Hi, I'm Heidi Rader. I'm with UAF Cooperative Extension Service and Tanana
Chiefs Conference. I'm here at the Georgeson Botanical Garden at the University
of Alaska Fairbanks and today we're going to talk all about herbs that
you can grow in Alaska and how to harvest them. So you can grow a lot of
herbs here in Alaska, they like pretty similar conditions to your vegetables:
neutral pH, well-drained soil. But many of them are not perennial as they
are in other parts of the world. We do have a few exceptions, chives and Welsh
or Siberian onions are perennial as well as mint in some areas of Alaska. These
are chives here and they actually will reseed and can kind of spread throughout
your garden as do the Siberian onions so you do want to be careful where you
plant them . Chives is kind of a mild onion flavor and the Siberian
onions is a much stronger onion type flavor. But you can use them in dishes
where you'd use onions and you know just chop them up finely. Ideally you want to
use them before they flowered as once they flowered they get to be quite woody.
But this one you can still cut off the flowers and some people even
like to deep-fry the flowers. This one is still good, this one's a little bit old.
The sprigs that have not flowered are still good to use so you
can just cut them down near the base and use those in a lot of dishes. There's
some grass in here too which you do not want to eat. So those are your chives and
Siberian onions. Over here we have quite a few varieties of lavender. Lavender is
great in tea, it's great for aromatherapy, you can also make a simple
syrup and infused baked goods with your your lavender flavor. Just boil down
some of the lavender leaves and then add sugar for that. So here's our varieties
of lavender and as you can see it's quite productive and grows well here
in Alaska. Many of the herbs that we grow here in Alaska need to be started in a
greenhouse. Some of them can take quite a long time, about five months, so you may
want to just purchase your transplants from a greenhouse especially if you're
only going to need one or two plants. And a few you can direct feed in the garden
like dill or chervil. Here we have Thai basil, sweet basil,
we've got dill that's flowered here and now is really good for pickling. Over
here we've got rosemary, tarragon, flat leaf parsley, and so Thai basil goes
really well in a variety of Thai dishes like curry or spring rolls. Thai dishes
use a lot of fresh herbs. Dill is great on salmon for making dips and for
pickling at the end of the year. Of course basil you can make pesto or you
can add it to pizza and pasta, all kinds of things. Rosemary is also a common
Italian herb, it also goes really well with potatoes. Rosemary is a little bit
stronger than some of your other herbs and so you want to be a little bit more
judicious and how much you use. And tarragon has a little bit of a licorice
flavor and goes really well in salad dressings or on fish and in soups.
Some herbs you're going to want to add it towards the end of cooking so you
don't destroy flavor and things like tarragon
especially lose their flavor if cooked too long. So others like rosemary or bay
leaves you can cook quite a long time and they'll retain their flavor. So if I
were to harvest these types of herbs you want to harvest just enough so you
promote continued leaf development. So I wouldn't want to cut off this entire
rosemary sprig here because then I wouldn't get as much leaf
development throughout the summer so I'd probably just take these side shoots
here and maybe the top here to promote continued branching and leaf development.
But it is good to routinely use your herbs so that they don't go to flower
because at this point they become quite woody and you know you can still use
this in pickling this dill but it's not quite as tender as if it had not gone to
flower and then you can use it in dips and actually eat the leaf still because
it's still quite tender. Same with this basil, you want to continue to to pick
off these side shoots before it flowers and and to continue to promote the leaf
development. So I would just cut off these side shoots to promote continued
leaf development.
Here we have chervil, this is also a licorice type flavor here and it doesn't
dry well so you don't generally see it for sale as a dried herb and so it's
another great reason to grow your own herbs because you can harvest it as you
like and as you need it. This is lemon balm here which as the name implies it's
a kind of a lemony flavor that's a great thing to use in teas and and other things like
maybe on fish or chicken where you want that lemony type flavor. Over here
we've got a Japanese herb called perilla shishu, and that's used in sushi
and other Japanese cuisine and quite productive here as you can see.
We've got Sorrell here, also quite productive. Cress,
sorry that was Sorrell, purple basil, and there's so many different varieties of
herbs another great reason to grow your own herbs like your vegetables, you know
you may be able to find one type of fresh basil at the store but
if you grow your own, you've got many many types. This is cilantro here used in
a lot of Mexican dishes. Some people love it some people hate it. I'm one of the
latter. This is lettuce leaf basil here quite productive and huge
leaves here. You can grow lots and lots of herbs here in Alaska and our
short growing season. Unfortunately many of them are not perennial but either by
growing your own transplants or purchasing them from a greenhouse you
can really have a productive herb garden. So that's that's all about herbs today
in which you can grow here in Alaska. I'm Heidi Rader with UAF Cooperative
Extension Service and we'll be doing a couple other videos here on cooking and
preserving herbs, so check those out. I'll see you later.