Tis the season for RED and out on the UMES Research and Education Farm on Stewart Neck Road in Princess Anne it’s no exception! Specialty Herb Consultant Henriette den Ouden is harvesting a new plant in her test plot, red sage.
“It’s neat,” den Ouden said. She lists the herb’s attractive flower in the summer and its bright red roots for harvesting as its attributes. “The seeds come from China where it is well-known. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the root from red sage is called ‘Danshen’ and is used for blood circulation and pain related to blood stagnation. In the U.S., it finds a wide variety of uses from support for high blood pressure to relief from pain and insomnia.”
Den Ouden was approached last winter by an herb grower in China who was interested in UMES Extension’s Small Farm Program growing Chinese herbs to test how they would do in soil and weather conditions on Delmarva. Having local farmers produce the herbs in the U.S. is beneficial, den Ouden said, since transport from China to acquire seeds or plants has been difficult at best, especially since the start of the pandemic.
“They do ok here at the UMES Research and Education Farm, but we really had to improve the drainage of the soil through cover cropping and compost use,” Den Ouden said as she pointed to two rows where she planted the Chinese herbs. There are farmers in the area, she said, with soil that she feels would be more suitable.
The red sage is a perennial plant in the Salvia family (Salvia miltiorrhiza). Den Ouden planted the seeds in deep seeding pots in the greenhouse in early March and transplanted them in the first row in a section of the herb garden at the farm at the end of April. She removed the flowers when the time came so “the energy of the plant could focus on root growth instead of seed production.” She also planted another test area later in the season and will keep them through the winter to see what impact that makes on the growth and yield.
Behind the red sage, Baikal Skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis) went in the row that produced an attractive purple flower and bright yellow root. The plant, she said, did well along with Bupleurum that did best when the weather got cooler. The Polygala behind it didn’t do so well and she suggested scratching it from the list of herbs to be grown in the area. In the next row, Den Ouden had already harvested Achyranthes. All are harvested for the root for medicinal purposes.
“The goal is to support farmers to be able to grow these Chinese herbs, because they are very profitable crops. We’re working on making the harvest more automated instead of using this broadfork; how most people still do it. For instance, if you could just go by the row with a potato digger, that would lower the costs of harvesting,” she said.
Once the plant is up and the red roots of the sage are visible, she said, you clean them off, cut them into one-inch pieces and dry them for a powder that can be put in a tincture (a concentrated herbal extract) or in capsules. She doesn’t suggest tea.
Interested in growing Chinese herbs, contact den Ouden at hdenouden@umes.edu.
UMES Extension Specialty Herb Consultant Henriette
den Ouden uses a broadfork to harvest red sage.
Den Ouden displays the eye-catching color of the root.
Once dug, the roots are cleaned, cut, dried and
used in powder form for tinctures or capsules.
Red sage in its flowering state.
Gail Stephens, agricultural communications and media associate, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences, UMES Extension, gcstephens@umes.edu, 410-621-3850.
Photos by Todd Dudek, agricultural communications, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences, UMES Extension, tdudek@umes.edu.
