“St. Johns Wort” – Summer 2013 – The Garden Table – Wilkinsburg, PA
“A Plant a Day till Spring” will highlight one plant a day, starting on the winter solstice (December 21, 2013)… And ending on the vernal equinox (March 20, 2014)… If all goes to plan I will be starting with old Snowdrop photos from 2013… And ending with new photos of Snowdrops in 2014…
Snow again… Damn… I’m sorry… And I don’t use this word lightly… But… Mother Nature can be a cruel bitch sometimes… I’m just sayin…
Hypericum perforatum… Commonly known as “St John’s Wort”… Is a herbaceous-perennial that is well-known as an over-the-counter supplement… Though I consider it an ornamental herb… Honestly… The amount of time and work that go into the preparation of this herb for consumption are rather limiting… I believe this is the reason the supplement has managed to go mainstream while the plant has not…
St. John’s Wort is a care free and work free plant… It requires no water making it a perfect plant for the xeriscape… About the only recommendation I can personally make is to give it a heavy pruning first thing in the spring… SJW grows a profuse number of stems throughout the year… As they grow they eventually flop over onto the ground… SJW that has not been pruned will form a tangled clump… Although this really doesn’t affect the plant negatively… It will create more work for you in the future… I always recommend regular maintenance of all plants… At the very least you should give every plant in your garden a once-over at least once a year…
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A few days last week our temperatures climbed above freezing… I took the opportunity to spend a little time on the lot where I am putting my new guerrilla garden this year… Sadly… The ground was still frozen… I wasn’t able to plant my apple tree… Which is symbolic because in the pioneer days of the United States… A requirement of land ownership was that the owner must plant an apple tree… Only after the apple tree was planted was the land officially considered owned…
A big part of what I do when I am planning to guerrilla garden an entire lot is observation… I have observed this lot for two years now… I know it’s ins and outs… I know where every mouse lives… I know where the tires are buried… I have excavated and identified all four corners of the now torn down homes foundation… I am ready to go…
All I need now is for mother nature to get on board… I want to dig the “urban-wetland” and the channel that will feed it from the neighbors gutters before the spring rains come… I also need to dig my production beds in the rear of the lot…
I need the thaw… I need spring… Because I am running out of steam…
plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello
If you want some science – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricyrtis
These “Plant a Day Till Spring” posts are simply intended to kill time until spring when I start writing more… My source (where applicable) is Wikipedia.org… The photography is all my own… And I am adding my own information…
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chriscondello 
Mother Nature did not dispense more snow with you in mind. Chill (uhm, excuse the pun).
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Are you sure? Because it sure seems like it sometimes…
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🙂 I’m sure.
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They are now saying we are getting a blizzard Sunday night into Monday… 12″ or more…
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Here in sunny South Africa, last vestiges of summer, well, until June, when we start shivering at 8 degrees. I find winter, here at least, gives one a last swipe of it’s tail, just so one won’t forget before it finally goes. We have about three months of winter, hardly ever any snow, and eight glorious months of summer.
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Hi Chris ~ Love this series you are doing. How does this plant do in clay soil? And can you please say a little bit more about what’s involved in processing this for herbal use?
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After a few years of getting questions I have realized something… The vast majority of gardeners deal with clay soil… SJW is suitable for clay soils… Clay is in fact the type of soil I garden in… A couple times a year I mulch using whatever organic material I have on hand (usually grass clippings or leaves)… But to answer your question… SJW is great for clay…
As far as uses… And in retrospect… It is not that big of a deal… The leaves are dried and used in tea… The taste is bitter… But I should also mention that I am not a tea drinker… So the taste could just be my own perceptions… If you are trying to make a pill the plant should be thoroughly dried and then crushed into a powder… I believe oil can also be extracted…
Let me check a website really quick – http://www.witchipedia.com/herb:st-john-s-wort – The Witchipedia is a great resource for this type of stuff… Often covering topics not discussed on other websites… Plus if you look at the bottom of the article – they mention reactions…
Hope this helps…
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Super helpful. Thanks for taking the time to respond. I would just dry the leaves for tea, which I already do with a few other herbs. Good to know this will work in clay soil. I amend it regularly, but frankly I don’t want to lose its water-retaining properties entirely. Here in arid Colorado, clay is not all bad.
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