Chamomile

German Chamomile,(Matricaria recutita) is a fragrant herb known for its apple-like taste and scent. In fact, this relative of the daisy gets its name from the Greek word kamai, meaning melon or ground apple. For thousands of years, people all over the world have been brewing chamomile into teas to aid digestion and calm jangled nerves. Gentle enough for both pregnancy nausea and infant colic, chamomile tea is a wonderful way to soothe yourself or your child naturally. A new to me idea is to use German chamomile tea, double strength, as a preventative to damping off in seedtrays. The Gardening guide shared this great tip. I will be using it from now on. German Chamomile grows in poor, clay soils. The short, two-month growing season of German Chamomile allows it to be planted with other biennial herbs or planted as an early or late crop. Chamomile is not only fragrant in the garden, it is easy to dry and use throughout the year. Remove the flower heads when they open and dry them on a newspaper in a quiet place. The tiny flowers are light and airy. They will blow around with the slightest breeze. To harvest chamomile can seem a chore. The flowers are very small but abundant. Some have better luck using a chamomile rake, which is a hand held device that combs the plants to remove the flowers. I find that it tends to tear a lot of plants up by the roots when I use it so I stick to the hand approach. Go out every day and you will find more flowers ready to harvest. This keep the flowers coming for an extended period of time.

Chamomile is an easy herb to grow and offers a lot of choices for teas, rinses and fragrant additions to crafts. Grow some as a ground cover or in a bed of its own, chamomile offers a gardener so much.

Elderberry - The Flu Remedy

Elderberry is used as a delicious remedy for the flu. It prevents the flu virus from attaching to our cells and therefore, it shortens the duration and severity of the flu.

Elderberry is extremely useful for fighting the flu. It contains compounds that keep the flu virus from attaching to the cell, so it can shorten the duration of your illness and possibly lesson the severity.

Elderberries make a wonderfully tasty remedy. You can use them fresh or dried equally well. Making a sweet elderberry syrup or a semi sweet tincture.

When wildcrafting elderberries, be sure to only pick from areas that do not receive a lot of vehicle traffic and be certain to only pick the most ripe berries. This is easy to do, as they are picked in large umbrells of berries per stem.

Make Hand Rubbed Sage Powder

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Red Clover

Red clover is a popular tonic herb. It has a sweet taste and is easily recognized by beginning herbalists. Red clover is used for women's issues, as a powerful addition to their herbal medicine chest.

Red clover is an important herb to know. The blossoms are easy to pick and the few tiny leaves that sometimes are attached can also be included in the harvest.

Use the flowers as a tasty accent in your salad or freeze individual blooms in ice cubes for a pretty addition to a pitcher of lemonade or tea.

Red clover blossoms are traditionally used for menopause issues, as they are said to helps balance the estrogen levels during this time. Red clover is also used in herbal cancer fighting treatments. This herb does have a blood thinning effect, and should not be used by anyone taking blood thinning drugs.

Red clover can be used as a cover crop in your garden area, as well as wildcrafted from clean, wild places.

Basil

Basil is a fragrant herb with strong ties to both Italian and Indian cooking. Basil varieties range from teeny fairy basil to large garden varieties with leaves large enough to use as wraps in cooking. Basil has many different colors. You can grow plants that are a deep purple, blue or a myriad of greens. There are also many different flavors of basil; sweet, spicy, lemon and even licorice can be found. For gardeners, no matter if you have a small window box garden or a large acre farm, basil has plants that will grow well in any size space. Look for a bush basil for a more compact and dwarf habit. Basil is an easy to grow annual so you can grow it straight from seed or start with a few plants. Basil likes well drained soil because it is susceptible to mildew and needs to remain watered but not soaking wet. It is also a good idea to keep larger leaves pinched back. The more airflow around the plant, the healthier for your basil.

Although basil is sometimes found crushed in jars, it doesn't dry well.If the leaves are bruised, they will turn an unsightly black. To store your excess basil for winter's use, puree in a food processor with just enough olive oil to make a paste. Freeze in ice cube trays and then pop the frozen cubes into a gallon size freezer bag. In any size garden, make room for basil.

Compost

Compost Pile

©2008, A. Jeanroy, Licensed to About.comAny herb gardener will benefit from adding nutrients and organic matter to the soil in order to grow plants well. One of the most popular and beneficial things to add is compost. Compost can be purchased at any garden supply center, but it is very easy (and less expensive) to make your own. Whether your garden is indoors or out, compost will help all your herbs grow better. The act of composting is putting organic materials in a pile or container, along with water. This pile is turned periodically and the beneficial bacteria will thrive. This creates high heat and breaks down the raw organic materials into a dark, rich, soil-like product. There will be no discernible original parts, and finished compost has a fresh, earthy odor. If you have a small indoor garden, you can simply create less compost. If you are growing your herbs outdoors, you can never have enough of this black gold. A nice idea for indoor composting is to buy a rubbermaid-style tub that will fit under your kitchen sink and begin composting with earthworms. This is called vermiculture, and it is the perfect way to create compost for all your indoor herbs.

For larger amounts, you may want to contain your compost pile in a bin. These can be made of any material you have access to. I have used free wooden pallets with great results. I simply wire three together and have the fourth side open for turning. These pallet bins are easy to move in the fall and contain enough room for me to easily stir the contents. There are many other styles of compost bins to choose from. You can spend hundreds of dollars buying a fancy version that is essentially a barrel with a handle to crank it around with. The choice is yours. Now, on to the ingredients needed for a healthy compost pile.

Compost needs three essential ingredients in order for the magic to happen: Green material Brown material Sufficient moisture

Green material is high in nitrogen. It is usually what we refer to as kitchen scraps like coffee grounds, peelings, fruit cores, and eggshells. Any kitchen waste that is not greasy or meat can be composted. Manure (NOT dog and cat waste, only barnyard animals), grass clippings, leaves, and weeds you have pulled are also green materials.

Brown material is high in carbon. Paper, sawdust, small branches and twigs, and straw all fall into this category. You may not believe that the items have anything to offer your compost, but they certainly do. The ratio of nitrogen to carbon ideally works out to be equal parts of both for us on the farm. We use all of our stems and any part of the herbs that we are not going to save and what we clean out of the stalls in the goat barn as the majority of our brown and green material. Cornstalks and kitchen scraps also get added regularly. We never have enough compost, but every bit helps and we do not suffer from drought or standing water like some of our neighbors do.

Water is the final key ingredient in a thriving compost pile. Without moisture, your pile will take months to do anything, and if dry enough, will not break down at all. If your pile is too wet, it will smell and become slimy as the ratio of bad bacteria outweighs the good. You want it to remain damp, but not dripping wet. If you do not get enough rainfall to suffice, dump a bucket over it once a week to keep things moving. You will know that your compost pile is right if it becomes hot in the middle. This is important to sterilize the compost and kill the weed seeds or bad diseases that may be there. The heat is your proof that the ratio is working for your compost pile.

You will turn your pile from the outside in about once a week. This doesn't have to be anything major, simply shovel the outer portion of the pile towards the inside and continue moving in this way around the pile until you have rearranged it so that fresh compost is now exposed. This way, all the beneficial organisms can have a chance to work on all of the pile's ingredients.If your pile heats up, gets moisture, and gets turned regularly, you should have dark, wonderful compost in about one to two month's time. Use this fertile addition to any herbs you have, both indoors and out. Add it in large quantities in the spring to the soil you are going to plant in. Use it throughout the season to top off any soil that has become tamped down due to water runoff or settling. In the fall, break down your garden and put any parts of it that are not diseased back into a new compost pile to work all winter and you will have new compost to use the following spring.

Best Ways To Profit From Herbs

©2008, A. Jeanroy, Licensed to About.com

Value added products, means using a single product, like lavender, to make other items. In the case of lavender, this could be lavender wands, salve, eye pillows, cookies, dryer bags and more. Value added is giving the customer more reason to purchase from you, because you are offering more than just that single thing you started with. A customer may never have the desire to grow a lavender plant, but would love to have a lavender filled eye pillow. Your customer base has now increased, with little effort.