The last time I posted about herbs (see Sage Advice) I looked at several different herbs that were growing in our garden at the time. One of them was Tarragon (artemesia dranunculus). I made a bit of an issue about the fact that it should be French Tarragon and not Russian. The flavour of the former being thought to be superior.......
French Tarragon is a tender plant and not commonly thought to survive our winters. Russian Tarragon can be grown easily from seed but French can only be propagated by division or cuttings. We had bought a pot of what we thought was French tarragon (as that was how it was labelled). The fact that the plant survived two harsh winters were due (I thought) to the fact that it was in a sheltered position and it had been mulched over the winter.
Every so often the subject of French tarragon came up in gardening articles and on television (Monty Don being the latest on Gardeners World.) There was a dawning realization that we had probably bought a wrongly labelled plant. We use it in chicken dishes and I couldn't tell much difference between it and the dried version.
So it's time for a taste test. We bought another French tarragon which will be planted up in a pot. We will then try cooking with both of them and see..... The proof will be in the eating (I hope).
Your herb garden is amazing! One day I hope to have enough ground space to have something like this. Right now I do almost all my gardening in pots. I've never grown tarragon but if it does well in pots, I might give it a try. Thanks for stopping by my garden site!
ReplyDeleteInteresting, I had no idea there were such differences between tarragons. Would love to see pics of the cats, I bet they love the herb garden.
ReplyDeleteYan
Our two moggies plus dog can be seen in an earlier post in April called "Introducing...."
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments.