Growing Fennel as an herb
While perusing herbs to round out my garden, I came across a fennel plant. It is called "Rusty" varitey or something similar (too lazy to go outside right now) and has reddish fronds. I love using fennel when I cook, so I had to get it. But when I googled, apparently there are Italian fennel with the thick stems, and other fennel that is used more for seeds. Wondering if anyone has any experience growing, and do you think I can use the stems on this one? If so, how to harvest, all at once or a stem at a time? It't very pretty either way!
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I grow bulbing fennel in my garden and collect the wild fennel that grows all over the place in Northern California. The wild stuff - perhaps more similar to your bronze fennel - has a stronger flavor. I use stalks and fronds of both to flavor fish, especially like to stuff whole trout with it. I tear the fronds and add to salads and make "gremolata" with the chopped fronds, lemon zest and garlic. This is great on fish, chicken, osso bucco, etc.
I also collect the seeds. We toast them, grind them and add to homemade sausage.
A cool thing about growing fennel is that swallowtail butterflies will lay their eggs on it. We love to watch the caterpillars eat the fennel, form cocoons (crysallis?) and hatch into huge yellow, black and blue butterflies.›2 Replies-
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re: Glencora
Those butterflies are called Anise Swallowtails and the bad news is, you'll only find them on the West Coast or at least that part of the country west of the rockies mostly. The good news is, here on the East Coast we have the Eastern Black Swallowtail wich more or less fills the same ecological niche so you'll still get plent of pretty caterpillars (they cats look almost idencal between the two) chrysalides (plural of chrysalis) and butterflies (the butterflies will just be mostly black, though with nice yellow red and blue edges to the wings) And you still may get the odd anise even here (I've never heard of it happening, but I opccurs to me that as plants are shipped from one side of the country to the other with reasonable frequency and the swallowtail eggs are small and inconspicouos, it would not suprise me if there were small number of each coast's swallowtalis to be found on the opposite coast by now.
One warning though, those little buggers eat a LOT of fennel so if you actually want to have them around and still use some, you had better SERIOUSLY overplant. They'll also eat dill, carrot tops, parsely (or why the caterpillars are called "parsely worms") wild carrot aka Queen Annes Lace (a useful fact to know if they suddenly get out of hand and you need a food source you can get more or less for free) basically any cultivated carrot family member except cilantro, cumin and ajowain (and maybe celery and lovage)
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re: Amy
I collected some fennel pollen yesterday (in Los Angeles). It is aromatic & suprisingly sweet. I like to lightly dust it over pork, simple pasta or fish. Or pasta with fish (pasta con le sarde). Intersting over panna cotta to add a licorice note. Wild fennel seeds are also delicious and useful as a spice, more intense than cultivated.
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I've been growing bronze fennel (don't know about "rusty") in my garden for about 10 years. I use the fronds for all the usual uses, seasoning fish fish soup, grilled fish, salads, etc. I harvest the stalks in late winter after they've dried and use them the following summer to grill the fish that are seasoned with the current crop.
Hope this helps...
Daniel›6 Replies
