Herbs  

Posted by Mermaiden in ,

I have already done a lot more with my herb garden this year than ever before, and the fun is just beginning.  I had started ramping up on the kitchen herbs last year but never used to do too good at gathering all the seeds or leaves before the season end on some of the plants. Roger gave me some plants due to his having to move which I vowed to tend well to!  And they are lovely.  The huge basil plant just started yielding seed so I'm gathering those. I'm drying and storing herbs too, not just seeds, like stevia, and some wild passion flower I found out back. Some of these will get turned into balms and salves... like the lavender, and lemon balm. Some of them will go the kitchen, like the thyme, oregano, basil, savory, and marjoram. A few plants I just don't know if they'll actually yield enough to do anything with.  Even if they don't, I'll scoop them up and move them indoors at season's end - rue, and parsley. But then there are others that are nice and full and ready now and I should start using in the kitchen right away!: texas tarragon (tastes pretty much the same as the original kind), the thriving parsley from Roger, and finally some chives. Not sure how the onions are fairing.

And yet others have been trying to get going, calendula and johnny jump ups, both making it but not yielding like I wanted, so that I could use them for some concoction or other.  But I will be patient. 

Of course too there's the cherry tomato plant and leeks we have been using, and the roma tomato that is just beginning to form fruits.

And then there's the late seeds I started. Lavender since only 1 actually grew in the 1st round, sage I thought I no longer had, woad I've never had but so thrilled to have strong sproutlings of on the 2nd try, more calendulas, and they're all shooting up quite well so far. Oh, and cilantro! I thought they weren't going to sprout.

And then there's the later seeds that can get sewn - lettuce, and fall calendulas. But since I started more calendula late, I will probably skip a third planting there.

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Intro to Herbals for Kids  

Posted by Mermaiden in ,

Another link for the blog - here is the class I taught at Page School at RUM last weekend.  An introductory class to kids about herbs, and some things that can be done with them.  Designed to be variable in the teaching based on class turnout. I brought several herbs for smelling, and then using in the sachets afterwards.

I had to request a small fee for the class because I did need to pick up just a few supplies.  I was hoping I could supply them all from my own stock, and I almost did!  But not quite all were mine.  Mountain Rose Herbs has never let me down. ;)  The rose petals were gorgeous, and the orris root was nicely powdered. 

Guess what my next largess will be?  Yep, the supplies not bought and used all go to me, so now I get to play....  ;-)

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My Project & Herbal  

Posted by Mermaiden in ,


In determining which herbs to study and work with, I decided first to learn which grew wild, natively, around me. This is something which my medieval ancestors might have done, whether through their own exploration or from being shown and taught the local plant population by their own people. So I began a study over the course of a year, observing as many wild plants as I could uniquely observe, and watch. It is important to know every phase of a plant in order to prevent mis-identification. Every part of the plant tells something about its identity, including leaf, stem, flower, seed, fruit, and root. In order to observe a variety of plants, some of which only appear during certain seasons, and some which will of course only flower or yield seed during certain times of the year, it was necessary to keep a journal on my plants of study, and follow up with them throughout the year. Photographing the phases of the plants and collecting the images into a digital file greatly helped me to keep track of the plants. I resulted in over 100, trying to keep it narrowed down to only those plants which I had seen in the wild, or that I have planted myself, knowing that they grow well in my particular region’s climate. For these will be the plants which I can viably get my hands on to use, and this is what I feel was most important about my plant selection. This, I feel, makes me as close as I could get to the same practices my ancestors would have used when they selected and used plants. They would have found them locally, or they would have been given plants and then would have grown them themselves.

After a year’s time I had collected enough data in order to begin identification. This of course took many months alone. But having the database allowed me to have a sufficient number of plants which I could go through to“weed” out those which are native to the US and are not any which medieval Europeans would have grown or known about.

Now, having arrived at this point, this leaves me with many viable plants which I not only know were used by medieval Europeans, but also have readily available access to.  Also, I know each plant quite well, having studied it in order to identify it and to begin building my own personal knowledge base about.  For this is what the herbalists have always done: having a stockpile of information allows one to create an Herbal, which is a collection of one’s own knowledge, as well as a repository of all the known facts one can gather about those plants. This is what will make it possible to use my knowledge, as well as share it with others. In my Herbal I can store bookmarks to other references such as Gerard for a medieval source, as well as modern sources, because when studying herbs of course we must look to both.

As we have made quite significant advancements in our knowledge and technology since the medieval ages, we know a great deal more about all the plants which we still use today that were used by our ancestors.  Consequently we have learned that some of them are in fact NOT to be used at ALL.  For example, nightshade is poisonous! (Gerard knew that Sleepy Nightshade would cause death if too much were ingested, and called it a plant which was furious and deadly; however, he did not speak this way of the Woody Nightshade, which we now know to be toxic as well.)

The modern technologies of being able to photograph instead of simply draw my plants has helped me to share them across the world with others online to help me collect identification. It is still, however, important to remember to learn each part mentioned, just as you would draw: stem, leaf, flower, root, and fruit or seed where applicable.

Where will this project go from here? As I continue to flesh out the Herbal itself, I will take parts of this information and turn it into an A&S entry. And of course, the knowledge learned along the way will be at my disposal anytime it is needed. I am certain that I will create other projects, such as comparisons of herbs and their uses and applications in various ways. But in the meantime, you can explore my collection online right here.

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0AV7putOjOnrqZGhycnhwZ25fMGdrY3R2dmRk

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