Herbs are an organic staple
CANON CITY, Colo. — Tammi Hartung dotes on her babies — all thousand-plus of them.
At this moment, she's in the "baby house," where she sometimes spends 16 hours a day making sure the little ones are kept warm and safe. She gestures across the expanse where the babies are born, row after row, and says once they're big enough, she'll find them a new home. Say, perhaps, a larger plastic pot.
Like motherhood, herb farming is a full-time job for Hartung. With her husband, Chris, she operates Desert Canyon Farm, one of Colorado's largest organic potted-herb and vegetable farms. In their six greenhouses, they farm-raise more than 500 different culinary, medicinal and fragrance herbs and 168 types of heirloom and ethnic vegetables destined for backyard gardens by way of retail garden centers in Colorado and New Mexico.
Their crops include everything from standbys such as rosemary and thyme to "What is that?" specialties, including double-bubble mint, tatsoi (an Asian green), gourds that look like cavemen clubs and 32 types of basil.
The farm is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and Hartung attributes its success to a key trend:
"There's a huge market for organic anything," she says.
Organic sales in the U.S. total more than $10 billion yearly, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. And Colorado is consistently in the top five in production nationally, with 268 farms and $560 million in sales.
Hartung is heartened to see organic catch on the way it has, and said she thinks the trend has weighty implications. Her motto, hung on the side of her house, says: "Creating peace one garden at a time."
"The world is more peaceful if we are all fed and have clean water to drink," says Hartung, an advocate for sustainable food production and backyard farming. "And that doesn't mean genetically modified or factory food. The more connected we are to our food and medicines, the better we are."
She also sees organic gardening as a way to preserve wild herbs that are quickly disappearing worldwide because of development and overharvesting.
Desert Canyon Farm was a natural outgrowth of the Hartungs' earlier jobs. She is a trained medical herbalist who worked in plant propagation and herbal formulation manufacturing. Chris was with the Denver Botanic Garden at Chatfield State Park.
"We decided that since we were working so hard, we might as well work for ourselves," Tammi Hartung says. They searched a long time before they found property that fit the USDA organic certification program rules, including a requirement that the land must not have been used for conventional agriculture including use of synthetic herbicides.
Their farm was one of the smaller acreages in the area when they started it a decade ago, but it is now one of the larger plots as new developments have sprung up where there were once gnarled apple trees, fields and farm animals. Nevertheless, she says with a laugh, "Old-timers around here still consider us gardeners. We don't have any tractors and animals."
She and Chris run the farm themselves, with help from three part-time employees and a couple of teens who help out during spring and summer. Chris makes a loop through Colorado and New Mexico to deliver bounty to garden shops.
The business is all-consuming, and the couple haven't been away for more than four days at a time during the past decade."Greenhouses are like children," she says "They need to be baby-sat, and you can't ask neighbors or friends to look after things because things break down."Nevertheless, she finds time to teach organic gardening classes, make herbal gifts and operate a roadside stand for four weekends in May.She also has time for her own sustainable garden. "What would be the point if I didn't do that?" she says.Her plot produces a cornucopia of vegetables, as well as grapes, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, currants, pears and nectarines. And, of course, she has an herb garden for culinary and medicinal use outside her backyard.Most people know what to do with basic herbs such as oregano and thyme, but she says that using more unusual plants, including borage, gotu kola, chicory, marsh mallow, and even hollyhock, dandelion and violet, can turn ordinary meals into great ones. Her book "Growing 101 Herbs that Heal" (Storey Books) provides a wealth of information on how and what to grow, and it includes recipes.A word of caution: Make sure you know what a plant is before using it in cooking. And make sure the plant CAN be used for cooking. If in doubt, ask an expert or don't try it.
• Annual herbs, or those that live only one season, include coriander, dill, borage and savory.• Shade-tolerant herbs include camomile, mint and lemon balm.• Herbs that prefer moist spots include horseradish and mint.• Dry-spot herbs include tarragon, rosemary and thyme.• Those that may do best in containers include chives, oregano, marjoram, parsley, rosemary, sage and thyme.
Harvest plants in the fall, and dry them for use during winter. The Colorado State University Extension Service offers the following tips on preserving your harvest:• Gather herbs for harvest in the morning, just after the dew has evaporated. Hang them in bunches in a cool, dry, dark place. When dry, rub the leaves and flowers from the stems.• Dried herbs store well up to a year and can be stored whole or crushed, although whole herbs keep their flavor longer. Store in rigid containers with airtight seals. Ceramic or darkened glass containers protect against deterioration from exposure to light. Be sure to label them.• Quick-frozen herbs keep up to two years in the freezer if wrapped in airtight bags.
