zucchini

Our first zucchini and this one grew in the ground not in a pot. Next year it looks like we will be planting more of them next to the plum trees.

U-turn moment - 6 years in the making

This is our old deck - in our old life. We had a guy custom build it just for us. This was also the very first time we ever had "plants" in our life. The plants were secondary - it made no difference what "kind" of plants they were. They were something to put in all of our cool pots that we decorated our deck with. I did water them though, it gave me a fun thing to do on the deck.

These are our plants today. After we left the land of pagers (and left all our pots to my mother) and moved to New Mexico - now our focus is JUST on the plants. Our mints (chocolate, orange, spearmint and catnip - sadly my peppermint seeds never sprouted) and our chives and a few veggies here and there are all growing in things I would have been mortified to place on my deck. They seem as happy as can be, planted in litter box containers and milk jugs. Its harder not having the kind of money that we used too but it makes what we do have so much more precious.

Catnip Tea

Catnip is also known as catmint, catswort, and field balm. It is a member of the mint family of herbs and is now to be found in the milder climates of the Northern Hemisphere.

Catnip contains a substance called nepetalactone and essential oils. Nepetalactone has a sedative effect in humans. It also can be anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and muscle-relaxing. The essence of the catnip herbs can be extracted through catnip tea, which is produced by steeping the aerial parts of the catnip for about 10 minutes in hot water which has been boiled and then removed. Catnip Tea can be consumed 2 to 3 times per day. Expectant mothers are advised to avoid drinking catnip tea.

When taken, Catnip Tea has the following benefits:

• Catnip Tea has a calming effect, may help relieve stress, and may help treat anxiety and nervousness.
• Catnip Tea may help alleviate insomnia.
• Catnip Tea may also be used to help lessen migraine headaches.
• Catnip Tea may also relieve stomach complaints such as colic, cramps, gas, and indigestion.
• Catnip Tea may be used in treating fever.
• Catnip Tea may help in treating toothaches. 

source Tea Benefits 


We also added a few leaves of chocolate mint plant. Not that catnip isn't good on its own...but everything tastes better with chocolate.

St. John's Wort Salve ©Millie Fodor

Stony Mountain Botanicals - recipe

First time using the crock pot to make a salve and cooking equal parts of dried herbs for 3 hours in olive oil. Things we changed: added more oil because when we put it in the crock pot it barely covered the herbs. We also added 4 pinches dried lavender. In the end we added more beeswax to make it more solid.

We bought all of the dried herbs in this recipe except, of course, for the comfrey which we dried ourselves. Herbs include: St. John's Wort, Calendula, Comfrey leaf and Plantain.

Mallow - Malva - Malva Neglecta

The flowers of this plant can be softened in water and then chewed to relieve the pain of a toothache. The flowers can also be brewed by infusion into a mouthwash that is said to soothe irritations of the mouth and gums.

The fresh or dried leaves, too, can be used, either to make a poultice or brewed to make a tea. In the latter form, mallow soothes the mucous membranes and is therefore considered a good remedy for sore throat or even sore tonsils. Some claim mallow tea will calm, intestinal irritation.

Externally, mallow tea is used as a body wash particularly on children, to reduce fever, or to clean bruises. Crushed leaves are also applied to relieve the inflammation associated with mumps. However it is used, it should be washed well because dogs tend to choose the mallow plant to mark their territory.  
Healing with Herbs and Rituals, Eliseo "Cheo"  Torres


Just drying leaves and flowers now. We have no dogs so marking isn't an issue but the bugs have started to eat the leaves and we wanted to harvest before it  was too late. This is growing all over the yard but mostly in high traffic areas. This small patch was protected by a makeshift greenhouse which was removed this morning.

Wildcraft

We were very excited to get our game in the mail today. What a fun way to learn about herbs.   Wildcraft

Harvesting rose petals

Learning about all the things we can do with rose petals. Everything from making a tea for medicinal purposes to making your own facial cream. Now we just have to figure out what to do first.

Coming up Roses

Roses are coming in. I'm looking forward to making rose hip tea and all kinds of other things we have been reading about. Last year we saw the hips (never even knew if you cut the roses another would grow) but had no idea what they were or how to use them. This is the year! I'm excited about drying them and tasting them fresh. Its frustrating how everything we want to use we have to wait until autumn to harvest. Another lesson in patience I suppose, something I'm still trying to learn.

Western Salsafy (salsify)

---Synonyms---Purple Goat's Beard. Vegetable Oyster.
(French) Salsifis des prés.


Salsify is called oyster plant due to its faint oyster-like flavor. It is grown for its edible root which is white, long and slender often reaching a length of 10 to 12 inches. The young shoots or leaves are often called "chards" and are field blanched and eaten in salads. Salsify is planted from seed in the early spring and harvested after the first hard freeze in the fall. Adequate moisture and fertility during the growing season is necessary if high quality roots are to be produced.   source

This is a plant that has been popping up all over the place. Its in with the comfrey, its growing with the spearmint, its even growing in the middle of the yard. I liked this plant from the first time I saw it because when it goes to seed it looks like a giant dandelion. No chance of me eating this though - Once I found out it tastes like oysters it was over. Maybe if I was starving...then again I'd probably go for bugs instead.

Soapwort growing in

I'm looking forward to summer when we can start drying the leaves and stems. We can't take the root to dry until autumn. This will be the first year (it's only our second summer at this house) we will utilize the soapwort.  Kay has been reading and getting recipes. My job is the drying so I'm learning about that. As you can see, we certainly have enough to play around and experiment with.

From Garden to Table

  

This is the first year we harvested rhubarb from the yard. We are renting and the owner told us its been growing here for years. She had never used it. A few weeks ago we separated a giant clump of them and all three sections we pulled off the main one have taken root. It doesn't look like we will get fruit from them this year but they have definitely survived the separation.

Drying Comfrey

Here is a bit of our comfrey patch. You can see some is going to flower. We are a bit unsure about drying. For us, the easiest way to dry is in our dehydrator but we haven't seen a lot of information on the web specifically about drying comfrey this way. We keep the temp as low as our machine will go -  below 95, but we don't have a "just air" feature.

Comfrey Leaf infusion

The left jar is an infusion Kay made last night. She used dried comfrey leaves and boiling water. It sat all night and then she strained the plant matter out of it. We had about a 1/2 cup this morning. It tasted pretty bad. She added some fresh chocolate mint leaves and sugar - that helped, but its no Crystal Light.

* Does anyone know if it is okay that we also used the stems of the comfrey for this? 

The jar on the right is some catnip tea she made. She picked fresh catnip leaves (and a few chocolate mint leaves) and put them in our teapot. Then poured water that had boiled on top and let it sit for 20 minutes. It didn't taste much better than the comfrey but sugar helped a lot. I think I like the teas better cold.

First time with Comfrey Salve

I want to say first off: We do NOT know what we are doing! We are trying to learn about different herbs that are growing in the place we are renting. Once Kay discovered that we had a ton of comfrey she set out to learn about things we could use it for.

Here is a few photos of us making salve for the first time. It turned out pretty well - given the fact that we don't know what its supposed to turn out like (other than photos from the web and books). We've both used it on general aches and pains but so far its been more out of novelty than necessity.