Author: Lilac

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Tea Plants (part II)

Japanese Tea Field
Japanese Tea Field

The strongest flavored tea made from the Camellia sinenses leaves is called black tea or red tea.  Black tea is the tea which was most commonly sold over the years in the US by brand names like Tetley, Lipton or “Good Morning” organic. Black teas are made from “fermented” tea leaves.

What is called fermentation is really oxidation because it takes place when Camellia sinensis leaves are spread on trays in a cool, humid atmosphere to oxidize the leaves. This changes the chemical structure of the leaf, and allows the tea’s  characteristic flavor to emerge. The longer a tea is allowed to ferment, the stronger flavor it will have and the darker it will become. To retard the fermentation process the leaves are dried. After drying the leaves are graded -  longer leaves are used for loose teas and leftovers and dust leaves are used for tea bags.

Connoisseurs think of tea like great wines or coffees, each with its special flavor. Aged tea is considered a great delicacy in the Chinese culture. TheGardenLady was invited to  a Chinese tea ceremony where she tasted 50 year old black tea. This was a first for TheGardenLady who has attended a number of Japanese Tea Ceremonies.

Continue reading “Tea Plants (part II)”

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Tea (part I)

Japanese Tea Field
Japanese Tea Field

It is cold outside, especially if you live in an area where it is frigid or snowing or raining. This is the time of year for drinking lots of hot tea, the world’s second most popular beverage after water. And now that there are so many articles about the health benefits of drinking tea, such as the antioxidants, anti-cancer content of tea , or tea helping to cure diabetes, people will probably be drinking more tea – both hot and iced.

Tea is one of the oldest beverages known to civilization- thought to have been discovered as a beverage in (probably western) China in 2700 B.C.  It was brought to Europe in the 1600s. We, in the American colonies, first got it from Europe and then were forced to buy it only from England who then foisted high taxes on the tea it exported. So the early colonists fought this high tax in a battle called the Boston Tea Party.

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Watching Plants Do Their Thing

As the winter wears on, many of us dream of spring and the return of flowering plants.  Some of us are lucky enough to have flowers open or opening indoors.  My amaryllis bud is opening and I eagerly await the brilliant red flower.  But if you don’t have flower buds and dream of your outdoor or indoor plants in bloom, you can watch time lapse shots of flowers opening or plants growing on your computer. There are many sites to watch (see here). Or perhaps you can take your own time lapse photos and send them to TheGardenLady (see here). YouTube has a lot of these videos and they are free.  Sit back and enjoy.

A few that I enjoyed are these:

Showy lady slipper – Cypripedium reginae – flower opening

Hibiscus Time Lapse

Time lapse radish seeds sprouting, top and roots growing

Orchid Time Lapse

Or you might want to watch a creative animation of flowering plants opening.  Check out the first video of this post.  It’s called

Plant techno

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The EasyBloom Plant Sensor

Today on televsion, TheGardenLady saw a new product that the company that invented it thinks might revolutionize gardening. It is called The EasyBloom Plant Sensor. The company claims that this device that looks like a plastic flower on a stick which is selling for
approximately $56 to $60 will:

  • 1     Determine which plants will thrive in a specific spot in your yard or home.
  • 2     Diagnose an ailing plant so you can bring it back to health.

You stick the device into the ground near an ailing plant or at a gardening site where you want to plant and leave it in the ground for 24 hours. Then you take it out of the ground and insert a part of the stick into your computer which will give you a read out. I don’t know whether the software costs extra money – you seem to sign up for it on the EasyBloom.com website to activate it. I would be curious to know how much information it gives out. And I hope the device is reusable.

Presently the way to get this type of plant or gardening information in the US and Canada, is to buy a soil kit at numerous places that sell gardening supplies or on the computer or at the local Master Gardener office.

At the Master Gardener Office you buy a soil kit for $10 to $20, take it home and follow the directions in the kit which tells you how to dig out some soil, fill the bag with the soil and send this bag with soil to your state agricultural school where it is diagnosed and the results are mailed to you. You can always go to your Master Gardener office with the sheet of results if you need help understanding what the results mean and what you have to do to correct or amend your soil.

But the EasyBloom website seems excellent just for their library because they say they have and you can “Access detailed plant information on over 5000+ plants; create a custom plant library of your favorite plants.”

If any readers do purchase this high tech gardening device, please let TheGardenLady and her readers know what you think of it.

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Building a Greenhouse

One of the things TheGardenLady always wished for was to have a Greenhouse. Perhaps TheGardenLady‘s readers have also had that wish for themselves. I have a friend who built one for her orchids.

Where to start seemed to be one problem and cost seemed to be another.  But with the computer as your library, there are many sites to check for easy to build cheap greenhouses.

Surfing and reading on the internet TheGardenLady discovered a site that said a person could build a  greenhouse using their empty discarded plastic bottles. Growing up TheGardenLady read on Ripley’s Believe It or Not about a man who built his house using discarded bottles. I went to see that house and since then have seen numerous such uses of bottles in construction on HGTV. With today’s bad economy building a greenhouse by recycling old plastic bottles sounds intriguing and cheap. The photo of the finished bottle greenhouse looks interesting and the plans cost either $4 or$5 dollars.

After this plastic bottle site, TheGardenLady found numerous sites that tells what is needed for a greenhouse project.  See here, for example.

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Gardening to Cope with Tough Times

TheGardenLady wants to wish all her readers a Happy, Healthy New Year.

These are trying times – especially because of the economy. Remember that gardening can reduce stress. Many articles point this out. Going outdoors to garden you will be working in the sun so that you are getting extra Vitamin D for free while you are getting some exercise both to reduce stress and  to save on your gym bill.

Buy packets of seeds. They are the cheapest way to go.

Johnny’s Selected Seeds

Thompson & Morgan

Burpee Seeds and

Park Seed are just a few of the excellent companies where you can go online to read what they have or they will send you a catalog.

With the strange winter we are experiencing, you may want to start planting seeds indoors (see this previous post). For example if you have a sunny window, you may be able to start your own herb garden. Buying herbs in the supermarket can be pricey and fresh can be better.  By buying packets of seeds, each seed that germinates potentially can grow into a plant so that you can grow many plants, enough to plant outdoors when the weather in your area is right or enough plants to harvest and dry or even enough to give as presents. Or you can use the extra seeds to plant outdoors when the time is right.

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Holiday Poinsettias

Read this excellent article by Michelle Gervais on Poinsettias.   According to it, Poinsettias are NOT poisonous to humans and rats. It doesn’t say anything about cats and dogs. It discusses how to choose the best plant, the care of the plant and it gives sites for more information on the plant.

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Biblical Garden Foods for the Winter Holidays

Allium Cepa by Bambo

It is December and many of TheGardenLady‘s readers are celebrating either Hanukah or Christmas. The  house is decorated in the appropriate way for the holiday you celebrate and food will be a main part of the festivities.

So this year TheGardenLady is suggesting that her readers try to cook with some of the herbs (Bible herbs) or foods that are  mentioned in the Bible.

While friends and family are seated at the dinner table enjoying the special holiday treats, talking about the foods in the Bible might even add to your discussion – after all these celebrations are related to the Bible plus TheGardenLady‘s readers are those who are interested in plants, even ancient ones.  And these dinner discussions might encourage some readers to grow the Biblical favorites in their own gardens.

Some of the Biblical foods mentioned are garlic and onions. Onion, garlic or shallots are all in the allium family of plants, relatives of the Lily. The common onion is the allium cepa (see photo above), the garlic is allium sativum and the shallot is Allium ascalonicum named for the city, Ashkelon in Israel  from which it was supposedly brought to Europe by the Crusaders. (Alliums are now becoming a popular flowering plant for the garden; Allium giganteum is a particular favorite in TheGardenLady’s ornamental garden. Though ornamental alliums are not for eating.)

Lentils – Lens culinaris is another food mentioned in the Bible. Lentils are thought to be the oldest cultivated legume.

Some other foods mentioned in the Bible are honey, olive oil, and cinnamon.

This holiday you might try a Baked Honey Lentil Casserole as part of your menu. This casserole is composed of herbs, spices and vegetables that were eaten during Biblical times.

  • Baked Honey Lentil Casserole for 6 as a side dish.

Cook 1/2lb red lentils as directed on the package. (Do not add salt when cooking lentils.)

Make a mixture of 1 tsp. dry mustard (optional), 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 small onion in small dice, 1  clove garlic minced, now add salt- 1 tsp or to taste.

All the above items are mentioned in the Bible. (You can add ground black pepper to taste.) Mix this mixture into the cooked lentils and taste to see if you want to add more of any herbs or spices.

Put 2 Tbsp Olive oil on bottom of casserole- olives and olive oil were used in the time of the Bible.

Then pour the cooked lentil mixture into the casserole and pour 1/4 to 1/2 cup of honey on top. It depends on your sweet tooth. (Honey is another food that was used during Biblical times.)

Cover the casserole tightly with the lid or with aluminum foil.  Put casserole in a preheated 350 degree oven and bake until tender- start checking after 1/2 hour- it could take up to 1 1/2 hour. When tender, take the lid off and let cook uncovered for another 10 minutes and serve.

Happy Holidays

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Do you know what espalier means?

For those who don’t subscribe to a website called Wordsmith which has definitions and etymologies of all sorts of words, TheGardenLady wants to direct readers to this week’s words and photos. This week the words are related to trees: espalier, topiary, pleach, bonsai and pollard.

TheGardenLady has only cut and pasted the first word of the week-espalier– so that the reader has to enter the “A Word A Day” Wordsmith website for the other words.

A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg

A few months back I featured this quotation from the journalist Hal Borland (1900-1978): “You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.”

Astute linguaphile Mark Germer wrote in response: “Recent work on information processing (even kin recognition) in plants suggests that there may be more going on there than we now understand; as for birds and mammals, it has long been appreciated that they are perfectly capable of deception and subversion. For my part, I don’t find these things odd or disturbing, as it’s the continuity of all life that intrigues me most. Humans are not alone in their baseness — though a few may be alone in their desire to rise above it.”

Mark said it well. There’s more to trees and plants than we think (see nature.com). So next time you pluck an apple from a tree or trim that hedge, be aware that it may not be as oblivious as you think.

This week’s words relate to what we do to the trees: chopping, trimming, twisting, bending, and stunting as we shape them.  espalier

PRONUNCIATION:
(i-SPAL-yuhr, -yay)

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Chinese Garden Tour

TheGardenLady just received an email about a garden tour in China.  She knows nothing about the organization nor the people running this group so she cannot endorse the group. But she thought TheGardenLady readers might be interested in the following information.

China – Flower Blossoms & Peony Festival Tour April 7 – 21, 2009

Thinking of what to give yourself as a Christmas Present this year? Then think no further as this trip is the perfect answer!

We visit some of China’s most incredible gardens, sights and cities including Beijing, Xian, Luoyang, Suzhou and Shanghai.  Gardens that are thousands of years old beckon you to stroll through to capture
cherry blossoms and peonies in their full glorious bloom.   Gardens that will become your memories!

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