herbs

Fresh shiso leaf tea for hot summer days.

I posted a photo of my sprouted shiso seeds on Instagram this morning, which led to several people asking how to grow it. Although I've written about growing shiso a couple of times before, I have never described the procedure. So, here it is!

Around here it's already cool enough to declare that summer is over and fall is here. (Actually we had a very cold, wet summer anyway, but nevertheless.) So the summer vegetable plants in my garden are dying off, and I'm in the process of salvaging the remaining tomatoes and eggplants, picking the last zucchini, and eyeing the winter squash to see when they will be ready.

Tender herbs like basil are on their last legs, so I'm picking and preserving those flavors of summer so that they can brighten the dark winter months. Last year I took the lazy option and froze everything, packing the picked leaves in plastic bags and throwing them in our big locker-type freezer. Freezing is okay if you're too busy to do anything else with your herbs, but not really the optimal way all the time to keep tender herbs in the long run. So this year I'm thinking things through a bit more and considering how I want to use each herb, and preserving them accordingly. Each method is quite easy and really doesn't take that much time.