Happy Accidents in the Garden Part 2 (Jeff's Version)

We sat down to write two different blog posts and when we traded them to read each other's, we discovered we had basically written the same post. So we decided to post both, from each perspective. Enjoy!

We rented a little garden in our town of Caldes de Montbui. It’s a fully mediterranean climate with 4 olive trees growing down the middle. It cost us 50€ a year and isn’t much more than 200m2. Our first job was to clean the whole space. It was piled high with years of weeds that had been chopped, and mixed into that were mountains of plastic and garbage. We even found the back door of a refrigeration truck amidst the brambles of an overgrown blackberry bush. The owner told us we had to practice organic farming, but how can one be organic when throwing so much plastic and garbage into the mix?

As we finally got the ground cleared, we found a patio next to the small shack and could see just how much space we actually had to work with. It was clear that many things had just been left to grow wild and pile up. While being extremely hard work, it was incredibly rewarding to see the potential of the space.

Upon clearing the ground, the weeds began to grow. While walking though with our friend, Gerard, he bent over excitedly and said, “Es manzanilla!” It’s chamomile! He bent over, picked the small leaf and chewed it. I did the same, and I could taste the very distinct sweetness of the chamomile in my mouth.

About 8 years ago, during a routine medical check, the doctor informed me that I had extremely high blood pressure. I’ve had to change my diet, begin exercising, and at times, cut out coffee. With the subtraction of coffee, I switched to drinking chamomile infusions every morning.

So, right then and there, we decided to leave certain sections of the chamomile to grow wild and see what happened. Well, we didn’t have to do much, the chamomile has grown out of control and we often have to remove plants because they just don’t stop.

As the flowers began to appear in the spring, we have picked the heads off and set them to dry, letting the plant live to produce more flowers. We can pick for a couple of hours at a time and usually only have a coffee can worth of flowers to show for it, but the flavour is worth it.

So far, we are only using it for tea. There are a myriad of health benefits and the plant self germinates every year, so all we have to do is choose where we want it to grow and we will always have a crop. We hope to continue discovering all the uses of the plant so we can further take advantage of its healing properties.

So, while trying conventional vegetable growing, we are finding the benefits of learning what the ‘weeds’ are which may carry some benefit and value.