The Eight Essential Cooking Herbs: The Home Medicine Cycle 4

We’ve all heard that chicken noodle soup is the best thing for someone sick with a cold or flu. But why is that exactly?

I know that sometimes it really hits the spot, especially at the tail end of the cold season when you’re struggling to fight off those tough, long-lasting viral infections.

Well, the broth in the soup is light on your stomach and nourishing. Boiling may damage some vitamins and nutrients in food but not all. A good broth from chicken, fish or vegetables can really carry a lot of nutrition to your body without the heaviness of many foods that weigh down organs made sluggish by illness. Broth is also liquid and consuming a lot of liquid is one of the most important parts of recovering from a viral infection.

Then there are the noodles themselves. We don’t usually want simple carbohydrates in our diet that much. But when you’ve been sick and not eating much for days that is actually a time when you do want them. Those noodles are essentially energy to your cells, including your immune system. So, there’s a possible reason too.

But there is another aspect of chicken noodle soup that is sometimes actually left out entirely in modern times. One of the reasons that chicken noodle soup was such a popular remedy historically was also that it was heavy on herbs, particularly in the words of the song things like parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Today when many people think of cooking with herbs, they think of a teaspoon of an herb in a pot of soup. But that gives little flavor and only a small health benefit.

Many cooking herbs should be treated more like vegetables than like spices. And this is particularly true in times when viral infections are rampant. Add a handful of sage, a handful of parsley, a handful of chives, tablespoon of thyme and a teaspoon of rosemary to that soup and you’ll find that the taste comes alive and the infections recede faster or stay away all together.

I can't include every useful herb for cooking here. But this is my short list of the eight essential cooking herbs that my pantry cannot be without. These herbs not only taste great but also provide health benefits.

1. Basil

Basil pesto on fettuccine by Cliff Hutson of Wikipedia

Basil contains a lot of flavonoids, those little plant pigments that make raspberries red, huckleberries blue and basil bright green. They are important phytonutrients that prevent the kind of cell damage caused by radiation. Basil also contains a lot of vitamins but you have to eat a fairly large amount of basil (more than just a teaspoon in a pot of soup) to enjoy the benefits. Several studies have been done documenting the use of basil particularly in reducing inflammation. What that means for most of us is that basil is a good calming and strengthening influence for the body. One great way to eat a lot of basil is by making pesto, if you can get fresh basil. If you have dried basil, add large handfuls of it to Asian, Mexican and Mediterranean soups.

2. Ginger

Ginger is a great herb for dreary, drizzly and muddy times of the year. Ginger helps some people with an upset stomach or nausea, though I haven’t personally seen a lot of success with it. What I have found it very useful for is that it eases the symptoms of any sort of cold or upper respiratory illness. It warms and clears up passages and generally just makes you feel better. Great ways to get enough ginger to produce this effect are pumpkin soup with a generous amount of fresh ginger root chopped in or gingersnap cookies, also using fresh rather than powdered ginger.

3. Garlic

Garlic is highly prized among herbalists, particularly for its antibiotic properties. However, you should know that the chemical compounds that give garlic antibiotic properties are unstable and they break down with heat. This means that if you cook garlic you lose those benefits. In short, if the garlic doesn’t sting your mouth, it has probably lost its antibiotic properties, whether it is dried, boiled or powdered. Fresh garlic is very helpful in preventing sore throats and other infections at this time of year.

Image by Lee Kindness of Wikipedia

Adding small bits of fresh garlic to your food is pretty much the only way to eat it in comfort. If you don’t have stomach trouble or other disorders that don’t allow you to eat fresh garlic, you can make beet or red cabbage salad with fresh garlic. You can also try a Bohemian specialty from my neck of the woos, garlic soup, and add the garlic in small bits at the end after the stove has been turned off. Fresh garlic in soups, salads or sandwiches will be a bit spicy and very tasty to those who like it. And this is one of the best preventions I know in flu and cold season.

That said, garlic is still both tasty and medicinally useful when it’s cooked. You just have to look to its other benefits. Both raw and cooked garlic contain powerful antioxidants that protect against free radicals and heart disease. So, using large amounts of garlic in your stews, pizzas and casseroles can be a good thing.

4. Parsley

Parley is first and foremost a very nutritious herb with high vitamin and mineral content. It is also a good source of dietary fiber. If you want to eat more dark leafy greens for better health, don’t forget that parsley is among the best. It’s particular combination of nutrients and fiber is good for lowering cholesterol and maintaining the health of the digestive system. You can add parsley on top of many soups, casseroles, salads and just about anything else. One of my family’s favorite recipes for using a lot of parsley is tabbouleh salad.

5. Turmeric

Tumeric has been used medicinally in some cultures for centuries, although it is relatively new to western cooks and herbalists. Today a lot is being made of the health benefits of eating turmeric. One study claims that turmeric kills cancer cells. Others have claimed that it at the very least helps prevent cancer. Unfortunately, it isn’t clear how much of the powdered, dried root, which is what most of us have access to, would be needed to produce a medicinal effect. There aren’t really any problems with eating turmeric though. It has a mild flavor and can be used to color soups, sauces and even cake frosting a nice warm golden color without the use of any harmful dyes. Turmeric is used in many curry spice blends and particularly yellow curries usually use a lot of turmeric.

Image by Simon A. Eugster of Wikipedia

My husband and children have a mild dislike of rice for some reason. They claim it has an odd smell, so one of the ways we get our dose of turmeric is that I add a teaspoon of ground turmeric for every cup of rice. I like the taste and the beautiful yellow color of the rice after this and my family claims that the turmeric neutralizes the smell they don’t like. I have never been troubled by rice myself but I am glad to have an easy solution for them.

6. Thyme

Thyme is one of my all-time favorite herbs. It’s medicinal qualities are essential in our household but it is also most appreciated in cooking. Thyme has a very beneficial effect on respiratory problems and it is probably part of the reason traditional chicken soup is a good cold and flu remedy. Thyme is also good for digestion and can make many meat dishes tastier and easier on the body. We find thyme essential for any poultry dish at our house.

Chicken soup with dark leafy greens added. Image by Claus Ableiter of Wikipedia

Here is my basic recipe for roast chicken rub, which is simple and always met with enthusiasm:

2 - 3 tsp salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

2 TBS dried thyme

1 TBS dried rosemary

A handful of dried sage

7. Sage

If thyme is the first key to good chicken noodle soup, sage is the second key. Your soup may be edible with only one of these herbs in a pinch but the combination is best. Sage is one of the few herbs or spices that actually have some effect on keeping food from spoiling. It is worth noting that most spices, including very hot peppers, do not actually “disinfect” food, so eating over-spiced food won’t tend to protect you from food poisoning. (In fact, it may be a good idea not to eat terribly spicy food when traveling because the extra spices can mask the taste of food beginning to go bad.) I wouldn’t rely on sage to keep unrefrigerated food from going bad, but a healthy handful of sage in a soup broth can help to keep it good. It will also taste fantastic, help sooth respiratory and throat infections and generally strengthen the body.

8. Mint

Used in food - rather than medicinal tea for colds and asthma - mint has a good effect on digestion. If you have digestive troubles, you might look into using mint specifically before meals. It tends to be particularly helpful whenever you have the feeling that food you have eaten is weighting heavily on your stomach. This is often the case with heavy or greasy foods.

In our attempts to support local, organic agriculture, my family has taken to eating lamb as one of our primary meats. We freeze a lot of local lamb in the fall and eat it all winter in stews and roasts. We don’t mind the taste of the lamb. Given that it is raised in a very clean environment in the highlands, the lamb we get doesn’t have a terribly strong flavor. But it is still meat and it has a particular kind of grease that feels heavier than most other meats. There is a reason why traditional recipes for lamb chops often call for mint jelly. The mint has a wonderful property of neutralizing the heaviness and any residual mutton taste about the lamb. I often make stew with lamb just as I would with beef simply by adding a handful of dried mint (the same stuff I use for tea) to the pot along with the other cooking herbs.

I hope you find these ideas useful. Please not that this isn't medical advice from a doctor and not all individuals will respond the same to herbs and some medications can react adversely with herbs. It is always a good idea to share your concerns with your doctor.

I love to hear from you. Please keep in touch and comment in the box below. What is your favorite cooking herb?

Teaching Kids about Herbs: The Home Medicine Cycle 3

We partially homeschool. For a while, I had a standard preschool curriculum for my kids where you learn about “community helpers.” When we got to the picture of a “doctor," my kids were excited. They know our doctor. He’s nice but he gives shots. They don’t really like shots but he also gives them stickers for being good. They like stickers.

It was when we got to the pictures of “medicine” that things got confusing. My kids didn’t recognize the medicine shown in the curriculum. It wasn’t just the brand or the type of medicine. They have rarely ever taken medicine from a pharmacy. They didn’t know about pills.

Walking near the Growiser Native Plant Preserve in Northeastern Oregon, an area of great biodiversity.

If you ask my kids to show you what “medicine” is they are likely to point out a weed or at most a jar of salve, possibly some dried leaves for tea. This is because I make most of our medicine and we have increasingly less need for medicine from pharmacies.

So, a slight disconnect in communication comes up when my kids talk to other kids or adults about medicine. It isn’t that they’ve been deprived of the knowledge of what pharmaceutical medicine looks like. They have two toy doctor’s kits with the standard accoutrements, plus the spare salve and tincture bottles I added. But they are simply used to the idea of herbal medicine and many other people aren’t used to it, especially kids.

That got me to thinking about how I taught my kids about herbs. How is it that my children have some fundamentally different assumptions about health and medicine and plants?

Mostly it is simply what we use.

Since my kids were babies they’ve been around when I cultivated, harvested and processed herbal medicinals. They have taken “black honey” for everything from coughs to stomach aches since they were a year old. “Black honey” is simply a syrup made of plantain and honey that is one of the best remedies for kids. It can help significantly with coughs, sore throats and stomach troubles, but even if it doesn’t cure what ails them, it tends to taste so good (much like caramel) that they feel at least a little better anyway. (I'll post the recipe for black honey when the plantain come up in the spring.)

My kids are also used to herbal tea and a variety of salves. They know about chewing up a bit of plantain to put on a scrape when they’re outside.

But even more fundamentally than that, they understand that medicine doesn’t “make you better.” It is part of healing that includes a balance of rest, food, water and cuddling. They see medicine (whatever the type) as just one factor in getting well or staying healthy.

In the process of learning about herbs myself, I’ve observed how other families teach their kids about herbs and developed a set of tips that can help along the way.

1. Use herbs as much as you can both in cooking and medicine. Name them specifically when talking about them with kids. Instead of just saying, “Let’s add some herbs to the soup,” spell out that you’re adding sage and thyme or whatever.

2. Point out plants by name whenever you can, whether they’re herbs or not. I once knew a two-year-old whose parents were biologists and when he pointed to a duck he gave the correct scientific name for the particular type of duck because that is how his parents named them to him. So, while most kids would say “Duckie!” he would say “White-winged scoter!” And he’d be right. The same is possible with plants. The human brain was designed to catalog enormous detail about the natural world but it’s an aptitude we don’t exercise much these days. It's hard to keep up with it if the knowledge is irrelevant to your life, but if you follow the other tips here, plants will be essential and your child will remember the names of many plants.

3. When discussing medicine or doctors with preschool-age kids pretend that we live in a perfect world where there is no chasm between doctors and herbalists. When we teach kids about money, we first teach them the concepts in an idealized way. We don’t teach them first about money laundering, corruption and crippling poverty. We teach them that you work and you get paid and you then spend your money to buy things. When we first teach kids about soldiers, we don’t tell them about war crimes and how even “good” soldiers sometimes kill people. We teach them that soldiers protect us. We do teach them that guns and other military equipment are very dangerous because we don’t want them touching these things on their own. The same goes for medicine. We teach them that doctors give you medicine to make you well again. Sometimes a doctor might recommend pills or sometimes she or he might recommend herbal tea. Both are to be treated with respect and kids can’t take them without a grown-up’s help. Make the idea that herbs are medicine a simple fact, so that the opposite is strange.

4. As kids get older let them use herbal salve for cuts and scrapes on their own. Make sure it doesn’t include any ingredients that aren't okay for internal use because kids may use salve for lip gloss. (For instance, North American arnica is often added to herbal salves for bruises and should not be used on broken skin or near the mouth.)

5. Teach kids to identify the most basic edible plants. You could start with dandelions, chickweed and violets. Put them on salad to make it pretty and tasty. Kids get the idea that many more plants can be used for food than those we see in the grocery store or even the vegetable garden.

6. Teach kids early on where it is okay to pick flowers and herbs and where it isn’t. Just as kids need to know about the invisible world of germs and why we have to wash our hands before dinner, they have to know about the invisible world of pesticides and herbicides. Make sure your kids know if you use chemicals in your yard and that they can’t eat the flowers or herbs that grow in such areas. Point out that in parks and other maintained public places, these chemicals are almost always used. Show kids that they should never gather herbs directly beside a road or anywhere near a major highway (particularly if you live near a freeway interchange for instance).

This is the correct kind of plantain but possibly too near a road.

Photo by Sannse of Wikipedia

7. The easiest medicinal herb to start with is plantain. This is because it grows just about everywhere, its easy to identify and low to the ground where kids can reach it. It’s medicinal action is also very direct, observable and easy to understand. Whatever it touches it heals. Sit in a meadow and have your kids practice identifying what is grass and what is plantain. Plantain has distinct parallel ridges on the leaves. There are two types, one with broad leaves that come to a point abruptly and one with long thin leaves that taper gradually. The thinner leaves are more medicinally potent but neither is harmful. When your kids can identify the plant successfully, show them that you can chew up a piece of plantain into a paste and then put it on a cut or scrape. A minor scrape will stop hurting almost immediately and this is very satisfying to kids. If your kids are older, they may initially balk at the idea of putting green spit-mush on themselves. They can mash the plantain up and add a few drops of water. That works too.

8. At this stage you might consider reading the Herb Fairies books with your kids. Herb Fairies is a set of thirteen story books plus activity packs. As far as I know the only way to get them is by joining the Herb Fairies book club. Once a year the book club opens for new members. The basic membership, which doesn’t include printed books but only ebooks that you can print out or use on a Kindle or a tablet, usually costs around $100 which can be intimidating. You are allowed to download the first book and activity pack for free and keep it even if you don’t decide to join the club for the full thirteen books, which are sent to you over the course of a year. I’m not affiliated with this program in anyway. I bought my own membership for my kids a few years ago at full price and I’m very happy with it. I particularly like the fact that the fairies in the books are not all female, not all Caucasian and not all young-looking or even skinny. They are all quite fun and pretty though. The first book mentions plantain, so that is why it is fun to start the series when you’re first learning about plantain. The writing in the story books isn’t spectacular but it is as good as say The Magic Tree House in terms of good flow and age-appropriateness. The story is engaging and there are four kid characters of various backgrounds and levels of herbalist understanding for kids to relate to.

9. The classic Flower Fairies books also provide a lot of beautiful pictures that include medicinal plants. They are focused on beautiful flowers though and will include many poisonous plants and leave out many medicinals. The best way to use Flower Fairies in your herbalist curriculum is to get the black and white Flower Fairy coloring book and use specific pages that feature a medicinal plant. This also circumvents the other problem I encountered with Flower Fairies, the fact that all of the Flower Fairies are very pale and Caucasian-looking, which may not be comfortable for all families. 

10. A very good book for teaching not only a few medicinal herbs but also a lot of good herbalist concepts is The Herbalist of Yarrow. This little treasure found its way onto my bookshelf a year ago. It is a very engaging story for kids seven and up that hits home the importance of medicine as just one part of the process of healing, including the idea that medicine that makes you feel good when you are still sick can prolong illness because it prevents you from resting. This story does open up the issue of the divide between doctors and herbalists, although doctors aren’t mentioned explicitly. The villain in the story is a “wizard” who wants to force everyone to use only the wizards’ medicine and wants to stamp out village herbalists by force. The story manages to be very suspenseful and exciting without actually resorting to violence and the ending is one of reconciliation and mutual understanding. It will, however, tend to bring up the issue of conflict between those who don’t accept herbal medicine and those who do. The book also includes several recipes and pretty, child-friendly illustrations.

Picking nettles with rubber gloves, doubles as both necessary weeding in our yard and harvesting the greens for dinner. 

11. Start learning about more edible or medicinal herbs one by one. Start with some you already know how to identify and can harvest near your home, herbs that you know are very safe and that can be used in cooking as well as medicine. Mint, nettles, thyme, elderberries/flowers, marshmallow, calendula and red clover are all good for the next step. It is important at this stage not to try to go too fast. Don’t try to teach kids about a whole bunch of herbs at once. It is much better to spend some time focusing on one, exploring what it looks like, where it grows and what it can be used for. Draw pictures or color coloring sheets with that herb. Pick some and discuss the differentiating features, what the stem looks like, how many petals the flowers have, how the leaves look, what the texture is, what it smells like and how it feels when you crush a leave or flower in your finger. This sensory exploration is important for correct and safe plant identification but it also connects you and your child with the plant on a deep level. It is much easier to remember the medicinal uses when you know the plant intimately, know where it likes to grow and what it looks like in the early spring, mid-summer and late fall, as well as the times in between. Take your time. In terms of overall herbalist education in the long run, it is much more important for children to know a few things well in the beginning than to memorize lists of herbs and their uses.

12. If children aren’t yet fascinated by plants, try asking them questions instead, such as „What does the shape of this leaf make you think of?“ and especially why questions like , „Why do you think this plant has this color or grows here or has white milky stuff inside?“ Correct answers aren’t the point. Exploration and interest is the point. If you get the child talking about it, like this, "Maybe the plant likes to drink milk, so it milks worms down under the ground," you've won, even though the answers will probably be wrong. Then you can continue the line of inquiry. Dig up some worms. Check them out. Do they appear to produce milk? That might be the end of it for that moment. But if the child is really interested, you could look up the plant and read about the real reason for the milky stuff.

13. Use herbs in recipes and crafts. In my posts over the next year I will include a lot of recipes for food as well as medicines such as salves that are suitable for making with children. Children are all kinesthetic learners to one degree or another. They learn from being hands-on. Take advantage of this talent. Even a seemingly non-medical activity such as making lavender pillows or dried flower arrangements will bring children closer to an understanding of herbs as medicine. Sign up for my hearth-side emails, to keep tabs on this series of posts.

14. Once your children have developed the basic concepts listed here and have deep experience of a handful of herbs, it is possible to start on a more systematic herbalist education. You can teach specific herbs and their uses, going down the list of the safe and reliable herbs I will write about this year. Another tool you can use at this phase is Wildcraft, a wonderful board game developed by the authors of the Herb Fairies books. This game not only provides a fun way to reinforce knowledge of which medicinal herbs are used to treat which types of ailments but it is extraordinarily well made and a piece of beautiful artwork. It’s a cooperative game where players race against the sun and help each other rather than trying to beat one another out and yet it manages to be very suspenseful which is a challenge with cooperative games. This game normally sells for $40, which is a lot. While it is worth that amount, I would point out that if money is tight and you aren’t in a big hurry, you can sign up for the mailing list of the company and wait a bit. My experience is that at least once a year the game goes on half price and you can pick it up then.

I hope these tips are helpful. My next post will focus on cooking with herbs and roots to help you get through the tail end of winter with a minimum of sniffles. After that spring will bring the active herbalist season and we can start with the first specific herbs to harvest and use.

P.S. Please remember that this isn't medical advice from a doctor.

Starting the basic home herb garden: Home Medicine Cycle 2

Let me say right off that this isn’t going to be about creating geometric designs out of your herb plots or even about complex co-planting strategies. It seems like every guide I read about starting an herb garden is obsessed with these things. I’m sure they are good for the hobbyist with plenty of time to dabble. And if you are a gardening wizard or have a lot of garden space and even more time, by all means study up on design and co-planting.

My herb garden when I started it ten years ago

But if you’re like me and you want to grow some key herbs and make the basic medicines to keep your family’s doctor visits to a minimum, I’ll offer what I’ve learned in ten years of trial, error and holding my aching head while reading gardening books.

Let’s get another thing out of the way. I’m not a master gardener. My philosophy is simple and probably imperfect. Feed the plants. Dig compost, manure and the occasional bucket of ashes into the beds. Try not to water too much or too little. Trim and thin when it’s necessary.

I’m also not gardening in the best conditions ever. My garden is on a north slope in a cold and clammy climate. Last year we got a total of 40 hours of sunshine between January and May. Even as late in the year as February, the sun barely peeks above the tree line at noon. The ground won’t thaw until mid-March, until mid-April in some years. Mold destroys many crops by early August and the growing season is over by mid September.

Given all that, it is probably a miracle that we manage to grow anything without a greenhouse or extensive technology or chemicals. We get a pretty good pumpkin and squash crop most years. Peas, kale, chard and green beans do alright as do strawberries. But that is about it for vegetables.

The good news is that most herbs are a lot easier to grow than vegetables. They are in essence weeds and they will forgive you for poor soil, sporadic watering and lax weeding much more than vegetables will. And many herbs are perennials, which means that once you have them established you don’t actually have to replant year after year. In fact, most of my annual herbs reseed themselves as well.

What herbs you'll need most

In my climate February is the month for ordering seeds and then planting starts in recycled yogurt containers. Our growing season simply isn’t long enough for planting directly outdoors. And beyond that, many herbs take weeks to germinate and I would never find the tiny shoots of mint or thyme amid the weeds that quickly take over my beds.

So, it’s the right time of year to consider which herbs should you start growing. Keep in mind when you’re thinking about what herb seeds to buy that you may be able to collect some herbs in an empty lot or meadow near where you live. Also fellow gardeners may have starts you can use, which is often much easier than starting herbs from seed.

Keep those options in mind when considering the following priority lists of herbs. I have spent twelve years narrowing down which herbs are both easy enough for me to grow and most useful in home medicine. I’ve tried to grow a lot of different things, some with less success. Here is the list of what has worked consistently for me.

The twenty most important herbs in my home medicine chest in rough order of importance to my particular family:

• Yarrow
• Plantain
• Elder flower
• Thyme
• Mint
• Echinacea
• Sage
• Lemon balm
• Willow or feverfew
• St. John’s Wart
• Mullein
• Comfrey
• Calendula
• Aloe vera
• Marshmallow
• Linden
• Nettles
• Lavender
• Dandelion
• Valerian

While I think these are among the overall best herbs for home medicine, your specific list would depend on what ailments are common in your family, your climate and if you have any allergies to these herbs. This list is based on a cool, moist, temperate climate. It will work moderately well for the northern half of the United States, Canada and most of continental Europe.

Now of those crucial plants, I prefer to gather yarrow, plantain, St. John’s wart, nettles and dandelions in the abandoned meadow next to our house. Elder, willow and linden are trees that we either have in our yard or can access easily. I like to buy aloe vera plants or get them from other herbalists. That then leaves a short-list of the most important herb seeds I would order if starting my garden again.

• Thyme
• Mint
• Echinacea
• Sage
• Lemon balm
• Feverfew
• Mullein
• Comfrey
• Calendula
• Marshmallow
• Lavender
• Valerian

I do highly recommend having a source of yarrow, plantain and St. John’s wart, so you might need to order those seeds anyway, if you don’t have a good place to gather organic herbs.

Now, those are the medicinal herbs in my garden. I also grow several cooking herbs.

The key cooking herbs, including a bit of overlap:

• Thyme
• Sage
• Basil
• Rosemary
• Mint
• Estragon
• Chives
• Parsley
• Wild oregano

Some of the cooking herbs that I don’t currently use for medicine can be put to medicinal use but I haven’t experimented with that in depth.

Now, you might ask what I would grow if I had very little space, such as a few pots on a window sill, or if I had very little time and just wanted to get a tiny start with herbs in the first year? Assuming that I was going to use the herbs for cooking and medicine both, these would be my priorities.

If I could only have eight herbs…

• Yarrow (Yarrow is always first on my list because I personally can’t get by without it. I have intense menstrual cramps and I used to have to take way too many pharmaceutical painkillers until I discovered yarrow, which is nature’s ibuprofen, anti-inflammatory, disinfectant and helpful in slowing bleeding.)
• Thyme (I love thyme for cooking and my husband is similarly dependent on thyme for easing a chronic cough that used to plague him from October to April each year.)
• Mint (I use mint in cooking and I have seen it work wonders with eczema and other skin conditions.)
• Echinacea (Beyond the essentials, there is one herb I always hope to grow and that is Echinacea. Homegrown Echinacea flower tea and tincture is well correlated to my family’s ability to avoid many of the viral infections that run through the preschool population of our town. My experience with store-bought Echinacea supplements isn’t nearly so good.)
• Lemon balm (If you have cold sores, lemon balm is your friend. It also makes a nice calming tea and one small children can enjoy.)
• Aloe vera (You have to grow aloe vera in doors in many climates, including ours. It is so useful for burns, scrapes and cuts that I don't like to be without it.)
• St. John’s wart (It is not hard to find and identify St. John’s wart plants in the wild but it is such a useful herb that I really wouldn’t want to be without it for its anti-viral and anti-depressant properties.)
• Sage (love sage for cooking and it has important medicinal properties.)

I am having great difficulty not putting plantain on this list. Plantain is possibly the second herb I would not want to live without, right after yarrow. I am known to the local herbalist club by the slogan, “There is no such thing as too much plantain.”

This is because plantain heals whatever it comes in direct contact with. It is incredible. It is magic on cuts and scrapes. It will clear up many coughs and sore throats if you can get it to flow down your throat in the right spot. It will help with all kinds of skin and mouth problems. But I have never heard of anyone growing it in a pot and because it is sparse and low-growing I don’t think you could grow enough that way. But you might be able to in a pinch.

If I lived in the city I might get desperate enough to try to grow plantain in a pot. While you can find the ribbed blades of plantain leaves amid grass in almost any yard or meadow, you CAN NOT use plantain from any grassy area that might have been sprayed with pesticides. The types of pesticides used on lawns are not meant for food crops and can be very poisonous. This is why I would consider growing plantain in a pot if I lived in a city. Do what you can to find a source of organic plantain. (And no, this is not the plant that produces something like a banana. This is essentially a type of grass. I’ll include some recommendations for herbal books below, in case this is confusing to you.)

The same goes for things like nettles and dandelions that do grow in many cities. But be careful of where you harvest them. Keep in mind that herbs growing along roads will also often be contaminated with heavy metals and chemicals. If you gather near a major highway make sure you are at least three hundred feet (or one hundred meters) away from the highway before gathering herbs.

Ordering seeds

Now that you’ve chosen the herbs you would like to grow, you can order seeds. I’m sure there are a number of places to order seeds but I’m going to recommend two specifically. This isn’t an advertisement. This is my own personal experience and no one is paying me to promote a particular company.

The first place is Heirloom Seeds where I order almost all of my seeds both herbs and vegetables. It’s a business with a strong commitment to preserving traditional and heirloom varieties. Given that I grow crops like corn, which have often been contaminated with genetically modified pollen if the seeds are bought through ordinary sellers, I want to get my seeds from a source that makes a point of avoiding this. Heirloom seeds used to take up to five months to ship seeds, because of the small size of the business and the high demand for their seeds. I just ordered seeds from them two weeks ago and they’ve come in record time this year.

They also have one of the best selections of herb seeds I’ve ever seen and many of them are organically grown seeds, although these are a bit more expensive. I don’t have specific information on whether or not it is medicinally important to grow your herbs from organically grown seeds. I do recommend growing all your herbs organically, but this mainly has to do with avoiding chemicals that come in direct contact with the leaves and roots you are going to consume. While I like to support organic agriculture and I’ll order organic whenever I can, I don’t think you should let finances get in the way of growing herbs, if that is an issue.

If you want to find a more local source heirloom seeds, here is a great list of heirloom seed providers which may have some herb seeds available.

I can also recommend Mountain Rose Herbs. I have ordered seeds from them once and had a good experience. I have also bought several books that they are affiliated with, which I’ll discuss in the next post on teaching children about herbs. Generally, this company has a very good reputation on herbalist forums on-line.

Planning the layout

Once you have ordered your seeds, look again at the space you have available. Can you plant herbs around the borders of your yard? Can you convert a flowerbed to a kitchen herb garden? Do you have a sunny window sill or two? Or do you have a large open plot? This will determine how many plants you will want to start.

You will also start to get an idea for how you want to organize your garden. While I love the idea of a beautiful, geometric herb garden, I have never found it practical to grow one. There are too many practical factors to take into consideration and many of the herbs that provide the best medicine are not all that ornamental.

Soil is important with any sort of gardening. Most herbs like well-drained soil and will do better in somewhat sandier soil than vegetables. They like nutrients of course but they would rather have course soil than moist clumps of damp compost. There are exceptions though. Marshmallow likes mud and lots of water. Hence the name. Mint likes significantly more water than you might imagine.

So, while I think co-planting herbs for pollination benefits would be wonderful, the limitations of my garden and climate force me to consider three factors most when planning herb placement. Those factors are soil, water and sun. The soil can be changed somewhat of course, but I need to group plants according to their soil needs. Those few herbs that do better with rich soil, have to be clumped together.

Water is another factor that necessitates clumping. As I said plants like marshmallow and mint like lots of water. While things like rosemary, sage and mugwort rarely need to be watered after they are established and will suffer root rot if over-watered. Other herbs such as Echinacea and calendula can be positioned between the wet and dry groups. In some very wet climates you may find that putting dry herbs like sage under a roof overhang where they’ll get all the sun but not all the rain water might help. Greenhouses also help to regulate water.

The most important factor to consider when positioning herbs is sunlight. Many herbs - but not all - need as much direct sunlight as possible. You may have a couple of sensitive herbs that you want to plant in a shady spot but for the most part you will want to position your plants so that the tallest herbs are on the north side of your garden and the shorter herbs are on the south side. Many herbs that aren’t even actually trees are very tall and marshmallow, mugwort, elecampane and even Echinacea can shade lower growing plants and severely stunt them.

So, before you plant look carefully at the height expectations on the package and then try to devise a layout that puts taller herbs at the back, herbs that like richer soil and more water on once side and herbs that like drier, sandier soil on the other side. Here are some helpful quick lists.

Tall herbs:

• Elecampane
• Marshmallow
• Mugwort
• Echinacea
• Mullein

Medium height herbs:

• Calendula
• Borage
• Lavender
• Lemon balm
• Some types of sage and mint
• Dill
• Chamomile
• St. John’s Wart
• Yarrow
• Feverfew
• Heartsease

Low-growing herbs:

• Red clover
• Basil
• Most mint
• Most sage
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Chives
• Parsley
• Estragon
• Fenugreek
• Violets
• Plantain
• Comfrey

Conclusion and gardening books

Once you’ve got your seeds and your garden space you are ready for the real work. Again, I recommend planting starts in small plastic or peat containers and giving them a head-start in a sunny window for a few weeks.

You will have to look carefully at the estimated germination time and recommendations for when to plant outdoors that come with your seeds. If you gather your own seeds, look these guidelines up on the internet. Many herbs are slow germinaters and will take up to two months to grow into a healthy start that can be transplanted in the garden. Other herbs such as chives and basil will sprout quickly and need to be timed carefully so that they can be transplanted after all danger of frost is past.

Some seeds, such as those for Valerian and Echinacea require a moderately complicated stratification process to make them viable. The easiest way to stratify seeds is to mix them with a small amount of sand in zip-lock bag, dampen the sand slightly and put the bag into your freezer for a week. Take it out and leave it in the refrigerator for a week. Then repeat the freezing once more. The only challenge in this is remembering to move the seeds at the right time. When I do it correctly it works but I often have trouble remembering and end up with seeds that don’t germinate.

This is far from a comprehensive guide to gardening and growing herbs. Most of my future posts will be concerned with how to use specific herbs, how to process herbs into medicine and how to treat certain ailments. If you would like more detailed information on the gardening side of this project I would recommend getting one or more of the following books:

Homegrown Herbs

Your Backyard Herb Garden

Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs 

Note 1: I’m not an Amazon affiliate or advertiser. These are just the books I would recommend and the easiest links for them.

Note 2: Please also note that nothing in this post is medical advice. I’m not a doctor and you should consult a doctor about illnesses before trying to self-medicate, whether with herbs or other medicines.

I love to hear from you. If you have favorite herbs you think are essential to the basic herb garden, please leave a note below so we can all learn more.

My next post in the Home Medicine Cycle will discuss teaching children about herbs and involving your family in growing, harvesting and preparing herbs.

Taking back your health: The Home Medicine Cycle 1

After ten years as a home herbalist, I’m embarking on a new project. I would like to bring together all of the experience and information I have gathered about reliably growing and using herbs as home medicine in one place here on the part of my site devoted to herb lore.

Grumblers ridge, Mnichovice, the czech republic, where I grow my herb garden

Let me say right off the bat that I’m not a doctor. I’m a mother of small children. I’m also not against doctors. My children are registered with a pediatrician and go for regular check-ups. I’m not even against buying medicine from the pharmacy on a prescription, when there is no alternative.

My goal isn’t to return to the Middle Ages when people had to rely on the knowledge of a local herbalist who used a variety of remedies, some useful and some unreliable. My goal is to keep my family in as good of health as possible.

Simply put, my experience - while observing myself, my extended family and my friends - is that overuse of synthetic pharmaceuticals is harmful to health. I have found that almost every health challenge that comes our way can be handled with herbs and other simple remedies that we can grow or make ourselves. We know the source, we know what’s in them and we they are tried, true and safe.

This is why my pediatrician and family doctor love us. We show up on time for check-ups every year or two and rarely show up in between. They get a small cut from the insurance company because we’re on their books, even if we don’t show up. We’re all very happy with the arrangement and very healthy.

Doctors as allies, not dictators

I grew up in a time and a place without either insurance or any doctor within twenty miles. I can still remember when my towering six-and-a-half-foot father, who I thought was invincible, was too sick to get up because of a spider bite on his neck. When he finally made his way to a doctor, the doctor was appalled and frightened by the fact that he hadn’t come earlier, given the danger. I was also sick for a month when I was seven before I was taken to a doctor so weak that I couldn’t sit up in the back of the car.

We're a moderately normal family.

As a mother, I am immensely grateful to have a pediatrician less than a mile from my house. I don’t go to him often because he tends to be trigger happy with the antibiotics but, as long as I don’t forget that I have a reasonably good brain as soon as I walk into his office, he is an ally.

The crux of the issue is my attitude. I see a doctor as a skilled ally, not a genius or an expert on my body or someone with all the answers or a representative of the medical establishment. In turn, I view my body and my children’s bodies and complex biological systems, living in rhythm with the earth and with our consciousness. I know I don’t have all the answers and I know that the doctor doesn’t have all the answers.

The doctor has the advantage of years of experience, a lot of medical education and up-to-date professional medical news. I have the advantage knowing my body intimately and the advantage of intuition. But in the end, I take responsibility for my health.

I listen to doctors. When there is a complex problem, I do a lot of research both through doctors and on my own. But in the end I make conscious decisions and I use all of my resources - nutrition, exercise, ancient and modern herbal lore, doctors, other herbalists and my intuition.

Bodies are ecosystems, not battlefields

The pediatrician doesn’t always agree with me on everything. He was initially concerned about my herbal remedies, but he is coming to agree more and more, as year after year passes and he sees how healthy my children are compared to the general population. My children’s bodies are not a battlefields. They are balanced living beings. We are lucky to have avoided many serious health problems but we have also avoided many through ingenuity and responsibility rather than luck.

Kids will climb trees and they'll get bumps and bruises. What parent doesn't need basic first aid? Learning to use herbs as well is a natural extension. 

My children have never been to the emergency room. We are moderately careful but we aren’t the kind of family where kids are never allowed to learn about risk and the pain of falling off of a jungle gym. I’ve treated a case of croup that would have sent most parents scurrying to the emergency room immediately. I’ve dealt with an infant’s dangerously high fever on a ten-hour flight across the Atlantic. I’ve stopped profuse bleeding from a cut on my husband’s hand and bandaged it with a poultice so successfully that by the next day, when we could have reached an emergency room, the wound was closed and there was nothing left to stitch up.

If someone falls and breaks a bone, we’ll go to the emergency room, but we try to stay away by treating our bodies as whole and balanced systems, rather than battlefields.

My story of taking back my health

For three years, I underwent intensive and unsuccessful fertility treatments using the latest pharmaceutical and surgical technologies. (My children are adopted.) In those three years I learned a hard lesson about the medical industry. I did weeks and months of intensive research trying to determine the best and safest course of action.

Doctors, who had vested financial interests - rather than the attitudes of allies - gave me confusing and contradictory information. I tried to make sense of it. The brochures from clinics and pharmaceutical companies that I read claimed that the side effects of IVF hormone treatments are minimal and rare.

I desperately wanted children and I had no one to advise me. Everyone I trusted knew little more than me and those who were “experts” all had financial incentives to skew the truth. So, I let myself be ruled by doctors. I went where they said, I swallowed what they said to swallow and injected what they said to inject.

And over three years my body fell apart. When I started I was twenty eight and extraordinarily healthy. When I finished I was thirty two and sick in bed more days than I was well. I had no diagnosis from start to finish and the doctors refused to listen when I told them that I had once been able to resist most of the seasonal coughs and colds that went around and now if anyone coughed in my vicinity I was flat on my back for a week. Instead the doctors at the fertility clinic insisted that the next step in treatment should be to continue with all the hormone treatments that had been unsuccessful for three years and to add immune suppressants to them, further crippling my immune system.

And I finally said, “no.”

I took a step back and took responsibility. I knew that statistically less than 0.2 percent of those who undergo four unsuccessful rounds of IVF, as I had, will ever become pregnant. I knew that something in the treatment had severely impacted my ability to resist minor viral and yeast infections.

The potential benefit was no longer worth the cost. I had tried alternative infertility treatments as well and, in the end, my husband and I decided to adopt children instead of treat our bodies like battlefields for more unnumbered years.

our Bodies are ecosystems and not entirely separate from our environment.

I had begun to take a serious interest in home-based herbal medicine as well. So, I stopped taking all synthetic pharmaceuticals. I relied on herbs for everything for three years. I found that if I took so much as an ibuprofen for a headache, I would have severe rebound headaches and often flu-like symptoms two days later.

So, I stuck to the herbs and after three years, my immune system started to bounce back. I am as healthy as I was before, as far as anyone can tell. And with caution I can take antibiotics and other basic pharmaceuticals when needed.

This taught me that I have to listen to my body as well as to doctors. I have to pay attention and take responsibility for my health, first and foremost.

That is what my idea of home medicine is about. I can’t give medical advice because I’m not a doctor or even an expert herbalist. I’m a mother with experience in the trenches of home medicine. I read a lot and I experiment when I am sure of the basic safety of a remedy. I compare notes with doctors and herbalists all over the world. And then I try to do the best I can for my own family.

If your goal is good health for yourself and your family, you can take an active role. Listen to your doctor as an ally. Listen to your intuition as a key tool. Pay attention to your body. Learn first aid and other basic home medicine skills. Learn how to grow and use medicinal herbs. Think carefully to avoid dangerous pitfalls and learn what works for your particular family.

The home medicine cycle

This is what it means to take back your health. With the out-of-control use of antibiotics, pesticides and other harmful chemicals in modern society, we have to take a conscious role in guarding our health. With the huge medical-pharmaceutical industrial complex generating reams of advertising and countless scientifically suspect studies, you can’t trust everything a doctor tells you or everything you read. Develop relationships with doctors who think and read critically, who know that the industry isn’t always right. Do as much research as you can on your own and learn to use as many homemade remedies as you can, because there is one thing that separates homemade remedies from those you buy at the pharmacy - you know what’s in them.

A word of caution on using the herbal supplements you buy at the health food store: While there are surely some responsible companies making effective herbal supplements, you should be aware that this is an industrial complex as well, almost as big as the pharmaceutical complex. And it is much less regulated. Several studies have shown that many and possibly most herbal supplements sold in stores contain none of the medicinal ingredients they claim to. Some contain dangerous substances and some are simply sugar pills or water. Those that do actually contain a medicinal herb or other active substance have often been processed so much that their potency is minimal.

That is why my focus is on medicinal remedies you can grow and make yourself. You may sometimes need to buy dried herbs, if you can’t grow or collect everything you need, but if you buy locally and develop relationships with herbalists you can trust, you have a much better chance of getting what you need than if you simply browse the shelves at a store.

I have been taking responsibility for my health and making most of my family’s medicine for ten years now. As much as I can I use herbs that I can grow or collect myself, so I know what is in it and where it came from. I get other materials such as honey, wax and propolis and some dried herbs from local family businesses that I can visit and see their quality. I make careful decisions about using synthetic pharmaceuticals, if they are absolutely necessary.

The results? It isn’t that my family and I never get sick but it does seem like we get sick less than most people and that when we get sick, we don’t have terrible symptoms and they pass quickly. It didn’t always used to be that way. As I’ve said, I’ve been through some rugged illnesses and times when I couldn’t fight off the tiniest cold. So I’m not just coming from some extraordinarily tough genetic stock.

For what it is worth, I would like to share my experiences of what works in home medicine. So, I have set myself a project this year. I will write regularly about the steps it takes to build up a safe and reliable herbal medicine chest from things you can grow and gather near home. I am starting now, in February, because this is the time when you can order seeds and start an herb garden if you don’t already have one. Even if you don’t have room for an outdoor garden, a few pots with strategic herbs an a sunny window sill can go a long ways toward taking back your health.

I invite you to come with me on a journey this year through my Home Medicine Cycle of posts. If you are new to herbal medicine and simply want to find a way to better health, you can follow my posts and get tips throughout the year for how to grow the basic herbs you need, make medicines out of them and decide what to use them for. If you have experience with herbal medicine, we can compare notes and learn from each other.

In my next post, I will discuss the basics of how to start an herb garden, primarily which herbs to plant and where to find good seeds.

I’d love to hear from you. What are your experiences with taking your health into your own hands? If there are specific topics about herbs and home medicine that you’d like me to cover, let me know.

Easy tincture – how to make your own powerful herbal medicine

'Tis the season to be overwhelmed with the herb harvest.

I only actually harvest and preserve a fraction of my family's food and most of our medicines but this time of year I fall into bed at night so exhausted that I don't even dream. I suppose this comes of having several other "jobs" besides growing and preserving things but it still makes me wonder how so many cultures manage to have extravagant harvest festivals.

The result of all this harvesting (both in the garden and in the world of books) is that I haven't written as much on Practical Herb Lore as I hope to. However, I have to post this because this is what you most need to know at right now at this time of year, if you want to make your own herbal medicines.

Yes, you can dry herbs to make tea and some teas can be very effective medicines. Salves are also good and I'll get to the first step in making those next week. But one of the best ways to make potent herbal medicine is with good old 40 percent alcohol. Being based in Eastern Europe, I use vodka but anything that is around 40 percent (80 proof) will work. When you brew herbs in alcohol in order to extract their medicinal compounds you are making tincture.   

 Why make tincture?

Herbalists know that many of the plants most people think of as weeds contain powerful medicinal compounds. One such herb is Ecchinacea. I recently had a lengthy debate with a doctor friend over Ecchinacea and the fact that several recent studies found little or no benefit in terms of the prevention of upper respiratory infections in people who took tablets of freeze-dried Ecchinacea. The studies were well controlled and large enough to matter. My doctor friend was convinced that this should bring into question generations of herbalist use of Ecchinacea as an immune support, herbal antibiotic and flu remedy. But there is one thing overlooked in this argument. All of the unsuccessful Ecchinacea trials used freeze dried Ecchinacea. None used fresh Ecchinacea or Ecchinacea tincture.

My own humble experience doesn't constitute a study but I have used both store-bought tablets containing dried Ecchinacea and my own home-made Ecchinacea tincture. In both cases, I probably subconsciously expected the Ecchinacea to work. But the tablets never did. The tincture, on the other hand, has good anecdotal results. 

The fact is that the chemical compounds in herbs that produce medicinal effects are often very volatile and herbs are almost always best used fresh. Because we have to prepare for winter in my part of the world and sometimes because we need to concentrate an herb's effects, we often have to process herbs. One of the most reliable methods for capturing those volatile compounds and preserving their beneficial effects is to make tincture. Not every herb is appropriate for this but I'll give you a quick list of the best ones.

Which herbs are good for tincture and what do they do?

Here's my shortlist of must-have tinctures to survive the winter:

Ecchinacea - Traditionally many herbalists have used the root of Ecchinacea but you need stronger alcohol to extract the medicinal compounds from roots and I have had better luck with the flowers so far. Ecchinacea tincture is good for general immune support and prevention when there are colds and other infections going around. Some herbalists have concentrated Ecchinacea to the point where they use it as an herbal antibiotic but I haven't personally experimented with that. 

Yarrow - Yarrow flower tincture makes a great anti-inflammatory for pulled muscles, strained backs and menstrual cramps. It is also one of the few herbs credited with slowing internal bleeding.

St. John's Wart - In my extended family, St. John's Wart is probably the most commonly requested and used tincture. We pass around little bottles of the stuff like a treasured family secret. That's because St. John's wart is both an effective anti-depressant and a good remedy for seasonal mood disorders but it is also specifically anti-viral. Those little yellow flowers seem to capture the warmth and healing energy of the sun and store it in their amazing red juice. We take one teaspoon daily for depression (for no more than three weeks at a time) and three teaspoons daily for viral infections (for no more than one week at a time). Oh, we also use it externally as a disinfectant. When I have to go on a trip and pack light, St. John's wart is the one tincture I always take with me.

Thyme - Thyme tincture is one of the things my husband swears by for fixing the chronic cough that no establishment medical specialist was able to fix in several years of trying.

Marshmallow - Marshmallow is the other tincture that my husband uses for his coughs. Together they have worked a virtual miracle in soothing a chronic cough that used to last from October to April each year.

Elderflower - Elderflower has the miraculous ability to clear up excessive mucous like nothing else I have ever seen outside of some of the more dangerous stuff at the drug store. I just got over a terrible cold in which I went through several boxes of handkerchiefs in two days. Thanks to elderflower tincture, the thing didn't last more than those two days.

Lemon balm - For those of us who are a bit high strung and can have a hard time going to sleep the night before some big event, lemon balm is can be a life saver. It is calming and can make you pretty drowsy. The other thing about lemon balm is that it is specifically active against the herpes virus. I prefer to use lemon balm salve to deal with cold sores but a dose of lemon balm tincture would probably do the trick as well, and it would certainly help with the stress that usually accompanies cold sores.

Plantain - The Czechs have a saying about another herb/alcohol mix, "What it touches it heals." They mean this mostly about the buzz you get from drinking a shot of hard alcohol, but with plantain tincture it is literally true and you don't have to drink nearly enough to get a buzz. Just remember that whatever part of your body will come in direct contact with the undiluted tincture can be effected. Plantain's effects appear to be specific to cell repair. So, it can be used on external wounds after disinfection for added speed in healing. It can be used for coughs and sore throats if the throat and bronchial area is raw and irritated. It is excellent for stomach problems where the lining of the stomach is irritated. I've seen plantain work on some stubborn skin infections that even synthetic antibiotics had not cleared up. 

How to make tincture

Okay, not that I have visions of your own powerful herbal medicine chest dancing in your head, lets'get down to the nitty gritty. Fortunately, it is quite simple. 

• Chop your herb into small pieces about a half an inch long. If you can, use a ceramic knife.
• Pack the chopped herb into a glass or ceramic jar.
• Pour 40 percent (or stronger) alcohol into the jar until it completely covers the herbs. 
• Poke a knife into the jar to release air bubbles and top off the alcohol again. 
• Close the jar tightly.
• Label clearly with the name of the herb, the word "tincture" and the date.
• Place in a cool, dark place.
• Let brew for four to six weeks.
• Strain the herbs through cheese cloth. Wring out the bundle of herbs in cheese cloth firmly and catch the tincture in a glass or ceramic bowl. 
• Store the tincture in small dark glass bottles, ideally with dropper lids. Label carefully.

That's it. That's all you need to make potent herbal medicines that last up to five years if kept out of direct light.

Warnings

• Please note that tincture is "real medicine." You should treat it just as you would treat ibuprofen. Keep it out of reach of children. Be watchful for allergic reactions. Use with care and don't exceed dosage recommendations for the particular herb you choose. Let you doctor know if you are taking tinctures regularly. I am not a doctor and my notes are not medical advice.
• Be aware that tincture contains significant amounts of alcohol. The end product usually contains about 20 percent alcohol. You usually only take a teaspoon or two of tincture at a time, so most people should not have a problem with this. However, children and recovering alcoholics should avoid tinctures. You should also refrain from taking tincture directly before driving, if for no other reason than that the while you wouldn't take enough to show up in an alcohol blood test, it might show up in a breath test for some minutes after taking the dose.
• Be particularly careful with labeling tinctures. Some tinctures can have adverse effects if taken regularly for long periods or if taken in dosages that would be fine for another type of tincture. Also some tinctures may have the wrong effect for the situation at hand. I once mislabeled a tincture and instead of taking Yarrow tincture for cramps, I accidentally took comfrey tincture, which is extraordinarily potent. The result was one of the worst headaches I have ever experienced.