Country Enterprise: Growing flowers and herbs and drying herbs for cooking, pot pourri, bouquet garni

<H1>Country Enterprise: Growing and drying flowers and herbs for medicinal, cooking, bouquet garni use<h1> <H3>Grow flowers for their beauty, fragrance, smell, colours, taste</H3> <P> <A HREF=flower1.htm >The flower & herb gardens</A><BR> <A HREF=flower2.htm >...Growing flowers</A><BR> <A HREF=flower3.htm >...Specialisation</A><BR> <A HREF=flower4.htm >...Dried</A><BR> <A HREF=flower5.htm >...Herbs</A><BR> <A HREF=flower6.htm >...- Varieties</A><BR> <A HREF=flower7.htm >...- Medicinal</A><BR> <A HREF=flower8.htm >...Pot Pourri</A><BR> <A HREF=flower9.htm >...Bouquet Garni</A></P> <P><A HREF=title.htm >Chapter headings</A></P> <P> Anyone with a garden probably grows at least a few flowers. </P><P>To grow flowers for sale can be very simple indeed. You can wander round an established garden, scissors in hand and snip off attractive bunches during most of the summer months. </P><P>In some locations, such as country cottage doorsteps, these are the bunches that will probably sell best. With a nice mixture of colours and shapes and a generous bunch for the price, such bunches do not last very long on a good weekend.</P><P> If you decide to grow specifically, the choice of flowers depends on your location and how you intend to sell the flowers. With no passing market you will have to sell to greengrocers, florists or hotels and restaurants for display. Almost all of these markets will require standard-looking flowers. </P><P> Unless you are growing on a large scale, it is probably not worth considering growing under glass. </P><P>Flowers grown this way are necessarily more expensive; even if you are not heating the greenhouse you are at least having to maintain it. To consider growing flowers in a heated greenhouse you must feel very sure indeed of your market. </P><P>There is a great deal of competition in selling these kinds of flowers, including a lot of imported flowers. Cut flowers have a short life and they do not have a long time to sell on the shop shelf. Good strong growers, such as dahlias grown on a well manured plot, have an attractiveness all their own. So do well grown chrysanthemums and, going to the other extreme, delicate sweet peas. </P><P>As with other growing enterprises, it is worth aiming to catch the early or late markets. To grow the earliest sweet peas you can use cloches; you can slow the growth of chrysanthemums by leaving the pots out until the very last moment. All these flowers must be presented to the consumer in top condition. This is also the case with pot plants. </P><P>Although it may seem that a pot plant will happily survive far longer than cut flowers, this is not the case unless you alone are looking after them. A pot plant dislikes being overwatered more than it does being underwatered. If the plant you carefully raised from seed is left to the tender mercies of several different shop assistants then both will happen to the unsuspecting creature and it will die. Many outlets for flowers, cut and potted, will insist on sale or return. If the flowers die then so does your profit. </P><P>Some garages and hotels will enter into arrangements for you to keep them continually supplied with flower arrangements. Again willing hands will overwater and careless hands will deposit cigarette ends on plants. It is not a case of do not do the business. It is a case of being fully prepared for what will happen to plants out of your control. </P><P> The public is being artificially educated to demand only a very small range of plants. </P><P>Look at the highly professional displays of flowers and plants for sale in the high street and in markets: the range available is continually decreasing. It is often possible to use this aspect of the market to your advantage. Become established in the area in which you live as a specialist producer. If the public know that you can supply quite beautiful blooms at competitive prices, you will start to build an enterprise. </P><P>People buy flowers for occasions — weddings and funerals — and for regular events. When we produced chrysanthemums regularly, we had a customer on the last week in October every year. It was for a bunch of one dozen of the finest blooms to take to a crematorium. Off they went like clockwork every year to commemorate our customer's mother. When our aged greenhouse gave way under a heavy fall of snow, we gave up as we felt that a new large greenhouse would not justify itself. </P><P>It was hard to tell who felt the most upset that October, us or our customer. We still miss the big blooms and no doubt she would still have been turning up to buy them. That is the kind of trade that is not dependent on impulse-buying and is not adversely affected by highly commercial competition in the high street. </P><P> An area that is always of interest in the winter is dried flowers.</P><P> Today there is a strong sale in silk flowers and other similar items that decorate without dying as fresh flowers do. There are a wide variety of flowers that can be grown specifically for drying. Everlasting flowers — the pink, yellow and blue tiny flower heads carried on spriggy branches — are popular in rural areas. </P><P>Where a more sophisticated flower is demanded, there are still ideal subjects to be found in rural gardens. The pearl-sheened seed heads of dried Honesty mixed with orange dried Chinese Lanterns make an elegant arrangement. Many hydrangeas dry well; we have one that if picked late in the year dries to a soft green. This unusual colour looks fresh all winter. Try adding some choice: the hazel catkins available in January and possibly some peacock feathers (you can buy these from stately homes sometimes). </P><P>A fabulous addition to a dried flower selection is provided by dried hops. If you can get them on long swags and gently dry them, you can offer them to restaurants and hotels as large pieces of decoration; cut into smaller pieces, they make delightful centrepieces for a table. Hops are brittle when dry and will crush if handled harshly. If that happens to your hops turn them into a hop pillow for sale or, if you are really desperate, turn them into beer! </P><P>By producing a range of dried flowers that is not already widely available through florists, you can attract business that may well have been lost in the past due to the standardisation of many of the dried plants on offer. Dried flowers can be processed further to make framed pictures and cards. If you are really proficient at drying flowers, it may be worth advertising that you will preserve wedding bouquets. Just a few flowers from the bouquet can be dried, arranged into a framed picture and the bride has a permanent reminder. </P><P> A garden of herbs can consist of just a few plants to satisfy the culinary needs of the family or it can grow to immense proportions to provide fresh and dried herbs for sale for culinary and health purposes. </P><P>There is a great deal of interest in the use of herbs in medicine. Even if this does not involve combining herb essences and concoctions, it can be taken as simply as chopped herbs in a mixed salad that have a restorative effect. The herbs can be grown to be sold in little fresh bunches or they can be dried before sale. They can be sold growing in pots or put into sachets for dis couraging moths, or pillows to gently aid sleep. These final herb products often end up being made in a workshop or indoors. </P><P>The growing of herbs is an outdoor occupation. You can put the entire venture into one annual package: tending the plants as they come to maturity, gathering and picking at the right times, drying as you go. Then in the winter months when the outside work slackens off, you can go inside to produce the herb sachets. There are various factors to consider before planting a herb garden. To produce a bulk crop of herbs, it may seem easiest to grow the plants in rows as a normal crop. But if you intend to have customers coming to you, this less than romantic approach may well lower their enthusiasm. </P><P>Appearance is often important in this market. By working out on a piece of graph paper the heights and colourings of various herbs it is possible to produce a garden-like setting in a field environment. </P><P> A good way to start this effect is to plant a new lawn — a chamomile lawn. </P><P>Raise some plants from seed and plant them in April. The plants need four inches between them. In the first season let the plants flower freely; from then on mow the lawn with the blades at the highest cut. Walking on this lawn releases a gentle perfume. Chamomile tea made from the dried flowers is good for insomnia and makes a hair rinse for fair hair. There is a good market for nicely packaged herb teas. Dried mint makes another excellent tea as does dried marigold. Marigolds are another attractive herb to grow. </P><P>Sage, rosemary, thyme and lavender are permanent plants. Established as a thick border, they give a herb area a feeling of permanence. You can make the internal layout complicated as in an Elizabethan knot garden or plan it on simpler modern lines. A central raised area could be planted with an exotic-looking herb such as bergamot. This is sometimes referred to as bee balm and if you choose a variety with red flowers, it is a striking plant. Dill is delicious with fish; angelica can be candied. Nasturtium seeds can be pickled like capers and lavender dried to make lavender sachets for perfuming drawers and cupboards. Balm has a distinctive lemon flavour — we use it in yoghurt or chopped in salads. Herbalists prescribe its use for gastric disorders and migraine. </P><P>With such a wide variety to choose from, many purchasers are using herbs widely rather than specifically. Continual use of a quantity of herbs in your diet is a form of preventative medicine (Of course, it is important not to make too many claims for the herbs you produce. Although some people use them as a total alternative to modern medicine, such treatment could be dangerous) Bay leaves have been used to treat anorexia: perhaps a clue to this lies in the fact that the flavour of bay subtly enhances the flavour of food without being overpowering. Comfrey is grown in great quantities by some believers. You can revert to Tudor ideals and make bone-healing compresses from an infusion of the leaves. Comfrey can also be used for congestion: the roots and leaves should be well boiled and the cooking water reduced before consumption. The old names for this apparently boundless plant were knit bone and boneset. Apart from all this, comfrey leaves make excellent compost and they are produced in abundance if the plants are cropped three times a year. You can also force the young growths to eat like asparagus. </P><P> One of the delights of becoming involved with growing and selling herbs is that you begin to amass a great amount of lore from your customers. </P><P>Hyssop tea is a great standby for winter coughs and colds in many families. Dill water soothes babies; parsley helps with inflammation of the kidneys. The delicate English violet can produce a liquid for soothing catarrhal infections. (Alternatively, put the violet fresh into salads.) For an effective salve, heat a handful of marigold petals in some Vaseline jelly, warm and strain it. The resulting salve is soft and soothing for the skin. Mix in a spoonful of clear honey and the moisture-retaining ability of the treated skin is improved. Using various herbs, salves with special applications can be produced. They should never be designed to provide quick, harsh treatment; the accent of all these kinds of product is to gently soothe. </P><P>A mixture of herbs in a muslin bag dropped into a warm bath not only perfumes the bather: the bath can also have a soothing effect if the herb mixture contains natural sedatives such as lime blossom. If you put in rosemary and lavender, the bath is stimulating. We always put a quantity of natural sea salt into these bath bags and gently bruise the dried herbs to allow them to release their oils. We sell herb bags prettily packaged with ribbons and coloured labels. They are not expensive items and are popular as gifts in the summer and at Christmas. </P><P> Pot pourri, which is a mixture of flower heads and leaves preserved with some of their essential oils, is always popular. </P><P>Along with herbs like lavender and rosemary, sweet rose petals and geranium leaves go into the pot pourri. You can either buy mixtures of the oils and spices you need or you can make up your own. You will need four heaped tablespoons of orris root, one tablespoon each of cloves, ground nutmeg and allspice. Mix this up with the juice and rind of three lemons and stir in half an ounce of oil of bergamot. This mixture should go into a large pot. </P><P>As you gather flowers to go into the pot pourri, mix handfuls of them with pinches of salt and saltpetre and leave them to dry for a few hours in the sun. Then put the dried petals into the big bowl, stir and cover. Keep doing this until the pot is full. At the end of the summer the pot pourri will be ready. </P><P>You can concoct many different mixtures based on different flowers and each will be a perfumed reminder of Summer through the winter. </P><P> Bouquet garnis can be made using tiny muslin squares. </P><P>Put into a cellophane outer bag and prettily labelled, they are popular in specialist groceries and as gift items. Thyme, bay, parsley and - tarragon are traditional in these little bags. Put the little twig bundles on to the muslin square and tie the muslin to make a little bag. You can experiment with other mixtures. Special ones for cooking game are very nice. We add bought juniper berries to home-grown thyme and dried balm: this is delicious with wild duck. Using the little muslin bags means that you can put in whole spices and slivers of dried orange peel that would be unpleasant whole in a casserole. </P><P>Much of the selling of herbs lies in giving information and making suggestions. A lot of nice products such as the bags for smelling drawers really sell because of their pretty packaging. Even herbs growing in pots sell better if the pots are slightly unusual, such as hand-thrown ones. If the thought of growing all these personable plants appeals to you but the thought of pretty packaging does not then it is a good area for a joint venture. There is bound to be someone who would enjoy doing the fiddly tying of muslin bags and the designing of colourful labels who would hate to be involved with growing the initial product. </P>