Herb Farm Day 4 Baby Artichokes, Pineapple Sage

At the HerbFarm garden a hundred different smells greet you when you walk inside. Rose geranium, pineapple sage, soil, peppery nasturtiums, fertilizer and several other light scents linger in the air. On the left, when you walk in, there is a large water trough, but instead of water, it's filled with 20 baby chicks, scratching and peeping under a heat lamp. Once the chicks have mostly grown, they'll be moved outside with the other egg layers. Until then, they’re pretty fun to pet and pick up and listen peep while your in the greenhouse.

Most recently at the HerbFarm garden, we fed the woolly pigs a variety of bagels from the food bank's scraps, fed the chickens and collected eggs. I then set to work on picking pineapple sage leaves for plate liners for the restaurant. Pineapple sage smells so incredibly wonderful, sticky sweet candy-like smell- almost like Fruit Stripe Gum. And the leaves are sticky too, like double-sided tape. Perfect for holding down slippery plates. The tropical scent of the plant in the warm air in the greenhouse makes me feel like I'm in the rain forest zoo exhibit at Woodland Park and I’m just waiting for a dozen butterflies to come rushing out around me. Afterwards, my next project was transplanting purple artichoke seedlings into bigger pots. Gardening is comforting and meditational, like coloring. Nothing like digging in soil and handling seedlings in a warm green house with peeping chicks in the background.

Baby purple artichokes, Italian variety.
Pineapple sage leaves.

One of three huge 3-foot tall pots of pineapple sage.