Thank you, How to Find our Plants and Herbs, plus a Recipe

Thank you from all of us for an incredible, memorable, and unique season!

As our regular retail hours for 2020 end today at 5pm, our team would like to thank you for a wonderfully unique season. We are closing a little earlier than usual, but will keep up a once a week pick up with online sales and will continue twice a week deliveries to our wholesale partner stores. Read below to find out more!

During the month of August, we will be doing curbside pick up once a week, on Fridays between noon and 5. If you would like to order plants, please do so here, and we will have it ready the following Friday as long as orders are placed before midnight on Wednesday.

Our online store will carry an assortment of veggies and herbs for the fall kitchen garden, perennials, and houseplants. For the first time, we will also be offering directly to you the herbs and herbal products coming from our herb farm: freshly harvested herbs in bulk quantities for your drying and processing needs, herb salts, herbal vinegars, and pesto. Please check the website every Saturday for the latest updates, and place your orders by the following Wednesday at midnight for Friday pick ups between noon and 5.

If you need something sooner than the following Friday, just let us know and we can make another arrangement.

Confused? Have questions? Drop us a line at info@redwagonplants.com.

Thanks for a fantastic season in weird times. We are just so grateful for all of the orders and purchases you made this year. You kept our crew going, and you planted gardens like never before. We loved hearing from you and seeing you in person once we opened for shopping.

You can continue to find our plants at our wholesale partner stores:

• Shelburne Supermarket

• Gardeners Supply, Intervale and Williston locations

• Healthy Living

• CIty Market, South End and Downtown locations

• Bibens Ace Hardware, North Ave location

Recipe for Herbes Salées (adapted from Spruce Eats)

Here is a traditional Quebecois way to preserve large amounts of herbs to use all winter.

Suggested uses: A teaspoon in hot water makes a soothing and instant herbal broth. Stir into soups and stews, mix into salad dressings and tomato sauce, mix with cream cheese or cottage cheese….the uses are endless and a jar of these preserved herbs will be a welcome reminder of summer and freshness during the depths of winter.

• 1 cup chives (fresh, chopped)

• 1 cup savory (fresh, chopped)

• 1 cup parsley (fresh, chopped)

• 1 cup chervil (fresh, chopped)

• 1 cup carrots (grated)

• 1 cup celery leaves or lovage or cutting celery (chopped)

• 1 cup green onions (chopped)

• 1/4 to 1/2 cup coarse salt

  In a large bowl, combine chopped chives, savory, parsley, chervil, carrots, celery leaves, and green onions.. Layer 1 inch of herb mixture in the bottom of a crock or glass bowl and sprinkle with some of the salt. Repeat layers until all of the herb mixture and salt is used.

  Cover and refrigerate for 2 weeks. Drain off accumulated liquid and pack herb mixture into sterilized jars. Refrigerate until ready to use. Can keep for up to a year in the refrigerator.

Herbes Salées photo by Kate Bentley

Apple Pie Beats Chores

When today rolled around, I had lots of good intentions to do a bunch of garden chores, exercise, get some office work out of the way, and lots of other tasks that good intentions depend upon. But instead, the chores, tasks and lists took a back seat to making an apple pie with my daughter.

She made her first crust, which I learned from my father, which he learned from Molly Stevens, and you can learn how to make it by reading this. Yes, that is right, 3 sticks of butter for a double crust pie. Gulp. Hope to get in that exercise.

The apples came from Boyers' Orchard in Monkton, and they were just tossed with a little lemon juice, sugar, and cinnamon. Nothing fancy. The beauty of apple pie lies in simplicity. Getting me to agree to cinnamon and a double crust is about as wild as I will go - I would rather have an apple tart, single crust, with unadorned thinly sliced apples arranged in a pretty pattern. But I suppose that is the French in me.

A little egg wash goes on the crust, and vent holes are made to let out the steam so the crust does not turn to a watery mess. The beautiful creation goes into a 475F oven for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 425F. Check on it after 20 minutes or so, but it usually takes an additional 40 minutes or so to cook.  I often turn the heat down one more time for the last 20 minutes.