Last week I talked about starting to plan your herb garden and lessons for the year. I shared how to decide which plants to decide to grow and options for how to grow them. And how to start gathering resources for both your garden and lesson plans.
This week I’m going to go further into the planning and I’m going to break it down 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 them with a couple of columns. You’ll want to list the sun requirements, the height of each plant, and their seasonality. For instance, Calendula can tolerate full sun to part shade, grows to be about 12-18 inches tall, and will bloom continually once it starts until a hard freeze.
Now plot out your garden on graph paper. Put tall plants such as Marshmallow in the back, as well as plants that can be irritating, such as Nettles. Also be aware of orientation. Gardens do best growing east to west so that you can tuck the taller plants on the north side of the garden. Work towards the front of the garden putting increasingly shorter plants to the front and sides so they can spill out over the edges.
If you have to orient your garden north to south, you might consider putting your tallest plants in the middle of your garden and working outward to the smallest plants.
If you have plants that like lots of shade or can tolerate a fair amount of shade, put them behind the taller plants that will cast shadows on them.
Once you have your garden planned out, you’ll want to start growing your seeds at the appropriate times. Look up the growing zone for your location so you can get your first and last frost dates. From there, you can start planning when to start your seeds. The seed packets generally will tell you when to start your seeds and whether they should be started indoors or direct sown.
Make a list of plants in order of starting and direct sowing and mark those plants on your calendar so you don’t forget.
If you’ll be planting in containers, you’ll most likely only want to plant 1-2 plants per container. Arrange the containers similarly to the method of direct planting in a garden, with the larger ones in the back so they don’t shade out 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 instance, Chickweed, Violet, Dandelion, Cleavers, Nettles, and Ground Ivy are all great springtime 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.
Fall herbs include New England Aster, Goldenrod, Ragweed, and mushrooms such as Maitake, Turkey Tail, Oyster, and Reishi.
Decide how many herbs you want to commit to learning about 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 each herb and my lessons in Herb Club are focused for 1 month but you could stretch those lessons out to 2-3 months and instead of following the Monday through Friday lessons, 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 pick a day each month to revisit the herbs you’ve already learned about and follow up on their progress in the garden. Because there are very few plants that complete their growing cycle in a month, this is always good to do regardless of your pace. You will need to return to plants at a later date so you can harvest them when they are at their peak.
If you are using Herbal Roots zine ebooks, print off a copy of each now and decide what order you want to use them in. Make a list so you don’t forget and flip to the resource section of each to start compiling books for each lesson. This will give you time to source them out through the library or purchase them if you wish to have them in your home full time.
You’ll also want to flip to the front of the ebook for the supplies list to make sure you have everything on hand. If not, you can start gathering the supplies you’ll need.
In the front of each ebook you’ll also find an abbreviated break down of suggestions on teaching each day for a month. Use that as a starting point to create your lesson plans for each herb.
If this seems too overwhelming, you might consider a membership to Herb Club. There are monthly, annual, and lifetime rates available.
In Herb Club I create curriculum that allows you to plan lessons for all your kids, regardless of their ages and customize each lesson to their interests. And you’ll be able to teach all your kids at the same time as the lessons all match up with each age level. Best of all, everything is already planned out so all you have to do is decide how much you want to do with each child and gather up your materials for the lesson. I make it as easy as possible and even offer video lessons to use for each herb.
Herb Club can help you make lesson planning easy. Want to view a video? Check out this one I made on Identifying Calendula: