
And that was with the lavender essential oils.
How easy is it to make your own essential oils from the plants you grow?
That's a great question because I do distill for the aromatic waters, the hydrosols.
It takes a lot of plant material to obtain essential oils.
So the figure I always use is lavender, depending on the lavender plant location, you know,
all that growing season.
250 to 300 pounds of flowering lavender tops to get a pound of oil.
Oh, no, 350 pounds of flowering lavender tops must be harvested to then put into a still
to then obtain one pound of oil.
A lot of plant material, so we're talking like farms, you know, of a lot of plant material.
So it's crazy.
Like I grow lemongrass here or mentally and I'll cut it and I'll cut like three pounds
of lemongrass.
I get like not even a milliliter, you know, one ml.
I get like nothing.
Wow.
That's an essential oil.
Yeah.
So basically, if I want the essential oil of rosemary, I would need an acre of rosemary.
If you're using the flowers and not the leaves, and frankly, I'd rather the bees have the
flowers in the wintertime.
That's how I feel, honestly.
When I just still, I take what's on my property or I go to an organic farm near me and I take
what I need for me for my small aromatherapy practice.
And then like you're saying, I want it for everybody else.
You want to leave that behind and be responsible.
I mean, there's a whole thing about the big billion dollar industry, so essential oils
and overuse and bad oils out there, bad business practices.
Yeah, let's leave it for the insects.
Well, yeah, especially in USDA zone nine and in parts of eight, you can grow rosemary
as a flowering plant in the wintertime.
And that may be one of the few plants that the bees will be attracted to on nice days
during the winter to enjoy.
I love how you mentioned rosemary because I have two pots of rosemary and I put them
in the garage every winter.
And every winter without any water because it's rosemary, they are flowering right now.
They started flowering in early December.
So every time I go in the garage, I see these two rosemary plants just happily doing their
thing with no insects to visit them.
Oh, no, it's kind of scaring me that you're growing rosemary in your garage.
Are there lights or a bright window there?
There are some windows and it gets the light it needs.
It's just fascinating how plants are so resilient.
Oh, yeah, they want to grow.
For essential oils, are you mainly harvesting the flowers and not the leaves?
That's a really great question and it depends on the plant.
So rosemary, you would want rosemary when it's flowering or just about to flower and you
would harvest the top thirds, like the young shoots.
Okay.
And you sip, snip, snip, snip, same with lavender, just newly flowering tops.
You could get, there's oil in the stem.
I had the juniper bear.
You would want to take the berries, but you could harvest the top, the top of the twig
with the berries.
So you want to get where the aromatics are like lemongrass.
You could take the whole plant.
You wouldn't take the roots.
Let's say rose, you just want the rose petals.
You don't want any green parts.
So it's just about who's the plant and where is the most oil produced?
For a lot of gardeners who may have roses that are unpruned, they may be seeing this
time of year in the winter time, rose hips, which people use for rose hip tea.
So how easy is it to make rose hip tea?
Super easy.
I love that you said that because my mother harvested.
She's in Michigan, harvested some rose hips for me, and then dried them with such a nice
gift for her to do that.
And then I just take the rose hip for like a cup of tea.
I'll take two to three, four rose hips and let them gently steep.
Oh, it's so nice.
Oh, okay.
That's easy.
It sounds easier than distilling to make essential oils.
It is.
And that's the thing about being a mindful practitioner of aromatherapy is love the plants
in turn to the application that's needed.
So I do want to give this shout out to, I don't have it with me, rose hip oil, like
pressed, when you press the rose hip, it has the seed.
It has an incredibly beautiful oil that could be nice for topical applications.
Oh, really?
Support skin health.
Would you attract bees then?
Yes.
Actually, no, because the rose hip is not really aromatic and it's very protective for
the skin.
Generally, the species is from South America.
I'm forgetting the species name, but rose hip seed oil is incredibly lovely to protect
your skin.
For all gardeners, right?
We forget to put our sunscreen on.
It's a nice oil to look into and most health food stores will have rose hip seed oil.
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Let's get back to our conversation about shows for the nose aromatic plants.
With the host of the essential aromatic podcast, aromatherapist, Amy Anthony.
Now, one point we were talking about earlier before we started is one of my favorite shrubs
that does a whole host of duties in the yard, especially here in USDA zones nine and eight.
The Bay Laurel plant, Loris noblis, the shrub that in my yard would get 15, 20 feet tall,
the leaves, you crack a leaf and it's spaghetti time.
What a wonderful aroma.
And it's so like the symbolism of Laurel.
Like I have them here.
I have them in little pots and these guys are probably two feet tall.
I can ask them to grow here.
So I have to bring them in the garage where they overwinter.
The poor garage.
What?
Well, the poor garage, your car is outside.
Now you've got a garage full of plants.
I do.
My husband is very gracious.
Very good.
But Bay Laurel is such a, I'm so jealous that you can have this plant.
I don't harvest its leaves here.
I leave it when it flowers.
Oh, those flowers are gorgeous.
You see the bees visiting it.
And you could just take a leaf and crush it like you were saying and smell it.
Or one thing I like to do as an aromatherapist is I like to, whenever I make soup, I like
to put my herbs on the side and make a tea of it and an infusion.
Because that way you don't have to strain things out.
I could do what I want.
And then you lift the lid off.
And if you have like 20 bay leaves in a pot of ever so slightly, you know, steaming water,
it's like heaven.
It is.
Exactly.
But Laurel, like, I just to share a couple things about Laurel, like Laurel we cook with
because it's really digestive.
It helps with digesting fatty things.
I think it's like a gall liver type support.
Many of the essential oils or aromatic plants help with getting the GI system moving and
helping digestion move along.
But Laurel, the way I know it to work with emotions, because when we work with the aromatics,
we're working with emotions as well in states of being and how we feel.
Laurel gives you chutzpah.
It's like, it's like a, I can do this.
It's courage, right?
It's been used for centuries for, you know, the crown of Laurel victory.
It kind of gives you a little pep in your step.
If you need that boost, if you smell some Laurel essential oil and as a tip, I have a,
on my website, lots of free videos and free classes I have on the first page, how to
smell an essential oil.
And you might think that sounds so stupid, Amy, but really how do you get something out
of this for you?
If you take one drop of Laurel essential oil and smell it on a cotton pad for three minutes,
I'd love to see what your response is because something's probably going to happen.
Wow.
Okay.
That's what I love is being a teacher.
It's like, how do you work with the oils, right?
A lot of us are like, I've heard of essential oils, but it's like, how do you really work
with them and incorporate them in your life?
Maybe start growing some of the plants so you get to appreciate where that oil comes from.
You know, it's, it's important.
So there's a tip for all you salespeople out there before you have to make a cold call.
You might want to sniff some Bay Laurel.
I love that.
All right.
Let's.
Let's.
Yes.
I'm a plant that I grow to attract beneficial insects because apparently insects are hooked
on nicotine, flowering tobacco.
Oh, oh.
And the tubular flowers attract hummingbirds and butterflies and the plant itself gets
about four or five feet tall and two feet wide and it has a great nighttime aroma.
And I always love the plants that have an aroma at night because you come home from a
hard day at work, you can walk through the garden and inhale and calm down immediately.
Yeah.
I love to grow ornamental.
So I'm in zone seven B. Yeah, we're on the east end of Long Island on the north fork
as it's called.
And we have a, I can't grow what you grow, but I have been growing native tobacco and
ornamental tobacco and that headiness and you see the different insects visiting these
plants like you're saying.
And it's just, it's heavy.
It's just divine to sit there be mesmerized while looking at a tobacco plant.
Yeah, there's something.
And that's the thing that like, I love to talk about aromatics and I geek out about essential
oils, but like tobacco and these gorgeous oleander, we can't get essential oils from
those plants per se.
It's just something about engaging our sense of smell and realizing how important it is
to us as creatures of this earth and how scent is a chemical means of communication.
So scent and insects, plants and insects have been evolving together for thousands and thousands
of years, right?
And we have too, but I like how you're bringing up always to go back to the insects because
there's a special relationship that plants and insects have without insects, there's
no fruit.
So we need it.
So plant those gorgeous plants.
You know what I want to share with you?
Sure.
I was planting euphorbia at someone I'm getting to know and it's in the back of our three season
room.
I'll have to send you a picture and I haven't been watering it, but it's getting light
and it just started flowering.
And even my husband who's not into what I do so much and I'm not into what he does.
It's smell, the aromatic smell from those flowers is interesting and the volatile language
is shared amongst all the plants.
There's a similar chemistry, but I was like, I smell Yarrow.
Mm hmm.
Yeah.
So there's a chemical language, you know, the chemistry is shared.
So I was so excited that these guys are blooming.
It's new to me.
There's always something new.
Unfortunately, euphorbia has the common name that some people don't like and that's
spurge.
You think of spurge, you think of weeds, but euphorbia is commonly called spurge, which
makes it easy to grow.
Yeah.
Well, hope so.
I'm glad you brought that up because when I was looking at the plant tags and I was seeing
euphorbia, spurge, I'm like, ew, spurge.
That's what I think.
Yeah.
You know, I've been gardening my whole life and I'm in my early forties.
Yeah.
And that actually is a very, there's just so many euphorbs out there that you can grow
that are just gorgeous with wonderfully different flowers too.
One or two plants that you could probably grow in USDA zone seven that are a wonderful
show for the nose.
And that would be the star jasmine and four o'clocks.
Star jasmine, I just bought this year and I, we live next to state land.
So we have deer that come to visit and I'm like, I'm never putting up a fence, but I
finally put up a little fenced in garden and I put the star jasmine in there in a pot.
So thanks for sharing that.
I can't wait to see what happens next year.
And the four o'clocks are one of those that put on their best aroma as the name would
imply after four o'clock in the afternoon.
I have a question for you about that because they come from South America.
If I'm not mistaken, four o'clocks.
And my understanding is they can become weedy.
I wouldn't classify it as a noxious weed.
But it is a tuberous rooted perennial.
And that's kind of a red flag and gardening circles when you say tuberous rooted because
tubers have a tendency to multiply sort of like the Alstramaria or Peruvian lily and it
can take over an area.
But you know, if it's the only thing that'll grow in that spot, let it grow.
Oh, that's awesome.
But you're right.
It's just like, you know, when I have kind of, I'm a novice still, I guess, compared
to you.
Someone says, oh, I'm going to plant a spearmint or fill in the blank mint.
And I'm like, are you sure?
Like, are you ready to always kind of pull that out from where it's growing?
Or are you going to contain it in a pot?
Speaking of memories of shows for the nose, one of my earliest memories would be my mother
telling me, go in the backyard and rip out that spearmint that's starting to spread.
Really?
Yes.
You've got taught young.
Yeah, it was a ground cover that got away.
Yes.
I remember smelling like a Wrigley gum for the rest of the day.
I love that you're bringing up a point that just, I was reminded of so many essential oil
bearing plants.
You know, we're talking about aromas aromatic plants in general, but a lot of the essential
oil bearing plants can be a little weedy, like fennel, like if you let that go, I just
think coming back.
Chamomile, she's everywhere in my garden, the German Chamomile, everywhere.
Coriander, some of these guys aren't so contained, right?
And a lot of these plants produce the essential oils to help them thrive and survive.
So a lot of these essential oil bearing plants grow in really tough spots or pioneering species.
So to go back to this gorgeous juniper berry, they're kind of the first to arrive, or I
have Virginia cedar wood here on Long Island, it grows everywhere.
It's just such a noble plant.
They are the first to arrive after, you know, the birds eat the seeds and poop them out.
I hope you get my point.
It's just important to share like essential oils.
These plants aren't precious per se.
They're fighters.
They're just trying to survive.
And you brought up fennel and what if you love the smell of licorice, I would say get a
fennel plant, but I would give it to you with this warning, put it in the back 40.
It's going to spread.
It's going to look ugly for most of the year.
But when it has that aroma, you'll want to be out there all the time.
We have it along a bike trail here in Sacramento County, the American River Parkway, which is
full of native plants and some escaped plants.
And fennel is an escaped plant that has sort of taken over in this riparian area running
along the American River.
But during the month of May, what a joyful experience is to bike the American River Parkway
and just inhale all that licorice from the fennel.
Yeah.
And you know what?
I love those ombles, the umbilofaray family.
So you'll just see all of the different insects.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
The APAC family.
This is like the equal opportunity plant family where like you'll see so many different
insects together on the same omble.
It's just fascinating to me to watch like a little kid.
If you're trying to attract beneficial insects to your property, go with the umbilofaray family.
And umbil is almost short for umbrella.
And that's the way the flower looks.
It's a flat flower and it makes it easier for the insects that are beneficials to get
to the pollen because they don't have the long proboscis that say a hummingbird might
have.
So those the umbilofaray family plants are just excellent for attracting a whole host
of great pollinating insects.
You know what my great love is and I don't know if you can grow this in your area is
Angelica.
Oh, yeah.
Sure.
Because yeah, Angelica and then the Chinese dong quai, right?
The Chinese Angelica too.
Just gorgeous flowers and all of the different insects.
It's just such a it's like a party.
Some would say it's a weed.
It's a party for insects.
Oh, it's a party for insects.
Yes, but the angelica can spread.
So around here, I've I learned that lesson the hard way when I planted.
I had a kiwi vine that requires some some major infrastructure to support.
And underneath it, I used a beneficial insect plant blend of seeds.
And it seems like the first one that came up and the one that took over the rest of
the area was the Angelica.
Not to say there's anything wrong with that.
We never we don't forget these lessons though.
Once you learn them, you'll never you'll never plant that mint.
Well, watch Angelica and metal.
Well, there's a place for everything.
And if people really want man, put it in a container.
Exactly.
Yeah, and grow it that way.
It's easier to enjoy that way.
Hey, talk about your podcast.
Well, thank you.
My podcast, I think it started out as a way essential aromatica.
I want to make a romeotherapy accessible to people.
I want to provide inspiration.
And if you're curious about essential oils and how how do you incorporate them in your
life, I have episodes that I'll feature like I made a soup today.
I'm going to talk about it.
And let's talk about I put lemongrass in the soup.
And let's talk about the essential oil of lemongrass.
And I really want to make a romeotherapy accessible.
And what I'd like to highlight is really just today, it's the new moon.
So happy new moon day to everybody.
I have this pet project I've worked on that I'm putting on the podcast where I take an
essential oil bearing plant and I pair it with the seasonal moon time.
And I talk about moon time theme.
So this is juniper time right now in talking about its winter, even if you're in gorgeous
California times of scarcity and how to think about that and honor it and notice nature
around you.
And I pair a plant with this moon time and I have a poem I read.
I have a guided meditation to help you connect with the oil, with the plant, with yourself,
with nature.
I think this is why we garden right?
It's to be we're curious.
We want to be connected with the earth.
I mean, that's in a nutshell.
I really want to make a romeotherapy accessible to people and not just be a bottle of something
you see on a shelf and you're like, well, I have a diffuser.
What do I do with this?
I'll pause because it's a big question.
Yeah.
But I'm here to share I'm doing this out of passion.
A lot of my work is out of passion, actually.
Well, that makes you a happy camper.
Very.
Yeah, exactly.
Who wants a job?
I understand why they do it, but I could never have a job where sitting on my desk is a calendar
with X's through the dates to the day I retire.
Why are you doing that to your life?
Live your passionate life.
And that's I think I could just really share briefly.
I worked in corporate America.
I was a market researcher, meaning that's focus group design, survey design, data analysis.
And it's really cool stuff.
But towards the end of that career, I would look up at this in I was in downtown Manhattan.
I worked at a very global bank.
And I was like, why am I here?
And I was just not happy.
And I got to follow my heart in aromatherapy.
It was like knocking the universe is like, we're here.
Amy, you know, you need the plants.
We're here.
And this is my way of connecting and hopefully sharing with other people.
I'm glad you follow your heart.
Thank you.
But consider me as a resource.
I hope for inspiration for essential oils, aromatherapy.
And I've been told I'm a passionate teacher, which I think I'd agree with.
And that's a good thing to be.
Yeah, I invite.
I'm learned from me.
I'm a resource.
If you go to my website or my podcast, I'm sharing, I'm loving and I want people to
be as excited as I am about plants.
The website is NYC aromatica.com.
The podcast is called essential aromatica.
There are videos at the website, online classes, consultations, a lot to read.
Check it out.
Amy Anthony and essential aromatica is the podcast.
Sent is information and it's cultural.
So a lot of people might think something smells gross from one culture and different in another.
So one thing I like to challenge all of us is when you're smelling something, unless
it's like horse, dog poo, plants, all of them smell beautiful.
They're just communicating.
So when we challenge ourselves to be like, what's that smell like?
Just remember it's information that's really deeply impacting you on many levels.
And somebody in nature will appreciate that.
No matter how vile that aroma might be.
There is some creature that is attracted to that plant.
Like the corpse plant.
There you go.
Yeah.
Who needs more flies?
Well, put in a corpse plant.
But yeah, you're right.
Some that coevolutions there.
So someone needs it and appreciates it and loves it.
I love that.
Thank you.
NYC aromatica.com is the website.
The name of the podcast is essential aromatica.
Amy Anthony.
Thank you for being with us today and explaining more about aromatherapy and those shows for
the nose.
Thanks so much for having me.
I love this.
Just as I'm fond of saying that all gardening is local, plant names can be local too.
You heard a aromatherapist Amy Anthony refer to a plant in her area of New York's Long
Island as the Virginia cedar wood.
That's a plant prize for its oils and loathed by many for its tendency to spread.
It's also commonly called the eastern juniper.
It is, as Amy said, a pioneer species.
That means that it is one of the first trees to repopulate, cleared, eroded, or otherwise
damaged land.
It's a rather long live plant as well with the potential to live over 900 years.
It's found in prairies, oak barons, old pastures, limestone hills, off and along highways, and
near recent construction sites in the climate that it likes.
So what climate does it like?
It can be found in eastern North America from Maine to South Dakota, south to northern
most Florida and southwest into east central Texas.
But what about this name Virginia cedar wood?
Is it a cedar or is it a juniper?
Well, the botanical name gives it away.
Juniperous Virginiana It's a juniper species.
It's also called eastern juniper, eastern red cedar, or Virginia cedar wood, a name most
commonly used in commerce when referring to its aromatic oils.
Eastern red cedar or Virginia cedar wood extract, it's an extract with a potent woody cedar
aroma derived from the wood of the juniperous Virginiana.
Among its many commercial uses, it's a fragrance component in some products.
The fragrant finely grain, soft brittle, very light, pankish to brownish red heart wood
is very durable, even in contact with the soil.
It's a very useful wood.
Because of its resistance to decay, fence posts are fashioned from this wood, moths avoid
the aromatic wood and therefore it's in demand for guess what?
Right cedar chests, cedar closets.
It's marketed as eastern red cedar and aromatic cedar, even though it is a juniper.
The best portions of the heart wood are one of the few woods that are suitable for making
pencils.
But the supply had so diminished by the 1940s that the wood of the incense cedar, calicidristi
currants, largely replaced it.
Interesting too, the incense cedar isn't a true cedar.
Well, it's interesting if you like plants.
Because it can spread so easy, a lot of people don't like it for that.
If you suffer from allergies, it could be that plant, the juniperous Virginiana, the eastern
red cedar.
Its pollen is a known allergen.
The pollen releases at various points in the spring, depending on where you are in the
country.
And it spreads easily courtesy of the cedar waxwing bird.
They're fond of the berries of these junipers.
It takes about 12 minutes for their seeds to pass through the bird's guts.
And the seeds that have been consumed by this bird have levels of germination roughly
three times higher than those of seeds the birds did not eat.
And Bani, we'd call that efficient stratification.
Many other birds as well, from bluebirds to turkeys and many mammals, also will consume
those berries.
The weather may not be perfect for outdoor gardening right now, but it's perfect for
planning your 2023 garden.
Now's the time to plan the what and the where of what you want to plant for the future.
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And coming soon to that nursery near you is Dave Wilson Nursery's excellent lineup of
farmers market favorites.
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They'll already be potted up and ready to be planted.
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Wholesale Grower Dave Wilson Nursery has probably the best lineup of great tasting fruit and
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Find out more at their website Dave Wilson dot com.
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Plus at Dave Wilson dot com, you can find the nursery nearest you that carries Dave Wilson's
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Your harvest to better health begins at Dave Wilson dot com.
Are you hankering for some split piece soup?
We are talking with a noted chef and master gardener, Andy McDonald.
And Andy, I know you love split piece soup.
You're making it for the group here on the Saturday Workday at the Faroaks Horticulture
Center.
It smells delightful.
Tell us first about your love affair with split piece soup.
Okay, so when I was little, my aunt Carol, who lived on the coast, we'd go to visit her
and my father would take us out to Split Pea Anderson's for endless bowls of split
piece soup.
And I just thought it was wonderful because we got to go to a restaurant and eat as much
as we wanted.
And as a 10 year old, that was a delight.
So a few years later, I went back and I wasn't as thrilled as I was as a 10 year old because
to me, the soup seemed rather plain and bland.
And so I decided that I would fix that.
And so I came up with a different version.
And I noticed in the recipe that you do the cooking in an instant pot.
Oh, yes, I did that because for this instance, I was making it for a large group and it was
just easier and quicker that way.
And there's no danger of burning it.
So I made it in the instant pot, but you can make it stove top.
It just takes longer.
All right.
So what makes your Split Pea Soup so special?
Well, I use a blend of carrots, celery and onions.
And I also add russet potatoes and cook those.
And then the herbs that I use, I use bay leaves and I use oregano and I use thyme and I use
liquid smoke because I make this version vegan.
And so you can't do a ham hock with it if you're vegan.
And anyway, so I cook it in the instant pot, stir it really well so it breaks up the Split
Peas after it's been cooked and it's creamy and thick and has chunks of vegetables in
it.
Okay, I'm going to ask a very basic question.
Can you grow Split Peas or do you have to buy Split Peas?
I would recommend you buy Split Peas.
I'm sure you could grow them and then dry them.
And I don't know, just split them.
You just buy them.
They're really inexpensive.
It's a very inexpensive food that can feed a lot of people.
Okay, another basic question.
Where is it in the grocery store?
Oh, it's with the beans.
Okay, so it's a canned product.
No, no, it's dry.
Oh, it's a dry product.
You have to use dry.
Okay.
Yeah, dry Split Peas.
They're like dried beans.
Actually, I think they're similar to lentils.
What is in liquid smoke?
Liquid smoke is all it is.
They take, I use rice, which is one that's one of the purest of them.
They take, they burn different woods like there's apple, there's hickory, and they capture
the vapors and then filter them and that's what liquid smoke is.
Hmm, that's very interesting.
It is weird, but it's a little bit goes a long way.
And it imparts the aroma of pork?
Yeah, well, because hams are smoked.
This is that flavor that makes them.
It gives the smokiness to it.
Wow.
It's a great product if you're a vegan.
Now you do have one word of warning though about Split Peasoup.
Don't let it sit out for too long.
Okay, well, what it will thicken as it sits.
So if you make it ahead and refrigerate it or you have leftovers and refrigerate that,
then you'll need to add stock or water to it to heat it back up because you'll have to
eat it with a fork otherwise.
I mean, it really congeals.
But that's not a bad thing because it just means it goes further.
Okay.
And then if you wanted to serve it as a soup again, would you just add a broth?
Yeah, just add some more stock to it.
That's better flavor if you add stock or you can even add water to it also.
But stock is going to give you a better flavor.
And yeah, and you just add more to it and make it whatever consistency you want because
it's not going to thicken as much while you heat it.
All right, I'm going to show my culinary idiocy here.
What is an instant pot and how does it work?
Oh, it's a fancy modern pressure cooker.
You can do this in a pressure cooker too, but most people have found that instant pots
are great because instant pot will have a setting like you can saute.
You can also use it like a crock pot, but it also does the pressure cooking.
When I cook it here, I started off using the saute feature and saute the carrot celery
and onions and then turn it in.
Then I add all the other ingredients, put the lid on, set the pressure and pressure
cook it.
So it cooks the peas.
So the recipe in manual mode, it says here is set the timer for 20 minutes when the timer
goes off.
Let the pot release naturally for 30 to 40 minutes.
If you are making this on the stove top, then add an hour.
No.
The reason, because it's a pressure cooker, if you just try to open it up, you will like
blow everything up and that's unpleasant.
So if you're cooking it stove top, you just cook it until the peas have all broken down
and it's creamy.
If you soak your peas ahead of time, it won't take that long.
If you don't soak the peas, it probably takes a couple of hours.
Okay.
Other than the split peas, everything you add there could actually be grown in the garden.
Yes.
That's true, except for soy sauce.
Well, yeah, unless you live next to the Kiko Man factory.
Right.
Whatever.
But yeah, because it's olive oil, it's onions, it's carrots, it's celery, it's garlic,
it's potatoes, thyme, oregano, bay.
Sounds good.
Yeah, so I call it my more than basic split pea soup.
Annie McDonald, chef instructor, Sacramento County master gardener, feeding the crew here
at the Faro Culture Center on a workday Saturday with her more than basic split peas
soup.
Annie, it smells delicious.
Thank you.
Enjoy it later.
If you were scribbling like mad trying to copy down master gardener and chef Andy McDonald's
recipe for vegan split peas soup while you're letting your Tesla drive you around town,
I have a safer alternative for you.
Number one.
I have a transcript of today's entire podcast episode, courtesy of the better podcast suppliers
out there or at our homepage, garden basics.net.
It's all in episode two 54.
Number two, we have that recipe written down, ready to go in today's beyond the garden basics
newsletter as well.
And it's free.
Plus, we wax wrap sonic about the plant from which one part of that plant is included in
the soup's ingredients, the leaves of the bay laurel, Laura Snowblis, the bay laurel.
It's an easy, carefree, broad leaf evergreen with minimal litter.
Perfect is a 30 foot tall privacy screen while you're cavorting in your backyard swimming
pool or hot tub.
And because it's a broad leaf evergreen, it's a year round hotel for small birds who
will enjoy feasting on the bad bugs in your garden during the day.
We have it all.
It's in today's beyond the garden basics newsletter.
It's in your email.
It's probably waiting for you right now.
Or you can start a subscription.
It's free.
Find the link to the newsletter in today's show notes or sign up at the newsletter link
at our homepage, garden basics.net.
The Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast comes out once a week on Fridays.
Plus the newsletter podcast that comes with the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter continues
and that will also be released on Fridays.
Both are free and they're brought to you by SmartPods and Dave Wilson Nursery.
The Garden Basics podcast is available wherever podcasts are handed out and that includes
our homepage, Garden Basics.net.
And that's where you can also sign up for the Beyond the Garden Basics newsletter and
podcast.
That's Garden Basics.net.
Or you can use the links in today's show notes.
And thank you so much for listening.
Thank you.
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