We love to have dried mullein on hand throughout the winter for our family--the leaves, the flowers, the roots... it doesn't matter! We love it. While we may not sell mullein regularly as an official product in our store, we had some volunteer mullein plants sprout in our freshly overturned clay soil after digging our trench for the irrigation, and we thought it would be a fun summer project to experiment with how to grow them. 

Because Nathan is a construction worker who has seen more mullein on job sites than you could shake a stick at, he suggested just filling the raised bed with pure clay. And he made a pretty compelling case since he mentioned how many times he had to weed-whack them down at the end of a project to clean up a job site—yes, that detail killed us inside, too.

So, in we put pure clay into our raised bed. And honestly, they were pretty sad and wilted for about two weeks. As the resident black thumb, I didn’t water them much after the first two days, but they’re a hardy plant. They started to perk up, and eventually grew tall flowers. It was fun to watch, and we were able to restock our winter supply!