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Want to Hide some Herbs,? I'll show you how! June 05, 2017 |
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Contents: Hiding Herbs in Your GardenHow about hiding herbs in your garden? By early June most people have seeded, or planted their gardens if they have one. But it is never too late to get some herbs started, even if you end up tucking them into your flower beds or separate containers. (This year I'm finding that less and less people want to be bothered with a garden. That could raise a whole discussion on how much safer growing your own food is than trusting what comes into your supermarket, but I'll leave that for another day). So, I'll assume you still have a garden, even if only a small salad garden, or maybe a few plants in containers on your balcony. Many foods and herbs can be a non-drug, safe medicine that will heal you of your ailments, or at least relieve your symptoms to a large degree. Even a pot of herbs on your kitchen windowsill can be a good start. Then, the following year, you might add another pot of herbs, or grow some along the sunny side of your house. A balcony with your apartment will work wonderfully too. If you have some flowerbeds around your property, you can easily plant an herb here or there, in small gap among the flowers, and as you get used to seeing them thrive there, you bring in a few leaves to dry and make a tea, or to add as a garnish - and before you know it, you want more of that herb. What herbs would work that way? To tell the truth, I was drawing up a long list, then realized that I could not get such a comprehensive resource ready in time for this publication. So I'm going to stick with a shorter list of those I have in my garden, or have some experience growing in the past. (The long list, with descriptions, will have to go on my website one day). Green onions and chives - these grow as perennials in several spots in my garden and flowerbeds. They are the first to be green in spring after the snow melts. I love to dash outside when I'm making a salad or soup, grab a handful of green onions, and or chives, and dash back in. Chives come in two kinds, one is of the onion family and the other of the garlic family. Either one gives a good flavour to food, and because of the allium in them, is antibacterial and anti-fungal, so will protect against infections and even cancer and the bad cholesterol. Listen, only 1 calorie per tablespoon full! I have the onion kind. Green onions (or, as I've just discovered spring onions or scallions - the bulb part) - add a lively flavour to any dish, and are loaded with quercetin, which has a great anti-oxidant punch. It keeps LDL cholesterol from cluttering up your arteries. I just learned it can protect against cateracts; I wish I'd know that sooner - I would have eaten far more green onions. The sulphur compounds which make you want to cry when cutting onions are good for you. They help you fight blood-clotting, allergies, bacterial infections and inflammation. They lower blood sugars, prevent diarrhea, and improve your appetite. Whoa! I need to eat more of my green onions! Dill and Summer Savory - these herbs were favourites of my Mom. Her soups were not complete unless she had both in them. So I do the same. I knew that dill improves digestion and reduces gas. Only lately, as I research, I learn that dill can provide relief from insomnia, hiccups diarrhea, dysentery, menstrual disorders, and clear up respiratory problems, and even fight cancer by boosting your immune system and save our bones from crumbling. It can hold off arthritis as well. You know what, my friend Helen craves dill. Now I suspect her body knows what it needs. Apparently, it may help deal with depression, and be useful as a bug repellent too! (All this calls for further research). Summer savory has a sharp tangent flavour, but when I sprinkle any on my cooking food, I smell my mother's cooking immediately! You can flavour meat and vegetable dishes of all kinds with summery savory (peppery flavour). (I have no experience with the winter savory but read that is is more bitter). Savory has been famous for love potion recipes, sore throats, poor vision, sciatic, - really? A remedy for wasp and bee stings? I didn't know that! Savory's uses aren't limited to the kitchen, however. Since the days of the ancient Egyptians—who stirred the powdered herb into their love potions—it has been praised as a remedy for sore throats, dim vision, sciatica, palsy, intestinal disorders of various kinds, and the stings of wasps and bees. Nicholas Culpeper, the famous seventeenth century apothecary and author, valued it as a virtual cure-all and recommended that it always be kept on hand. See how much you can learn when you start looking things up? Mint - I can't decide if mine is peppermint or spearmint flavour. I let my mint grow wild in my flowerbeds. It spreads itself and fills in empty spaces. Once or twice in the summer I go out with a large basin and pick it full of mint leaves. I wash them, spread them on wax paper over newspaper on some board-improvised tables in my basement, and let them dry. In a few days I can crumble them into empty supplement bottles. I label them and set them aside for making my most favourite tea. Sometimes I remember to dash out for a handful and chop the mint up to toss into a salad. (Somewhere I have a recipe for mint sauce I should try again). Mint has a quieting, soothing effect for gas and stomach pains, or nausea and vomiting. I read that it is also useful when urine or menstruation are suppressed, but never noticed that for myself. The limonnene and luteolin in mint blocks the development of breast cancer. Look, it even perks you up when you are tuckered out. Parsley - Mom preferred the flat-leaf Italian parsley, and used the dried roots in soups. Naturally, I do too, but I also sprinkle the dried, chopped leaves on just about anything cooking on my stove. Most of the time I forget all that it can do for our health. But when I look them up, there is such a long list of benefits. Sorrel (or French Sorrel) - is probably so named because of the tall stalks with floppy mops of red seeds they get in the late summer. Often our prairie ditches are full of those reddish/brown plumes in late August and through September. Unfortunately, the farmers often spray them along with the other weeds they want to kill, so I find it better to grow them in my garden where they are safe from pesticides. I grew up being sent to the pasture as a child to pick a pail full for the summa borscht that my Gr'ma and my Mom made. The pot could include a chunk of smoked ham, or sausage, some diced up potatoes, green onions, and 2 or 3 big hands full of washed, and chopped up sorrel. We added buttermilk at the end. Ah, my favourite borscht! Now as an adult I've discovered that I can use sorrel leaves in a salad just like spinach. It is high enough in Vitamin C to prevent scurvy. Sorrel will purify the blood, expel worms, and warm up your heart. A tea from boiling the roots is the answer to menstruation that is too profuse, or any hemorrhage. Sorrel will rid the kidneys of small kidney stones. The flowers make a tea that is good for internal ulcers, black jaundice, and all manner of skin diseases. Whew, all that from sorrel? There are many more herbs you can grow! Malva (or Mallow) and calendula have lovely flowers, so you can easily hide them in your flower beds. Malva grows on a long turnip-like root, and easily gets up to 2 or 3 feet tall, with lovely, crinkly leaves and pretty mauve trumpet flowers. Calendula is of the marigold family, but has only one layer of golden-yellow petals instead of the many variegated ruffled petals of the marigold. Both will make themselves to home in your garden and last many summers once they get established. Both malva and calendula are great for skin problems. Either as a strong tea which you drink, or in which you dip your clean cloths and lay on the affected areas. The tea can clear up phlegm stuck in the throat, or used to bathe sore and inflamed eyes as well. If you are willing to learn to make ointments with beeswax and the dried leaves and flowers, both calendula or malva, you can also apply that to skin conditions. In fact, you may be pulling some herbs out of your flowerbeds and garden as if they are nasty weeds. You should be harvesting them for your health! Dandelions, plantain, chickweed and portulaca are great examples of these. If you wish to know more, I have whole pages on my website for some of the above herbs. More planned when I can get to the writing of them. However, if I give you links to all the pages here, this email will be screened out as sp-a-m, and it may not reach you. So I suggest you go the website, https://www.aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com and go down the menu on the left until you get to "Handy Herbs" - there are some links there. But you can also check for the SITEMAP in the "Your Hostess" section, which has a link to every page on the site. (Or, it is suppose to; sometimes I find that I've missed one or two). Having just said that about keeping links to a minimum, I have two here in the next two sections for you.
Practical Tip or Solution - 7 Wild Plants in the Park - for Your SaladI found an interesting video on Youtube by a man who calls himself "Wild Man Steve Brill." In this particular video he is just prowling around Central Park (he doesn't say, but could be in New York City), and there he find seven wild plants that can be added to a spring salad. 7 Wild Plants in the Park - for Your Salad I Invite You to a Progress Report on Making My GardenI've really been busy the last few weeks with making my garden. I am not quite finished with adding flowers in more nooks and crannies and in the flowerbeds in my front yard. But I have written up a progress report on my blog for my friends and followers of my novel.. You are welcome to go read that and see the accompanying photos: Making My Garden I hate to make excuses, but that should explain, why I'm spending a little more time outdoors now. Because i work long hours at the computer. I have to schedule little snatches of time in the morning and after supper, and be content to see my garden grow little by little. But then my pleasure is greater as I see it green up and fill out with greenery and flowers about waist high by mid-July to early August. So have a look at the early seeding stage in the link above, and then later in summer I'll show you the abundance!
Contact
& Policies - Constant CONTACT INFO: Ruth Marlene Friesen (306)856-7785 Ruth@aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com
POLICIES: I am definitely against S/p/a/m! I Will NOT share your COPYRIGHT (c)2017 Ruth Marlene Friesen
Blessings & Thanks! Ruth Marlene Friesen
Contact & Policies - Constant CONTACT INFO: Ruth Marlene Friesen (306)856-7785 Ruth@aloe-vera-and-handy-herbs.com
POLICIES: I am definitely against S/p/a/m! I Will NOT share your COPYRIGHT (c)2017 Ruth Marlene Friesen
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