Last week I spoke about planning your herb garden and lessons for the year. I shared how to decide which plants should decide to grow and options to grow them. And how you can collect resources for both your garden and lesson plans.
This week I will continue with the planning and I will split it into two sections: garden planning and lesson planning.
Let’s start with garden planning.
Once you have your list of chosen plants, make a list of a few columns. You want to mention the sun requirements, the height of each plant and their seasonal. Calendula can, for example, tolerate the full sun to distribute a shared shade, grows to about 12-18 centimeters long and blooms continuously as soon as it starts to a hard freezing.
Now plot your garden on graph paper. Put high plants such as Marshmallow in the back, as well as plants that can be annoying, such as nettles. Be aware of orientation. Gardens grow the best from east to west, so that you can stop the longer plants on the north side of the garden. Work to the front of the garden and put shorter plants on the front and sides so that they can spill over the edges.
If you have to orient your garden from north to south, you can consider placing your highest plants in the middle of your garden and working out on the smallest plants.
If you have plants that have a lot of shade or can tolerate a considerable amount of shade, put them behind the longer plants that shed on it.
Once you have planned your garden, you want to grow your seeds at the right times. Find the growing zone for your location so that you can get your first and last frost data. From there you can start planning when you have to start your seeds. The seed packages will generally tell you when you have to start your seeds and whether they should be started indoors or sown immediately.
Make a list of plants to start and sow immediately and mark those plants on your agenda so that you do not forget.
If you plant in containers, you probably only want to plant 1-2 plants per container. Arrange the containers in the same way as the method of direct plants in a garden, with the larger in the back so that they do not shade the shorter plants.
Now it’s time to start your lesson planning!
Hopefully you have a good selection of herbs according to their seasons. For example, Chickweed, Violet, Dandelion, Cleavers, Nettles and Ground Ivy are all great Spring time herbs.
Many of the typical culinary herbs such as rosemary, sage, thyme, basil and mint are all generally harvested in the summer, so they would be the next group to work with.
Autumn herbs include New England Aster, Goldenrod, Ragweed and mushrooms such as Maitake, Turkey Tail, Oyster and Reishi.
Determine how many herbs you want to learn to learn this year. Will it be 10? 20? 5? The more you choose, the shorter the learning time will be. I always suggest at least a month for every herb and my lessons in Herb Club are focused for 1 month, but you can stretch those lessons to 2-3 months and instead of taking the lessons on Monday to Friday, you only do lessons 1-2 times a week to stretch them out.
Another option is to do a focus on one herb every month and then choose a day every month to visit the herbs that you have already learned and to follow their progress in the garden. Because there are few plants that complete their growth cycle in a month, this is always good to do, regardless of your pace. You have to return to plants at a later date so that you can harvest them when they are at their peak.
If you use herb roots zine -e -books, now press a copy of each and decide in which order you want to use them. Make a list so that you do not forget and do not turn to the resource part of each to book for each lesson. This gives you time to take care of or buy them through the library if you want them full -time in your house.
You also want to turn to the front of the E book for the list of supplies to ensure that you have everything at hand. If this is not the case, you can start collecting the supplies you need.
At the front of each e book you will also find a short breaking of suggestions about teaching every day for a month. Use that as a starting point to make your lesson plans for each herb.
If this seems too overwhelming, you could consider a membership of Herb Club. Monthly, annual and lifelong rates are available.
In Herb Club I make a curriculum with which you can plan lessons for all your children, regardless of their age and adjust every lesson to their interests. And you can learn all your children at the same time with the lessons that all match any age level. The best of all is that everything is already planned, so everything you have to do is decide how much you want to do with each child and collect your materials for the lesson. I make it as easy as possible and even offer video lessons to use for every herb.
Herb Club can help you make lesson planning easy. Do you want to watch a video? View these I made about identifying calendula: