Herb Garden Plants

Learn about the wide variety of herb garden plants to choose from and the few that are essential to every successful herb gardener

Plant Names – Why You Should Identify The Common Ones In Your Windowsill Herb Garden

Knowing the common plant names is important in order for you to build a good windowsill herb garden.

Plenty of botanical shops handle seeds and full-grown plants using their common plant names, and thus you must be in a position to match these names with scientific names. There are many paths to do such a job. You can use plant databases and plant encyclopedias, as these references would give you pictures of the plants along with the list of all their names. If you have kept any of the seed packets when you purchased your plants, you will see that they tend to name the scientific name with the common plant name.

In most cases, a standard plant name is the Latin version of the name interpreted into English. Diverse common plant names for herbs include Cudweed, Duckweed, Dove, Ammania, Beggarticks, annual, Buttercup, Conzya, Crimson Monkeyflower, among others . For flowering plants, we have got the African lily, Alpine thistle, bells of Eire, tulips, roses, clover, Amaryllis, gerber daisy, Amazon lily, baby’s breath, and masses more.

If you are somewhere within a region where deadly plants thrive and grow, being able to know their common plant names will be ready to forestall any puzzlement if ever you or someone you know ( particularly your buddies and family ) will be exposed to them. Diverse names for deadly plants include poison oak, belladonna, alder buckthorn, foxglove, monk’s hood, poison sumac, poison ivy, pokeweed, English ivy, poison hemlock and yew.… Continue reading →

Posted in Classification of Herbs, Growing Herbs in Containers

How to Grow Garlic

(from Wikipedia)

Garlic is easy to grow and can be grown year-round in mild climates. While sexual propagation of garlic is possible, nearly all of the garlic in cultivation is done so asexually, by planting individual cloves in the ground.^[4] In cold climates, cloves can be planted in the ground about six weeks before the soil freezes and harvested in late spring. Garlic plants are usually very hardy, and are not attacked by many pests or diseases.

Garlic plants are said to repel Rabbits and Moles.^[2] Two of the major pathogens that attack garlic are nematodes and white rot disease, which remain in the soil indefinitely once the ground has become infected.^[4] Garlic also can suffer from pink root, a typically nonfatal disease that stunts the roots and turns them pink or red.^[9]

Garlic plants can be grown close together, leaving enough room for the bulbs to mature, and are easily grown in containers of sufficient depth. When selecting garlic for planting, it is important to pick large heads to
separate cloves from. Large cloves will also improve head size, along with proper spacing in the planting bed. Garlic plants prefer to grow in a soil with a high organic material content, but it is capable of growing in a wide range of soil conditions and pH levels.^[4]

Posted in Italian Herbs

Golden Milk: An Ancient & Healing Remedy

by Rosalee de la Forêt

Turmeric has been used for thousands of years for countless ailments. In recent years it has also caught the attention of western researchers and there are many studies touting its many benefits.

Some benefits include…

Digestion and the liver (Ulcers, diverticulitis, flatulence, leaky gut)
Heart health (High blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol)
Immune support (Cancer, colds and flu, bronchitis)
Musculoskeletal strength and flexibility (Joint disorders, arthritis, pain)
Nervous system (Pain, Alzheimer’s)
Wound healing and healthy skin (Eczema, psoriasis)
Diabetes and Menstruation difficulties

Turmeric is pretty astonishing!

I learned this basic recipe from Karta Purkh Singh Khalsa and I often suggest it to my clients with a lot of success.

K.P. Khalsa has a new course coming out this week called Culinary Herbalism.

This recipe is in two parts. First we make the paste and then we’ll explore how to use it.

To make the turmeric paste you’ll need:

1/4 cup of turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon of ground pepper
1/2 cup of water

Measure out the ingredients. The additional pepper makes the turmeric more bioavailable, meaning that you use less for better results. At these measurements the pepper is about 3% of the mixture.

turmeric paste

Next add the powders and the water to a small sauce pan and mix well. Turn the heat to medium high and stir constantly until the mixture is a thick paste. This won’t take long!

tumeric past