My month & a half long visit home is coming to a close and I struck with a mixture of feelings. I will miss living with my parents and tending to the garden we have built over the years in their suburban backyard. And also I am eager to travel to my other home and see my partner and cats in South America. Feeling both at once and it is confusing!
Moving on is always bitter sweet, but I am so happy with the work I have done these past few weeks and wanted to share a bit of the garden with the Hive Garden community!! Besides growing microgreens (which I wrote about in a previous post) my mom & I have a focus on culinary and medicinal herbs.
This garden is situated in a very dry climate that has several days of 100+ degree (fahrenheit) weather in summer and rarely freezes in winter. This means that many vegetable plants suffer in dry soils but, surprisingly, culinary herbs do quite well. So, we grow all the Mediterranean basics like sage, rosemary, oregano, and thyme and use them nearly daily.
Oregano in particular seems to love the dry heat and scorching sunshine. In fact we grow such an abundance of the herb that we recently cut back the plants to use as dry material in a composting toilet!
Here I am with a handful of herbs to be chopped and added to veggies and then baked with a bit of salt and oil. They turned out deliciously, as you might expect.
But more than just flavoring, culinary herbs have a number of medicinal properties. Oregano is great for helping stomach upsets, cramps, and aid in the process of eliminating parasites. Rosemary is my go to herb for migranes and all are digestive.
Amongst the culinary herbs are a few medicinal flowers. My favorite of all flowers is the calendula which no grows & reseeds itself without any help from us. Occasionally my mom or I will transplant a volunteer seedling to a more prominent spot though they do much better when left to their own devices.
Calendula flowers have so many properties that they certainly merit a post of their own. In organic agriculture they are included to atract beneficial insects. And in herbalism they are often used to cure skin irritation, relieve menstrual cramps, among many other applications. Such is their usefulness that each day you can find me collecting calendula flower heads for drying.
There are so many herbs to mention, I will surely have to write a follow up post soon. Until then, I leave you all with photos and information about a new-comer to our garden, Feverfew!
I first heard about feverfew through an herbalism book by Rosemary Gladstar and was interested in the possible applications toward seasonal allergies. Sychronisticaly the nursery where I volunteer had extra pottted plants and I took one as part of our work-trade agreement. Last year I planted Feverfew, Anise-Hyssop, and Clary Sage in a very tough part of the front yard garden. This sector was once a gravel pathway and was very compact. For ten years the previous owner and later we have been adding compost and soil but only very resilient plants survive in such shallow & dry soil. Luckily Feverfew made it through and this year has gifted us with a cascade of small daisy-like flowers.
First I read about feverfew in a recipe for a migraine relieving tincture alongside lavender and California poppies. In my personal experience, however, I have found that this herbal mixture has greatly relieved my seasonal allergy symptoms which where triggering my migraines in the first place.
If you do suffer from seasonal allergies there are so many factors to consider especially diet and this differs widly person to person. For me this means total elimination of peanuts and avoidance or red wine that seem to worsen my reaction to air-borne pollen.
Some say that the best way to deal with allergies is by washing one's face with feverfew tea. I find keeping a tincture bottle of feverfew (or feverfew with lavender and Californian poppy) to be so convenient that I never forget to take my daily dose. Of course, do your own research before taking any new herb.
I hope you are all enjoying the abundance of late spring or the cozy moments or late fall. Happy gardening!!