Some thoughts on herbs: oregano and thyme

It's coming up on three months since I first planted seedlings in my Farmstead, and of those original twelve I still have six plants, including oregano and time. When I was first looking into hydroponic gardening, among the many consumer-scale systems out there I saw several fairly small devices, set up for growing just six or seven plants sometimes. Typically, I'd see them advertised primarily for herbs, since they were small enough there wasn't much space for larger plants like lettuces to grow. I didn't think just growing herbs would be very useful, since you can't make a salad out of them, so I ended up going with the Farmstand for more growing space. However, now that I've lived with the ability to pick fresh herbs for a few months, my stance on them has definitely softened a bit.

Oregano at the top, thyme near the bottom.

While I probably still wouldn't get a system for growing exclusively herbs (the ability to pick my own salads daily is just so good!), I've come to appreciate fresh herbs a lot more. Generally herbs, by their nature, work well with the “cut and come again” method of progressive harvesting over time, which I prefer over harvesting a whole plant at once. And they can really do a lot to spice up a dish! I used oregano and thyme to approximate a crude za‘atar for some lamb I cooked last week, and it came out quite well, and reminiscent of the real thing (which usually includes some additional herbs, such as the eponymous za‘atar plant). When making a breakfast omelet I sometimes sprinkle in some thyme or crumbled oregano or sage leaves, or chopped garlic chives. I've used the herbs I grow (including dill and bunched green onions in addition to the ones already listed) in a number of recipes: tuna or egg salad, soups, pasta sauce, even sandwiches. Having fresh herbs at hand is a much more valuable tool in the chef's arsenal than I appreciated before.

Having said that, I wanted to talk about the two herbs in the title, oregano and thyme. You can see them in the photo above (a photo of the Farmstand from the opposite side than in photos in previous posts); oregano is the plant in the center near the top with the hanging stems, though it's somewhat difficult to make out due to being encroached on by sylvetta arugula from the left and celery from the right. Two tiers below it, occupying much of the bottom of the photo, is thyme. Now, these plants superficially seem pretty similar. They're both somewhat bushy, with similar patterns of pairs of leaves branching out along their stems. They have a fairly similar flavor, as well, both somewhat pungent, almost spicy. However, while similar in form, they differ in scale, and that turns out to make a huge difference to how easy they are to harvest.

Oregano, as you can see at the top, has fewer (and slightly thicker) stems and larger leaves. (They're perhaps around the size of a postage stamp when fullly grown.) It has maybe 10–20 stems growing out, which makes it pretty easy to snip one off and pull the leaves off it for use. Thyme, on the other hand…thyme is a monster. A hydra, with dozens, probably well over a hundred stems all clawing their way outwards., and any one you clip off just grows two more stems from the stump. The leaves are perhaps a tenth the size of oregano, and the stems are much thinner, which makes it harder to strip the leaves off—the thin stems often tend to break, and the leaves hold on proportionately better than oregano leaves do. In general, I find stripping thyme leaves much more aggravating than oregano. (I've got an “herb stripper,” a small metal device with differently-sized holes which you can pull stems through, to strip the leaves off, but it's unfortunately not much better than using my hands for thyme.) I do like the taste of thyme—it's especially good paired with meat—but I sigh a bit inwardly whenever I'm clipping more than one or two stems for use. The one good aspect to thyme's increased vigor is that there's so much of it that I can afford to be a lot less efficient in harvesting it—if I lose 30% of the leaves on a stem because I couldn't be bothered picking each tiny leaf off individually after going over it once, no problem, I can just snip another few stems to make up for it.

I'll probably continue growing both oregano and thyme (and other herbs) in the future, as I've quickly grown accustomed to the taste, and I've got enough lettuce varieties already that I can spare some slots for herbs. (They're both prolific enough that I might see about harvesting a bunch of leaves from both plants and drying them for saving, which would be neat and potentially make a nice gift). I've just been musing recently about how two plants, so alike in form otherwise, can be so different simply due to their different size scales. And if you're thinking of trying hydroponic gardening, but can't afford (or fit in) a large system like the Farmstand, maybe give one of those smaller systems a try, even if just for growing herbs. A hui hou!

Expanding the Farmstand

This post is almost a month behind the times, but back at the start of January I expanded my Farmstand  with another two levels (out of a possible total of six). I always meant to expand it over time as I figured out how much food it produced and how much I could eat, but there was a promotion in December that resulted in me getting a free level, so I sped up the timeline a little.

Freshly (re)planted.

I also took the opportunity to harvest six of the original plants, leaving just the celery, dill, oregano, thyme, garlic chives, and scarlet cherry tomato from the first planting, which is why it looks so bare again in the above photo. (Thyme, by the way, is like a hydra; it's got dozens of stocks, and every time I cut one off two more sprout from the stump.) Adding two levels to the Farmstand actually had an interesting psychological effect. Before, it came up barely to my waist, and any tending to it required bending over. Now, the top of the highest tier comes up to about the level of my shoulders, making it much more of a peer in height and allowing me to tend to plants in the top levels while standing straight. (The extra grow light levels also light up the living room noticeably more, allowing it to stand double-duty as a floor lamp!) It's quite the change, and I'm curious to see how it'll go with the full six layers, although I'm not in a huge hurry to install them; the amount of food from four layers is pretty impressive compared to just two.

After three weeks' growth.

I took this photo last week, about three weeks since planting. While it's still slow enough to barely notice between days, I remain impressed at the speed plants grow in a hydroponic system. Double the number of plants has increased the weekly water consumption too; whereas before I only needed one trip with the 1.75 gallon watering can, this past week took two and a little bit extra!

With the extra space, I replenished a few plants that are fast becoming favorites (classic butter lettuce, lolla rossa lettuce) while taking the opportunity to try some new things. Lettuce Grow has a huge variety of seedlings available (something like 200 total, although it varies seasonally), so among other things I added a strawberry, some cauliflower and broccoli, and sage. I've discovered I quite like komatsuna for salads, which grow fast and have absolutely gigantic leaves—you can see it in the photo above in the third level, the plant directly facing the camera. (Some of those leaves are bigger than my hand!) I've also discovered I'm not a fan of arugula—unfortunate, since I planted two varieties of it (astro arugula and sylvette arugula), but that's what experimentation is for. Over time I'll figure out the plants I like and want to grow.

I probably won't expand to the final two levels for at least a few months, but come March it'll be three months since I started farming. Lettuce Grow recommends taking the Farmstand apart for a good cleaning about that often to prevent algae build-up, so it might also be a good time to harvest some plants and introduce some new seedlings. They apparently do two seasonal seedlings each month, so we'll just have to wait and see what comes out. A hui hou!