Sunday, May 20, 2007

Not for all the Lovage in the world ...

Lovage


Lovage or maggikruid in Dutch is a rather unassuming plant when you see it in the garden centre. They have it in these tiny pots and it looks like it would quite happily stay the same size forever. What an untruth!

Lovage tries to take over the world!

I didn't plant ours myself. It conveniently came up all on it's own, even though I had intended to buy one after reading that it's a 'beneficial to everything' companion plant, much like borage.

When the lovage started coming up in the spring I thought maybe we had something exciting, like asparagus. I asked someone and they told me what it was and I left it alone.

Until today that is, where I ruthlessly pulled it all up. Judging by how fast the little shoots have forced themselves up through the ground I'm sure it will be just as big in no time at all. It grows to 2 metres high!

It has an interesting smell, very clean and celery like. Brad wasn't so keen - he said it stinks!

I also paid Sebastian 2 euros to weed the onion bed and carry the weeds to the compost bin. He had to do it without complaining in order to get paid. And he did! I also trimmed the dead wood out of the black and redcurrant bushes, and we removed some growth from the plum tree which appeared infected with a virus of some kind. Then we covered the strawberries with a net to save the first strawberry from the birds. We laid some slug traps using milk.

My onions and garlic are starting to yellow. I can't believe it's time already, is it?

I am still unsure whether these are black or redcurrants ...

More May photos here.

4 comments:

Vertine said...

i am growing maggi in a perspot right now, to plant in my front garden. I want my herbs close. But I will watch it very close, now I have heard your story. I still have a packet of seed....want some?
lol

Ashleigh said...

vertine: I think I have enough thanks! :) It was such a beautiful plant, I felt very sad to pull it all out but it was in my strawberry bed!

El said...

Hey Ash!
yeah; I do love the way lovage looks but boy does it get big. (I gave my mother 4 plants last week. And I grew the stuff from seed.) But borage? That stuff is just fine.

My red currants look like those. For some reason, black ones are really hard to find in the States, so I suppose yours could BE black and I just wouldn't know the difference ;)

Cottage Smallholder said...

we have lovage in our garden and it grows enormous too. We eat the leaves in salads and collect the seeds in the autumn for cooking. I do cut it back a bit every now and then in the summer when it gets out of hand.