Lemon Poppy Seed Cookies made with a shortbread base, lemon juice and zest in a rich buttery crispy cookie that’s perfect for tea or your Christmas cookie exchange!
Whether you’re a city mouse or a country mouse — with a high-rise patio or 1000 acres — building an herb spiral near your kitchen allows you to partake in the sustainable permaculture revolution and have fresh organic culinary herbs at your fingertips. An herb spiral is a compact vertical garden built on specific principles allowing for individualized management of wind and water flow to create the ideal garden in a limited amount of space.
The spiral is a natural form that provides an efficient method for managing space, storing and sorting. Using the natural universal design of a spiral, the forces of gravity and water flow are utilized to their fullest allowing for proper drainage downhill. Herbs that thrive on drier soils live at the top, whereas those needing more moisture reside at the bottom where water collects. This form allows for planting of a widely diverse number of plants, and creates natural, sunny and shady areas — a perfect miniature microclimate landscape environment. The herb spiral as a permaculture form that allows you to create your own ecosystem and become self sufficient. The format can be adapted to large gardens if space is available.
Stone or block building materials allow for retention of heat and insulate plants in colder weather or at night, while acting as the backbone for the structure. Collect water at the bottom and have a small fish or frog pond or even a bog and grow edible water plants. An herb spiral can be built even on a concrete foundation and filled with the richest biodynamic, organic earth to support any plants included.
The spiral should always be built to move in the direction of water drainage in whatever hemisphere it’s located in — for example, in the Northern hemisphere, water runs off in a clockwise direction and the opposite is true for the Southern hemisphere. This allows for optimal positioning of the pond at the bottom and reduces evaporation. The spiral can be built as a round or oval shape to take advantage of the movement of summer sunlight.
15 REASONS TO BUILD AN HERB SPIRAL FOR YOUR PERMACULTURE GARDEN
1. Maximize growing space to grow more food. 2. Multiple microclimates available for optimal plant growth.
3. Healthier plants where growing needs are met and companion planting is easy to reduce insect problems and foster beneficial plant relationships for better growth. 4. Aesthetic garden focal point.
5. Maximizes space even in very small areas on top of concrete or in high-rise buildings. 6. Harvesting access is easy and all plants are effortlessly accessible. 7. No bending, everything is at waist height — hooray!
8. Save money by growing your own food. 9. Eat organic, using heirloom seeds and avoid pesticides and genetically engineered seeds. 10. Reduces maintenance, little weeding and easy to turn and mulch.
11. Manage water amounts and use natural forces to perpetuate the growing season. 12. Reduce building costs when you use local available materials. 13. Use drip irrigation or a small sprinkler for easy watering and irrigation.
14. Create a bio-diverse habitat for creatures who come to visit. 15. Build an herb spiral to grow medicinal herbs to avoid Big Pharm drugs.
Okay. Gardening 101; or “Auntie Sys I have a yard that’s currently a yard and don’t know SHIT or FUCK about how to make it not be a boring-ass yard.”
Step 1; go to your local landfill and get all of the newspaper you can. Cardboard will also work. If your neighborhood puts them out for recycling, go around and grab them all like a little newspaper goblin.
Step 2; acquire mulch. If you WANT, you can go pay for it at a garden store, but we’re all cheap lazy bitches here so screw that. Most landfills will collect yard waste and branches and chip them into woodchips, which you can get for PENNIES or FREE. Go load up on that good shit.
I like straw too, which I can get for barter because I am related to half the people around here and a solid 65% of my extended family are farmers. I give Uncle Daryl three quarts of elderberry jelly or a couple pounds of morels in spring and he loads me up with straw bales.
Step 3; figure what parts of grass you want to be not-grass, and cover that shit in newspaper, good and thick. 5-10 layers. It helps to wet the newspaper to keep it from blowing away as you work.
Now, cover that newspaper with a good thick layer of mulch.
Congrats, you’re removing the grass. It’ll starve to death under the mulch and newspaper and rot into compost. You now have garden beds and have not dug one single bit of sod.
If you can’t wait for six months to plant, pull the mulch aside, cut a hole in the newspaper, and dig out a plug of sod the size of the planting hole. Throw some compost in there and plant. Tuck mulch back around plant. Water well.
There ya go. Garden beds. In a year, when you pull back the mulch the newspaper will be almost rotted away, and the soil underneath soft and loamy.
I like to edge garden beds like this with rocks, which I can ALSO get for free because I live in the part of Iowa dotted with limestone quarries. Just, pick that shit up along the road and
I’m collecting flat ones for a FREE crazy paving path too.
I love you for this.
No prob.
Protip; the best way to do a large area without killing your knees or back is to load up a bucket of water with newspaper, sit down on the grass, and sorta scoot your ass along as you drag the bucket with you, newspapering as you go.
Then dump buckets of mulch on that and spread it out with your feet. Just sorta kick it where you want it to be.
The garden spiral is like a snail shell, with stone spiraling upward to create multiple micro-climates and a cornucopia of flavors on a small footprint. Spirals can come in any size to fit any space, from an urban courtyard to an entire yard. You don’t even need a patch of ground, as they can be built on top of patios, pavement, and rooftops. You can spiral over an old stump or on top of poor soil. By building up vertically, you create more growing space, make watering easy, and lessen the need to bend over while harvesting. To boot, spirals add instant architecture and year-round beauty to your landscape: the perfect garden focal point.
One of the beauties of an herb spiral is that you are creating multiple microclimates in a small space. The combination of stones, shape, and vertical structure offers a variety of planting niches for a diversity of plants. The stones also serve as a thermal mass, minimizing temperature swings and extending the growing seasons. Whatever you grow in your spiral, it will pump out a great harvest for the small space it occupies. I’ve grown monstrous cucumbers in my large garden spiral, with one plant producing over 30 prize-size fruits. The spiral is a food-producing superstar!
Stacked stones create perennial habitat for beneficial critters, such as lizards and spiders that help balance pest populations in the garden. The stone network is a year-round safe haven for beneficial insects and other crawlies that work constantly to keep your garden in balance—and you in the hammock. A little design for them up-front pays big, tasty dividends later.
On the subject of Completely Fucking Hating Cooking, I just have to say that this is such a good book for people who Completely Fucking Hate Cooking. This author understands the reasons people hate cooking, and understands that you still have to eat things, and understands the concept of ‘easy quick meals’ that are actually easy quick meals.
ifesbob 
