Spanish Lavender From Seed

For no particular reason, other than I had never done so, I grew Spanish Lavender (Lavandula stoechas) from a seed.  

Sometimes I grow plants from a seed for no other reason than because I haven't grown that plant from seed before.  This was one of those situations.  

Spanish lavender from seed

Spanish lavender is a fragrant and edible herb that is also used medicinally and grown as an ornamental plant.  Honey bees and other pollinators seem to like lavender flowers.  

Lavender is said to be simple to grow, and it's meant to be simple to grow from cuttings.  Growing lavender from seed is meant to be far more difficult, and a lot slower.  

For some reason I always struggle to grow lavender, and I struggle to get lavender cuttings to take.  Instead of fighting a losing battle with lavender, I grow lavender mint, which is a variety of mint that smells and tastes like lavender.  Lavender mint is very simple to grow in my garden and very productive.  Lavender mint grows so well that for a long time I had not thought about trying to grow real lavender.

I didn't find growing lavender from seed to be overly difficult.  The most difficult part was getting seed.  The seed is not viable for very long, and most places selling lavender seed will usually send old dead seed.  

I planted this, and watered it.  It took a long time before it germinated and grew into a small flowering plant, I needed a lot of patience, other than that growing lavender from seed was pretty straight forward.  

Spanish lavender is a species of lavender.  While the leaves may look vaguely similar, it is not a type of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis).  

Apparently a lot of people have difficulty telling these apart, but to me they don't look very similar other than the shape of the leaves.  They grow differently, the flowers look very different, and the smell/taste of the plant is very different.  I would not use lavender in place of rosemary in a meal.  

My Spanish lavender seedling is only small, yet it is flowering well.  I don't think this is unusual for this species.  The plant isn't overly interesting, the flowers aren't terribly unique, but I still like it.  I probably like it mostly because I grew it from a seed.  

I will try to grow this out and see how it performs for me once it is larger.  I struggle to keep lavender alive, but perhaps this seed grown one will be easier for me.  Or maybe this one will die over summer.  Only time will tell.  I'm glad I grew this little one, now I need to find space for it in the garden somewhere.  

Perennial buckwheat flowering

Perennial buckwheat (Fagopyrum cymosum complex, sometimes called Fagopyrum dibotrys) is a perennial vegetable that is sometimes used as medicine.  It is mostly grown as a leaf vegetable, or the rhizomes are eaten, or the leaves are fed to poultry and livestock, while only occasionally the seed is eaten. 

I have never seen perennial buckwheat seed, but am told it is smaller than common buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) or tatrary buckwheat (Fagopyrum tataricum).  Perennial buckwheat seed is meant to be highly nutritious, and (while this is hard to believe) studies show it to be even higher in protein than either of these annual species. 

Perennial buckwheat is also called 'golden buckwheat' or 'tall buckweat'.  I believe it gets the name golden buck wheat because in autumn the leaves take on an incredible golden yellow colour beforegoing dormant over winter.  It gets the name tall buck wheat because with support the plants can grow taller than me.  This perennial vegetable is rather impressive.  

Perennial buckwheat flowers 

Perennial buck wheat is very vigorous and productive, its leaves and rhizomes are eaten commonly in developing nations across the Himalayas.  Perennial buckwheat has been used as food for centuries, yet for some reason this is not grown or eaten in Western nations.  My perennial buckwheat seems to need a bit of water, and tends to suffer if the soil gets too dry.  Other than that it seems pretty indestructible.  

The flowers of perennial buckwheat are small, white, and produced in large numbers.  Each stalk produces flowers, and each group of flowers contains many flowers that open sequentially over a long period of time.  Each spray will have some flowers that have faded, others will currently be open, and others will still be immature buds.  

Having many flowers opening over such a long time means it provides food for beneficial insects for a very long time.  This is good for my garden.  It attracts pollinators, and it feeds other beneficial insects. 

Perennial buckwheat flowers are small and numerous

Common buckwheat is an annual plant.  These are largely self incompatible,  and usually only set seed if you have two or more genetically unique plants.  I don't know if perennial buckwheat is also self incompatible or not, but I am suspecting that it may be.

While I have a number of perennial buckwheat plants, I only have one clone of perennial buckwheat.  Every plant I have is genetically identical to all the others that I grow.  This is not ideal. 

Each stalk produces a spray containing many flowers, but so far it is reluctant to set seed in my garden.  From the hundreds, if not thousands of flowers it produces, not a single seed from my perennial buckwheat was set.  

Perhaps it needs a second clone to set seed well, perhaps it does not enjoy my conditions, perhaps it lacks the right kind of pollinators in my garden, or maybe it was just not a great year for seed set and future years will be fine.  At this stage I don't know. 

I am told it will cross with tartary buckwheat, and the resultant plants are said to display a great deal of hybrid vigor.  I grow common buckwheat, but have never seen tartary buckwheat for sale.  I know it is in the country, but can't find it for sale anywhere.  Hopefully some day I track down some and see how it grows here.  I would love to create this cross, and see how vigorous the hybrids can be.  

Perennial buckwheat leaves and flower buds

Until recently I only grew my perennial buckwheat in pots, and it always seems to want deeper soil.  This plant spreads underground.  It appears to perform better in my deeper pots, and it always tries to escape through the drainage holes.  

I wonder if I grew it in the garden if it would cope better with dry conditions and be more likely to set seed.  I am reluctant to plant it in the ground because I have heard that perennial buckwheat can be so vigorous that it is difficult to control when in the garden.  

Despite my hesitations, I am trialing growing some perennial buckwheat in the soil just outside the chicken's run.  This will get a lot of the nutrients from the chickens, plus it will be in deep soil, and hopefully this will produce strong plants.  So far the hens keep reaching through the wire and eating it, so I need to protect it a little better.  I want the chickens to eat this plant, but I don't want them to eat it to death.

I figure by planting it in soil near the chicken's run it should spread underground via rhizomes, and pop up away from the initial planting site.  Some will be eaten by the hens and provide them with nutritious feed, some will spread into the lawn and be mown, and some will hopefully be in that perfect zone where it can grow tall and potentially set seed.  

More perennial buckwheat flowers

I don't know why perennial buckwheat is so rare in Australia.  It is such a vigorous grower, and so nutritious, that it should be grown more commonly in backyards where it can add to household food security.  Perennial buckwheat leaves can be eaten as vegetables, or they can be fed to chickens, or can be used in the compost.

Hopefully when my perennial buckwheat flowers next it produces a few viable seeds.  If not, I will still enjoy this plant for the valuable leaf vegetable that it is and I will feed the leaves to my chickens to lower the feed bill.  I am told it makes a good cut flower, but I'm not sure if the flowers are pretty enough for this purpose and may leave them so they continue to feed beneficial insects. 

Perennial buckwheat is a great producer and an excellent permaculture plant.  At this stage very few places in Australia sell perennial buckwheat plants, and I hope this changes in the near future.  I am mostly experimenting with this plant to see what it can do, I have high hopes that it will act as a significant source of feed for our chickens.  If I have extra perennial buckwheat plants, I will offer try to some for sale through my for sale page.  

Cost per liter чайный гриб 'kombucha'

Home made kombucha (which is often called чайный гриб, pronounced: chaynyy grib) and store bought are two very different things.  The diversity of live cultures, the numbers of culture forming units, as well as the presence of organic acids, can be far higher in home made. 

Store bought can be pasturised (ie the beneficial microbes are dead), or filtered (removing some of the larger microbiota), and more often than not it is unripe and does not contain the full range of beneficial organic acids and other substances that kombucha can produce.  While live microbes are likely beneficial, the organic acids are probably the healthiest part of kombucha.  Store bought often is often higher in sugar, and can have various other additives that I don't want to drink. 

The stuff you get in a can or bottle in the shops if often so under-ripe that it contains few organic acids, and has a low concentration of the few acids it does contain.  The stuff from the shops would probably be better described as 'kombucha flavoured ice tea'.  

While store bought probably isn't bad, comparing the two would be like comparing apple juice with apple flavoured sugary cordial.  While not the greatest analogy, you get the idea.  

Now that I've said not to compare them, I am going to do exactly that.  I am going to compare home made kombucha with store bought kombucha.  I am not comparing flavour, or health benefits, or presence of live cultures, or number of colony forming units, or presence of organic acids, or any other nutrient, I will be comparing the price of home made kombucha with the price of store bought kombucha.  

Kombucha looks like a jellyfish in a jar

My kids and I go through a lot of kombucha over summer, sometimes less and sometimes more over winter.  I could not afford to buy kombucha flavoured drinks from the store, but can I can easily afford to make kombucha at home.  Making kombucha at home is cheap, really cheap.  

I make continuous brew kombucha.  This is the easiest and safest method.  I don't add any flavouring or do a second ferment because I like the taste of raw kombucha.  Making kombucha is simple and it never goes wrong if you do it the traditional way.  If you can boil water, you can make чайный гриб the traditional way.  

Traditional continuous brew чайный гриб

Price of store bought kombucha

The price of store bought kombucha is strangely a difficult thing to find.  Most shops sell a weird and wonderful array of drinks with amazing sounding flavourings that may or may not taste like kombucha, and may only have a small percentage of kombucha in the final product.  Some are high in sugar, others have non-sugar sweeteners added, some pasturise it and then add one species of probiotic of so they can claim it is a probiotic drink.  I assume store bought kombucha are similar to the wonderful array of ice tea that is sold in supermarkets.  They are expensive, and some sound utterly delicious, but I have never tried them.  

I looked around and the price of supermarket kombucha varies wildly.  I considered trying to find raw kombucha and comparing those prices, but raw unflavoured kombucha is difficult to find and seems to often cost more than the flavoured kinds.  I think the most sensible way to compare prices is if I found a few places that sell kombucha, and then listed their cheapest variety (whether it was flavoured or not).  I decided to use the cheapest unit price as this is most easily comparable even when they have different size bottles or cans.  

The cheapest I could find in Coles was $6.35 per litre.  The cheapest I could find in Woolworths was $8.80 per litre.  The cheapest I could find in Harris Farm Market is $15.12 per liter.  If we average out the two lowest ones (and ignore the higher one), this gives a rough idea of the price per litre of about $7.57 per litre.  

It is noteworthy that there were plenty of places selling kombucha flavoured drinks for a lot higher prices than these.  Some of the micro breweries charged prices so high that they make me consider quitting my day job and becoming a full time kombucha maker.  But I digress.  

Kombucha biofilm looks unappetising

Price of home made kombucha

I make continuous brew kombucha.  For me it costs under $0.15 per litre.

Given the price at the supermarket is around 50 times more expensive, the cost of making it at home seems so low that it seems hard to believe.  I will break down the cost below so you can see I am not making this sound cheaper than it really is.  If anything I am rounding up.

I make continuous brew kombucha,  I have this in a glass jar with a line that I drew on the jar.  We drink чайный гриб, once the liquid drops to the line on the side of my jar I add 2 litres of cool sweetened tea.  It is very simple, the time and effort needed per batch is negligible. 

Let's add these costs up so you can see the the total comes in slightly under 15 cents per litre. 

I use 1/2 cup white sugar (about 110 grams) which costs ~14 cents to make 2 litres of kombucha, or just over 7 cents per litre.

Tea bags costs about 2 cents per bag, I use 2 or 3 teabags to make 2 litres of kombucha, or about 3 cents per litre.

Cost of electricity to boil kettle 5-6 cents for a 2 litre kettle, or about 3 cents per litre.

Total: Around 26 cents per 2 litre batch of sweet tea, or around 13 cents per litre of kombucha.  

чайный гриб is very cheap to make at home

There are some one off costs that are not factored in above.  You likely already own a kettle and a measuring cup so I won't go into the price of buying new ones.  Perhaps you want to buy a jar with a tap? 

You don't need thermometers, you don't need heaters or a warm spot in your house, you don't need special sterilisation equipment, you don't need pH test kits.  I never use any of these things, and I never had a batch that failed.  Remember, countless generations of people brewed kombucha in Siberia without issue and they certainly didn't have comfortably warm houses, or (until the 1950s or 1960s) electricity, or use anything fancy.  

I found an 8L jar with tap at Target or Kmart $24.  Perhaps you prefer the 8.7L glass jar about $40 from Bunnings or a set of 2 for about $30 each.  You could probably find something cheaper online, or you may be lucky enough to buy one from a garage sale.  

Traditionally, no one had a jar with a tap so babushkas would ladle kombucha out of the jar and give it to members of the household to drink.  Perhaps you already have a large jar that lacks a tap, and can just buy a ladle to get the liquid out, in which case this would be even cheaper.  

Another one off cost is the kombucha scoby/culture.  Some people use supermarket kombucha to begin their scoby, this often results in weak scoby with low diversity of microorganisms and needs to be carefully looked after to prevent mould and contaminate issues.  

Perhaps you can find someone who will give you a scoby, or maybe you need to buy one online.  If you need to buy some, it should not be expensive.  Plenty of places online sell them for around $20, even though this is a once off cost, don't pay more than that.  

My little monster in a jar

As mentioned above, I normally make чайный гриб in a large jar that has a tap.  I also make small jar batches as back up cultures in case my large jar breaks or gets knocked over or something.  I sometimes sell kombucha scoby (which is living in the pellicle with some starter tea) through my for sale page.  The scoby I sell is from these smaller batches, it has one (or more) biofilm that is about 10cm across and about a cup of starter liquid.  This is more than enough to make 2 litres of kombucha.  Once you have the scoby/culture you can keep it going indefinitely.  

If you like kombucha, it is well worth making some at home.  Making kombucha at home takes next to no time or effort, and is so easy it is difficult for anything to go wrong.  Given how cheap it is to make at home, even if you need to buy a scoby and a jar it only takes a few liters until you are well and truly ahead financially, plus you have control over the ingredients that are added.  

Mulberry tree

I grow a few different mulberry trees.  For some reason, mulberry trees in Australia tend to be mislabeled more often than not.  

This mulberry tree was meant to be a black mulberry (Morus nigra) but was obvious when it arrived that it was a white mulberry Morus alba (or a hybrid of alba).  The fruit of this tree is meant to be very dark, and the taste is meant to be great, which means it should still be worth growing even though it is not a black mulberry.  

The first year the tree grew well over six feet tall.  This fast growth is a trait of white mulberries, black mulberry are usually slow growing.  I had it growing in a pot of soil, and think it would have grown larger had it been in the ground.  The little tree was strong, and went dormant over winter.

The tree broke dormancy in spring and started to grow.  It had a few berries developing at each leaf node.  Then we were hit with a very late severe frost.  The tree was burned by the frost and lost about 6 feet of growth.  My other, larger more established mulberry trees all lost over 6 feet of growth to that frost.  Needless to say, this little tree did not produce any berries that year. 

The little mulberry tree survived, and grew well, then went dormant over winter.  Now spring is here my little tree is breaking dormancy again.  It has fresh new leaves, and each leaf node looks to be producing several mulberries.

As you can see below, this tree is trying to be rather productive.  

Mulberry breaking dormancy

This tree is covered in developing fruit.  Hopefully this year I get to taste some of them.  

Interestingly, last year my larger more established mulberry trees were loaded in fruit, and were all severely burnt by the late frost.  I worried because my white shahtoot mulberry looked like it had been killed.  It was burnt back to a stump.  I'm happy to say it survived and did a lot of growing last spring/summer, and this year has more developing berries than I have ever seen before. 

White shahtoot mulberry

White shahtoot breaking dormancy

I have said before that a mulberry tree is like a vegetable garden on a trunk.  The berries are delicious, and the leaves are surprisingly nutritious.  

Obviously people can eat mulberry fruits, but not many people in Australia realise you can also eat mulberry leaves.  People can eat mulberry leaves cooked (or raw), they can be used to wrap things, and mulberry leaves make a nice 'tea'.  Basically any animal that eat leaves will eat mulberry leaves.  Mulberry leaves taste ok cooked, and are more nutritious than most common vegetables.  

The leaves from my dark fruited mulberry tree can be huge.  As mulberry tree leaves make great vegetables, producing a lot of large leaves is another great trait to have.  

Mulberry is a great leaf vegetable

At the moment I am growing this tree in a pot.  I planned to grow it in a pot for the first year or so and then put it in the garden.  I should have planted it into the soil this past winter or the one before, but I didn't, and now it will have to wait until next winter.  

You can see below that the pot also has miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) growing in it.  I didn't plant the miner's lettuce, but some seed got in somehow, and I encouraged it to grow.  This annual vegetable germinates in winter, grows until the weather gets hot, then sets seed and dies.  The miner's lettuce in the pot acts as a living mulch, weed seeds do not germinate as it is too thick.  

I like the taste of miner's lettuce, and I like how it self seeds and reappears each year for me.  Saving seed of miner's lettuce is fiddly, so I find it easier to grow some miner's lettuce in a pot, and when it seeds I move the pot to where I want this plant to grow the following year.  Inevitably some seed falls from the pot, and I have a new patch of miner's lettuce the following winter.  It's kind of the lazy way to save seed.

Sometimes miner's lettuce appears in the lawn, but doesn't grow large enough to eat as it keeps getting mown.  It still flowers and sets seed in the lawn, this seed gets washed around in rains or moved by wind, then the following winter seedlings pop up in new places.  I wish I had more of this growing, and am always sad when it succumbs to the heat and dies off for the season. 

Mulberry tree growing in a pot of soil

Miner's lettuce flowering

While I was originally disappointed that this tree was not a black mulberry (Morus nigra), and it appears to be a dark fruited white mulberry (Morus alba), it is still a good tree.  It is showing strong growth even when conditions are not great, it looks to be rather productive, and it has abundant large leaves.  Hopefully it has the classic mulberry taste as there is no point growing it if the berries don't taste great.  Normally mulberries begin to ripen around December/January here, so unless something goes wrong I will hopefully be able to eat some soon.

I may try to grow some from cuttings and see how readily they root.  If the fruit is good, and if this one is easy to propagate, I may build up numbers and share around some of the plants.  If that happens I may list them on my for sale page.  

Perennial vegetables for sale October 2025

For sale in Australia perennial vegetables, heirloom vegetable seeds, edible herbs, organic berry plants, and a few non-edible plants and things.  Everything has been grown organically by me.  

Maintaining my old for sale page wasn't working for me, so each month I will write a new blog post with an updated list of what I have for sale that month and include a link on my old for sale page. 

Various organic tomatoes

For Sale: October 2025 

Bare Rooted Plants $5 each (unless otherwise stated): 

Skirret offsets 
Everlasting onions 
Babington leek 
Pineberry strawberry 
Virginian strawberry
Atilla alpine strawberry 
Jekkas thyme 
Spearmint 
100 yr old mint
Lavender mint 
Willow herb
Vietnamese fish mint
Vietnamese coriander
Variegated water parsley
Green water parsley (more vigorous stronger tasting version of the variegated form)
Asparagus (Variety: Purple) 
Asparagus (Variety: Precoce D'Argenteuil) 
Sweet Violet 
Water cress - well rooted cuttings
Hops (Variety: Target)
Brahmi/water hyssop (Bacopa monnieri) 
Tiger nut/chufas (Cyperus esculentus) $5 for 5 tubers
Jerusalem artichoke tubers $3 each
Duck potato $3 each
Chinese water chestnuts $3 
Spider plant (variegated, green, or reverse variegated)  $3 each
Azolla  ($3 per scoop)  

Ancient Cultures: 

Milk kefir grains  $5 

Heirloom Vegetable Seeds:  $4 packet (unless otherwise stated) 

Immali corn
Superior coriander
Giant parsley
Purple hot mustard
Purple asparagus
Tomato Zolotoe Serdtse
Tomato Tommy Toe
Tomato Reisetoimate 
Tomato Woolly Kate 
Senposai
Huacatay

Non edible things:

Aloe vera $5
String of pearls succulent - plant $5, cuttings $2
String of beans succulent (from Coober Pedy) - plant $5, cuttings  $2
Red jelly bean succulent  $5 
African violet leaf cutting (Variety: New Hampshire) $3 each
African violet leaf cutting (Variety: unnamed double light blue) $3 each

Candle mold 'skep' $10 each
Candle mold 'owl' $10 each 

Postage Prices: 

$12 for plants etc, or 
$3.50 if only buying seeds.  

I post the Monday after payment has cleared.

Jerusalem artichoke tubers

To order anything from the above list: 

Please send me an email saying what plants/seeds you would like and I will reply with prices/payment methods.  My email address will need to remove the the spaces, put @ instead of the word 'at' and . in place of the word 'dot': 

damien_beaumont at yahoo dot com dot au 

Photographs, binomial names, and descriptions of plants, and notes on how I grow them, can be found on my old for sale page.  Please note my old page has a lot of things not currently in season/not currently for sale.  The only things I have for sale this month are listed in this blog post above.