After spending almost a decade in the event decorating industry I have repetatively heard "I can do that". Instead of being dismissed by creative minded people, I want to show you how I do "that" so you can be sucessful in recreating that inspiration image. I just might have a few tricks that you haven't seen yet!
Now that a new planting season is about to knock on our door, I’m beginning to hear more and more from those venturing into gardening the discouragement of last year’s grow season in the Pacific Northwest.
I’ve mentioned before that last year, we didn’t have a spring. We had back to back winter that went off the deep end and nose dived right into summer. We were cold and wet and literally missed a season. My garden didn’t know what to do. Even when I direct sowed at the proper time everything stalled for 2 months and it felt like I was the only person in my community that was grateful for the 6-8 weeks of extended summer weather. I needed it to finish off some of my vegetables, like my tomatoes.
And throughout the area of 4 or so cities, a good number of people said their vegetables gardens failed to produce anything.
I get it. The vegetables that I planted in May were harvested at the same time as what I planted in July.
This year I’ve already started in on my plan of getting ready for this spring. And I’m treating it like I’m going to have another cold, non-existent spring. Everything I overwintered is indication we’re not going to have a repeat this year, but I’m not taking chances. Food prices are insane. I need to offset my grocery bill by growing more than I have in the past. So I’m going to share with you what I’m doing this year to give my garden a leg up on what may or may not happen.
The Big Leaf Parsley and Oregano that I planted last year, which did not germinate at all last year, all of a sudden decided this winter that they were going to germinate and sprout. I’m looking forward to a lovely spring this year.
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Uneven Germination Rates
If you have a small garden that you work, one of the frustrations that you have is when you plant your seeds according to the proper measurements and seeds just don’t germinate. You start off thinking that you’re going to get a certain amount of starts of one vegetable, and in the end you find out you get a small fraction of that.
I’ve tasted that bitterness. In a normal year you can successive plant a new seed where there’s gap. But last year that didn’t work at all.
So this year I’ve started off my seeds indoors in small flats.
I’ve already repotted four other bunches of these sunflowers. You can see here that the seeds just didn’t want to sprout at the same time. I’m okay with that. I’m starting my seeds this way, because if none want to sprout, I won’t waste my limited garden space.
With how shallow this flat is, once these sunflowers get to a certain height, it’s time to repot them. They want to spread their roots and grow. And as much as they love this loose soil, it’s time to get these tall fellas into a pot where I can thin them out and give them more space.
With my pots a third full I sprits the soil with some water so that it has a little moisture to start the seedling off. Next I go to my flat, with a spoon, and insert it off on the flat’s wall and gently lift up on the roots. With the roots free, I set the seedling on top and put soil around it so that it can stand on its own again. I’m putting 3 of these seedlings into this 6 inch pot.
Yes, this is not at the final spacing on the seed package. But if you’ve purchased plant starts, the majority of the time all the seedlings are crammed packed. You’ve also learned how to massage the roots apart. And you’ve also learned that you end up snapping roots. The plants do live and do grow.
To minimize this breakage, if the primary root is long (you’ll see this shortly really well with some corn that I repotted), then I loop it on top of the soil as I get it settled into this new pot. The roots will still grow out and spread to fill this pot, but with the central heart of the roots a little more compartmentalized it should keep the greater heart portions of the roots of each of the plants more separate and easier to knead apart when it’s time to put them in the ground.
With each layer of soil I put down, I give it a spray of water.
The corn on the other hand, I’m finding that their root system has vastly out performed in growth in comparison to the sunflowers.
Ok, I have to pause here and say that I was blown away with this root system growth, because I’ve uprooted my corn at the end of the seasons that I’ve grown it, and my direct sow root systems were maybe a handful at the end of a season.
So here I have three seedlings in my hand and their main roots were already trying to wrap around the smaller ones that I didn’t want to bring out yet. These ones needed massaging already to separate. Originally I was going to put three seedlings in the pot, just like the sunflowers. But I still have frost going strong and I need more time in the pots. So I’m only putting two seedlings in the pot so that I can maximize root growth now.
Even with the fact that these roots are already large, they’re definitely going to fill the pot before it’s time to plant. So a weekly diluted spray of fertilizer is going to be necessary to keep these starts healthy and not eat through all the nutrients in the soil before it’s time for the roots to get adjusted to their new home in their final resting place of my garden bed.
I’m actually looking forward to seeing how these starts perform this year, because a few years ago I always bought corn starts and so many were crammed pack together in a pot of equal size. Those corns always underperformed.
But that’s the beauty of growing your own starts. You can do things differently.
If you talk with anyone who pour their lives into perennial plants, you will always hear them talk about their success comes from healthy root system. If perennial plants grow healthy with focus on their season of root growth (during the winter), it really makes sense that annual plants really benefit from root growth as well. Yes, their life span is short. But if you’re looking to get a good return, in the form of produce, attention to root growth is necessary. If a plant has a healthy root system, their rest of the plant is going to be healthy too.
Here’s the new home of these sunflowers and corn. I have a whole lot more starts to repot. Some will be repotted into different size pots, and some in different composites. I’m currently experimenting for what’s going to work best for my garden and me. Just like not all parents share the same parenting style, neither to plant parents (or gardeners). Our soil isn’t the same. Our touch and interaction with plants aren’t either.
As I leave you today, I just want to let you know that it’s okay if your garden didn’t do well last year. It could have been the fault of the weather. It could have been the seeds, starts, or root health of the plant. It could be a combination of so many things. But I want you to know that you are empowered to do things differently. There’s not one set way of doing things successfully with your garden. You really do have your own science experiment that you perform each year, because the variables will change. Last year my changing variable was the weather. And I learned a lot. A LOT.
This year I choose to do things differently to see what happens differently. I’m pushing through more seeds than I have in the past. But I’m also growing out my long maturity plants so they have more time. I’m choosing to thin the least healthy starts even before they go into the ground and maximizing the use of my small garden.
How are you doing your garden different this year?
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This year I’m working in concert with others in a garden. (I am so excited for this!) If you’re as busy as I am, you can imagine how quickly things slip through the cracks.
After hitting my local dollar store, I found some pieces that are going to make an inexpensive tool that doubles as home decor, all the while keeping tabs on what’s been done.
With these I decided to make a magnetic board where anyone tending the garden can quickly mark what they did.
I know the galvanized finish tends to overtake everything. So with the galvanized frame and banner, everything gets lost real quick. Not to mention that the frame was a really bad fake wood. To dress all this up a bit and minimize the galvanized look, I painted the frame and banner black.
I forgot to take a picture of the banner painted in flat black chalk paint (the same paint as the frame). It looked too minimalistic for my taste, so I took the transfer tape (which I used to apply the vinyl text) and put it straight onto the paint. Some places lifted the paint quite easily. But to get the distressed look, I scratched the tape
The magnets needed a little something extra. There are so many things that could be done. I have children and they’re helping with this garden and they’ll also be marking what we do when we work, so I went into kid zone and painted the magnets with acrylic paint and did all the colors.
If you want to keep minimalistic, pick your favorite color.
Love things that sparkle, glue on gem stones or use glitter.
What about texture? Glue on fuzzy pom poms, baby pine cones, large seeds or nuts… literally whatever catches your imagination. Maybe you have a farm and want to use small farm yard figures and animals. (I wish I had these in my craft room!!!)
Something that is great about using the galvanized banner is that the extra magnets can be kept on the banner so you can add stickers, personalization, more tasks, or a note section in the blank space on the bottom.
And then while typing I decided to go a different direction.
I pulled these out! Last year I made carrots out of my corn cobs. And I brought out the wooden beads from my drawer (which I also got from my local dollar store).
With the beads I removed them all from the string they came on and noted how they tied off the end bead to keep them all on the string. This “knot” that they used was how I spaced the beads further apart on the string.
Once I made those changes, the colorful “polka dots” needed to change. The gold and green glitter styrofoam balls simplified the overwhelming colors.
Even with the new modifications hanging, I’m not satisfied with the final color scheme. And sometimes that happens when you’re creating. You start building from the image you see in your head and make a change here or there and an earlier idea you loved just doesn’t work anymore.
The black isn’t working anymore. I loved the idea to begin with because it was a nice basic color that goes with where I was going to hang this. But it’s just not working anymore.
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First thing first, I need to lighten up the banner. So I’ll be distressing it heavily so that the majority of the galvanized metal will show through. With the addition of the carrots, which obviously take the spotlight, I can bring out a lot more of that metal and the metal is not going to overtake and make everything else hide.
But before I do that, I need to decide what I’m going to do with the frame and that’s going to take a few days of looking at it to see where I want to go. At the moment, I’m leaning toward the idea of painting on white striped and creating a plaid hand painted design on it. If I go that route, I might keep the banner predominately black still and incorporate that same design element into parts of the banner.
Stay tuned to see what I finally decide!
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And I’m going to leave you here in this moment just because sometimes the right thing is to take a step away from a project and let it tumble around in your brain. You don’t always have to have the answer right away. And you don’t always have to have things done in an hour.
Perhaps it’s convenient to have an idea presented to you in a finished state.
But I’m going to leave you here with your own thoughts. Because I know someone has that inner voice screaming, “You need to ____!”
Go ahead and leave that comment below.
Or better yet, use that idea to make your own magnetic board for your daily tasks, your children’s chore board, a classroom helper sign, your regular “Honey Do” list, or that board that I didn’t mention but you just got the idea for.
And when you’re finished, send me a picture so that I can see what you came up with.
It’s that time of year where we need to look at the space we have to grow a little something to supplement what we get at the grocery store. This year, more than ever, is this important. Grocery prices are skyrocketing, independent farmers are finding it more difficult to stay in business, and there are just times where you want to buy produce and there was a run on that item with nothing left for you.
The great news is that you’re not held captive by what is or is not available in your local market. Even if you choose a little something that is easy to grow, that is one less thing that you have to depend on others for putting up in your kitchen.
Maybe a Victory Garden sounds intimidating. You don’t have to go down the rabbit hole of homestead farming. Start by picking one vegetable that you eat a lot of. Do you use a lot of pasta sauce, tomato paste, tomato soup, or ketchup? You can start by growing some tomatoes and offset those items that you usually buy from the store by making it yourself. You will find it surprising at how few ingredients you really need to make those items. And you cut those preservative and other junk ingredients out of your diet that are put in those commercial products. And tomatoes are not demanding when it comes to you time. You can fit this vegetable into the cracks of your time.
Even if you respond to me right now by saying, “I’m not a vegetable gardener. I plant flowers. I love flowers.”
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Did you know that right now the price of living has risen so much that people are putting off doctor visits because they can’t afford to pay the co-pay? In 2018 44% of Americans skipped visits due to price. (Forbes) In 2021, 41% skipped visits due to pandemic concerns. (AMA) Even with statistics provided in December, 2022, 40% of Americans still are avoiding visit for various reasons. (First Stop Health) This is a reality for many people. But that doesn’t mean that you do not have to go without treating your body with items from your garden, even your flower garden.
There are many flowers that you can grow in your garden that have medicinal properties.
Echinacea: good for boosting your immune system and fighting colds and flus.
Rose Hips: (the dark pink or red fruit seen after roses have gone dormant for the winter) are high in vitamin C and good for fighting colds and flus.
Lavender: treats insomnia, reduces blood pressure, reduces menopausal hot flashes, and treats acne inflammation.
Dandelion: there are so many uses this flower has but some are soothing an upset stomach, aide with gall stones, and detox your liver.
Mullein: benefits for your lungs, sinuses, and ear aches.
Bee Balm: helps relieve flatulence and urination.
Yarrow: helps with fevers.
Elderberries: are high in flavonoids, vitamin C and A, betacarotene, iron and potassium.
Comfrey: is great mulch for all gardens (hint: in case you find it difficult to find a fertilizer). It also has anti-inflammatory properties (great for many different skin conditions), but also has a long history of being a bone mender. There are many medical articles that talk about how using a comfrey salve can decrease your broken bone healing time by half.
Chamomile: helps with muscle spasms and insomnia
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There are so many more flowers that I could put on this list. Last year I started increasing the amount of medicinal herbs and flowers in my garden. Not only are herbs amazing for making your meals flavorful (hello oregano, sage, basil, and the whole mint family), but they can also be used in tea with the above flowers to help treat the symptoms of oncoming colds before you become sick. Or maybe you have a skin condition where you need to look for specialty soaps in the store. Did you know you can make your own soaps for a fraction of the price and better for your skin? Fact!
I’m inspired. What’s next?
Whether you’re ready to grow your own vegetables or just want to stick to our flowers, there are plants that do well next to each other and ones that don’t. So by planning on where you are going to put everything you want to grow, you can be sure to keep the friendly plants next to each other and competing plants away from each other. And by knowing if your herb or flower is a spreader, you can plan on keeping them in their own contained area.
Some vegetables you can’t plant next to each other:
beans and onions
tomatoes and corn
celery and carrots
garlic and leeks
carrots and herbs (parsley, dill)
onions and beans/peas
lettuce and broccoli
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Vegetables that should be planted next to each other:
garlic and tomatoes
spinach and strawberries
beans and tomatoes
tomato, basil, and lettuce
corn, beans, and squash
radish and carrots
carrots and onions
By searching companion planting and the vegetables you want to grow, you can see what grows well together. You can also find out what does not do well together.
For example Marigolds deter pests that attack tomato plants, brussels sprouts, cabbage family, and bush/pole beans.
Search not just for vegetable companion planting but also flower companion planting.
Geraniums and Roses do well next to each other
Coneflowers and Black-Eyed Susans
Astilbe and Hosta
Hydrangeas and Daylilies
Daffodils and Amsonia
Daisies and Petunias
Marigolds and Lavender
Saving Time in the Garden
Now that you know what you want to plant, what does well together, and what doesn’t do well together, don’t wait until it’s time to plant your seeds or put your starts in the ground. Spend the time now in drawing out your grow space and determine where you will put everything.
I grew up putting seeds in the ground without a “map”. We would spend all day planting in a small garden because there was a swapping around of seed packets and other time wasting activities. Last year I mapped out where I was putting everything. By the time it came to putting seeds and starts in the ground, it only took me a couple hours to plant twice the area that my mother’s garden was.
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Plus, that “map” had the added bonus of being a reminder of what I planted where. This is particularly important because I planted cabbage and I can’t plant any brassica vegetables this year where I planted cabbage last year because of the competition between these two vegetables.
Not everyone keeps a garden the same way. The focus on most of the gardening community is that you just fertilize your garden, or scorch and burn to add nutrients back into the garden. I decided to practice not just crop rotation, but also resting the land. All throughout history these two practices were how farmers kept land without all the modern conveniences of amending soils with fertilizers and other products.
By keeping this “map”, I can keep a record of how long I’ve had a garden plot, planter box, raised bed, pot, or any other container. This puts a concrete calendar that tells me when it’s time to rest an area. This past year was my first year in resting the very first garden bed that I started. It made me nervous letting a decent size space go fallow. But I watched saw that only a couple dandelions sprouted in the bed. I left them because one of the jobs of dandelions is to draw up nutrients from deep down in the ground to the surface where my vegetables for this year will use. But dandelions always grow where they are most needed. It was encouraging that there were only a couple and not a whole garden bed full of dandelions. So the rotation and natural fertilizing with compost and tea from comfrey is doing its job.
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By watching your land sit during a year of rest, you can see what you are working with. Because your land will talk to you just like your plants will talk to you. They will tell you if something is wrong.
How to map and plan
I’ve looked at so many different sheets that homesteaders put together to share their process. The problem I’ve had with everything that I’ve found is that I have to shift through a dozen different pages to note the information that I want.
This year I decided to make my own sheets that are simplified and keep the information where I want it.
I’m providing my 8×8 Garden Plot and Weather Log for free on my website. Just click here and select the style that you want.
Why is a weather log important?
When I kept a weather log for my wild yeast starter, the mystery of why the same recipe was yielding different results.
In the same way, our gardens are going to respond to different weather patterns that hit. For example, the non-existence of spring and the extended winter jumping right into summer weather stunted all my seeds and starts. By keeping a record of the weather, I can look back on past years and see if and when I need to be concerned and add in hoops or other insulating method to help my crops in an uncharacteristic early season. And there was also an additional issue of powdery mildew hitting my pumpkins and comfrey plants in the midst of a sunny streak with absolutely no rain or my watering leaves. It turns out that the problem was the extremely uncharacteristic humidity levels. After a month of fighting mildew, I finally checked the humidity and saw that it was in the 90% range!
With everything that I threw at my plants to treat them, I ended up with a long list of what didn’t work. This gives me information in the future for looking for a different solution without wasting these resources. So never underestimate the power of keeping notes!
Last year I used a grid pattern not just for my garden beds, but for all my containers and irregular shaped beds.
No matter what shape or container you’re working with, all you need to know is the measurements and then you can roughly draw it on the grid.
Just keep in mind that when you plan seeds, you’ll want to keep a couple of inches away from the side of your container or raised bed so you can have a healthy root system.
The grid will do the math for you!
I set up the grid so that the darker squares can be used for a 1 foot measurement and the smaller squares can be used for other incremental measurements that you seeds require. Having this information already in mind, this past year I just used my pre-mapped seed drops sites, poked the soil with a chop stick and dropped my seeds. I knew ahead of time how many rows and columns I would be making so I didn’t need a ruler or anything else to space. (And spacing is always the most time consuming part of planting!)
Another thing that I hated with the other planning sheets is that they didn’t set it up like a map, complete with symbols to make your coding easy. It’s easier to use a shape code than an initial code when diagramming your seeds. I’ll tell you what! You never recognize just how many plants start with the same letter until you try to put them on a map. And they’re all at the beginning of the alphabet!
Make it Simple
I hope these two sheets will help you and your garden out as much as I know they will make my life simpler.
The Garden Plot sheet I will use for each of my gardening areas. I will be leaving the back of the sheet blank so that all I have to do is flip the sheet over to have more space for notes on what this growing season throws at me. And the Weather Log will be nice because a whole year can be seen on one page.
So far, this year’s planning is only going to take me 6 pages instead of the 18 that I started off with last year.
Give this Garden Plot a shot and let me know in the comments how it works for you!
Also let me know what other information you keep records of when you are gardening.
Winter sports have started and parents everywhere are volunteering for coach their kid’s park and recreation teams. And I am that parent-coach.
After spending quite a few years working with kids, you learn firsthand that not all kids learn the same way. But one learning style that all kids have in common is that they have to have a visual of some kind. And when you’re on a sideline, during a game, and you can’t walk out on the court/field to physically show your team what you want them to do, the next best thing is a whiteboard clipboard of your court/field. (So you don’t have to wait for school athletics for kids to be learn from this court map.)
For whatever reason, if you want to have the benefit of having a court/field dry erase board but don’t want to go through the expense of buying one, I’m going to show you a couple of different ways that you can make one rather inexpensively. (This is a huge perk for summer camps where counselors are coaching and you don’t want to worry about misplacing or breaking a nice board.)
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Laminated Court
I went this route because I already had in my craft room a clipboard, laminating machine, laminate, paper, printer, magnets, white board pen, ink pen (you never know when you need an ink pen), and hot glue gun. All in all, for the materials I spent under $4. So this is really inexpensive and gets the job done.
First you either want to make or down load a copy of a basketball court (or any other court or field you’re coaching) and print it off.
Run it through a laminating machine with a laminate cover. And as soon as it’s cooled, this mock white board is ready to write on.
I can’t tell you how many different of these “white boards” I’ve made for homeschooling with worksheets that I want to use over and over again. Yes, some colors like to stain the laminate (red and blue are the two colors that cause problems in my house). BUT they’re super easy to clean up. Take a cotton ball with rubbing alcohol and you’re back to a crystal clear “white board”. And if you’ve ever found out that you grabbed a permanent market instead of a white board pen. Don’t worry! Rubbing alcohol will also take that right off. Or if you ran out… simply take a dry erase pen over the permanent marker and erase. The permanent marker comes right off! (It’s the same trick for with a real white board.)
Now I modified my white board. After my first practice I got tired of fishing my pen out of my pocket. So on the back of my clip board I hot glued a magnet for my dry erase pen and for my ink pen. I hot glued magnets to my pens, in a place where they wouldn’t interfere with how I hold my pens (near center, in the crook between my thumb and first finger).
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Depending on your pen, hot glue may not work. Hot glue works like a dream on plastic finishes, but if you grab a metal pen like I did its 50/50 if the glue will hold. My pen popped off with a minimum amount of glue. This second time I used a very generous amount (where I had to wipe off a large glob of left over glue) and the magnet has stayed on the pen. My back up for another glue failure is to switch over to liquid cement glue that is formulated to work on metal and ceramic. I didn’t start with that glue because I didn’t want to rig up something to hold the magnet in place while the glue dried.
As you can see, I don’t have to worry about making sure I have pockets while coaching and my pens are taken care of without having to worry about tying my pen to the clip on the clipboard.
But what if you don’t have a lamination machine that you can use???
Plastic Holder
This one is another one of my homeschooling hacks. And I love it for absolutely everything, including a recipe protector in the kitchen if you have a sauce or frying and you get liquids flying next to your stove.
So far I’ve only seen these plastic holders at the dollar store. If anyone else has found them anywhere else (other than Amazon), please comment below!
But with this option, all you have to do is find a court or field that you want and print it out on a piece of letter sized printer paper and then you just slide it in. White board pens work on this plastic just the same as the laminate option above and white boards! So for under $2 this is really affordable for any scenario where your “basketball clipboard” will go missing. Or even if you have young kids who want to pretend play “coach”!
This option is also good if you want to be hands free coaching, but want your board with you. Connect it to a lanyard or a retractable key set on your belt loop. It’s handy when you need it and the pouch can also hold your pen.
Files Used For This Project
Don’t want to hunt down another basketball court image to print? You can use this PDF file here. Other sports fields and courts will be added to this link. If you don’t see the one you’re looking for, please leave a comment!
Other Items that may interest you
This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased at no additional cost to you. These items listed here are from Amazon but may be purchased at local markets.
15 mm disc magnets I know these can be found in your local store. I used magnets, of this size, that I had found at my local dollar store (traditional black refrigerator magnets).
I don’t know about where you live, but in my local community parents have been scrambling to find their family’s cold and flu medicines and finding the shelves are picked over at best and empty at worst. As a mom, I know the feeling of panic that can set in when you can’t source the things that you need to make your children feel better. As an adult you shrug your shoulders and muscle through the illness. But when it comes to your kids….
What do you do when you can’t find the over the counter medicine that is your go to for colds? Or when your child’s prescription is on back order and you’re told to just wait?
The one bit of information that you’re not told when you’re growing up is that every bit of medication, prescribed or over the counter, was originally birthed from herbal remedies that have been scientifically studied for thousands of years. The pharmaceutical companies cannot patent or charge a premium price on what you can find in nature, sometimes your own back yard. In fact, the pharmaceutical companies take these natural herbal compounds and modify the molecular structure so that they create something “new” and are then able to patent this medicine to keep their competitors from replicating their recipe and make it possible to charge a premium price.
Before I go further I want to state that I’m not putting down modern medicine or making any medical claims or promises. The intent of writing this post is that I want to help relieve parents from their fears, worries, anxieties, and feelings of helplessness as they wait for their children to get the medication that they need and is either out of stock or on back order. I also want to state that there is a time and a place for western medicine and seeing a doctor. Especially with young children, and any cold or illness that affects their breathing and ability to get enough oxygen into their system, medical attention is absolutely necessary. Clinics, Urgent Care, and Emergency Rooms have medical resources that you are not going to find at your local grocery store or pharmacy.
In the situation where you know that you are dealing with a common cold or virus that you’ve seen before your spice cupboard and/or garden have everything that you need to find some relief while you wait for the cold to run it’s course.
Herbs you may already have:
Healthline has an article here that breaks down herbs and what viruses they are particularly effective against. A good resource for more information of herbs can be found online here, from Annie’s Remedy. A heavy reading article in support of exploring natural remedies for viral infections can be found here, from National Library of Medicine.
Oregano is known for calming the stomach. This makes it particularly useful against stomach flu, norovirus, and rotavirus. (Healthline)
Sage is known to aid your digestive track, and remedy colds and fevers. “Test-tube research indicates that this herb may fight human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), which can lead to AIDS.” (Healthline)
Basil is known for settling the stomach (Annie’s Remedy) but also works to strengthen your immune system, notably your helper T cells. (Healthline)
Fennel “loosens congestion and make coughs more productive. Fennel also calms the dry, hacking cough of bronchitis.” (Annie’s Remedy) It boosts your immune system and decreases inflammation. (Healthline)
Garlic has long been known to be antimicrobial, opens the lungs for easier breathing, is an antioxidant, prevents blood clots caused by platelets (a blood thinner), fights cholesterol, lowers blood sugars. Studies have showed that it combats influenza, viral pneumonia and rhinovirus (common cold). Current studies have shown that it “enhances immune system response by stimulating protective immune cells”. (Healthline)
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Lemon Balm is shown to have effects against bird flu herpes virus, HIV-1, and enterovirus. (Healthline) I am currently finding it extremely difficult to find the reputable source that told me that Lemon Balm is the herb of choice to fight the whole corona virus family. In my continued re-search of this information, I have found that it is effective if your family cold medication is Tamiflu. So if you are running around town for Tamiflu, Lemon balm is the herb that you can use in its place. (The Botanical Institute) There are medical discussions on this subject as you will find in this medical article. Here is another science article talking about other medicinal uses for other diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. And here at Natural Society.
Peppermint calms nausea and soothes the bowels. “Peppermint is a first herb of choice for treatment of colds and flu because it acts to relieve multiple symptoms at once: congestion, headaches and muscle aches, nausea and fever.” (Annie’s Remedy) It is also well known as being antiviral and anti-inflammatory, it is active in fighting against RSV (respiratory syncytial virus). (Healthline)
Rosemary is known for its Immune System support. It also stimulates “the central nervous system and circulation, …block histamine, the chemical culprit of both asthma and allergies.” (Annie’s Remedy) It is also active against influenza, herpes viruses, and hepatitis A. (Healthline) Study Finds is showing that studies are finding that rosemary is useful in fighting C-19 and Alzheimer’s.
Ginger “has antiviral effects against avian influenza, RSV, and feline calicivirus (FCV), which is comparable to human norovirus… found to inhibit viral replication and prevent viruses from entering host cells.” (Healthline)
Bay Leaf is known to be anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, digestive relief, pain relief, good for your respiratory system, and help your immune system. (Nutritionand You)
Herbs you may not already have in your kitchen, but you’ve heard of:
Echinacea“is most effective when taken at the first onset of cold, sinus, gum inflammation or other infection symptoms.” (Annie’s Remedy) It is “particularly effective at fighting viral infections like herpes and influenza”. (Healthline)
Elderberries/Sambucus is known for being preventative in fighting the flu and common cold. It is best to take during cold and flu season and then increase dosage when you become ill. It assists your immune system and is not a complete preventative measure. It is “found to substantially reduce upper respiratory symptoms caused by viral infections”. (Healthline)
Licorice is known for aiding sore throats, coughs, chest pains, and stomach aches. It “is effective against HIV, RSV, herpes viruses, and severe acute respiratory syndrome-related corona virus (SARS-CoV), which causes a serious type of pneumonia. (Healthline)
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Astragalus is shown to work against herpes viruses, hepatitis C, and avian influenza H9. (Healthline)
Ginseng all varieties are found to help your respiration & digestive systems, helps with headaches, shortness of breath, and fight viruses. “Korean red ginseng extract has exhibited significant effects against RSV, herpes viruses, and hepatitis A.” (Healthline)
Dandelion has many health properties such as supporting the Liver, ridding the body of excess toxins, and help control blood sugar levels. (Annie’s Remedy). It also fights hepatitis B, HIV, and influenza, and dengue. (Healthline)
What do you do with this information???
The importance of using herbs is that you give your body the building blocks that it needs to fight whatever it is that your body is being attacked with. You eat food so that your body has the nutrients it needs for brain function, muscle building, hydration, having over all healthy cells in your body with everything working as it should properly work. Herbs are like a laser pointer that have a focus in helping in a targeted area.
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I know it’s hard for many people who were raised with Western Medicine to switch over and trust in herbs to do what pharmaceutical medicine does. Herbs don’t work as quickly, which is one reason why people tend to shy away from this way of helping your body and grab that cold medication off the shelf that you have experience with it working, because you grew up with it.
The difference between your tried and true cold medication and herbs is that the cold medication was formulated to be quicker acting to take care of your symptoms while your white blood cells fight the infection and you heal. The herbs may be “slower” acting because their function is to feed your white blood cells to give them the building blocks/nutrients they need to be healthy and become super charged to do their job. It takes a little time for your cells to respond to good “food” and adjust and become super workers to kick that virus’ butt. But that’s what herbs do.
ONE— look for these ingredients in a tea. It’s as easy as boiling water. In fact, the last time I had a cold, I drank Breathe Easy Tea a couple of times a day and I didn’t have to take any cough syrup. It was a dry cough that was annoying and took forever to go away. But this made it so that I could breathe through the night without waking myself up coughing.
When I’m dealing with upset stomachs or nausea from me or my kids, I love steeping sliced ginger root in apple juice. It works better than Ginger Ale, which I grew up with drinking every time I got sick as a kid.
TWO–cook with them. I so hope that people catch my heart on this and start cooking more with herbs! It is one way that is definitely 100% in our power to help turn our health around when we begin to feel sick.
What prompted me to write on this subject this week is that for a second time a family member has tested positive for C-19. They both sought medical treatment and were released to go through the course of the virus at home. Talk about feeling helpless as theh one being sick and the family member who is left to watch them go through it.
For both family members, I cooked them chicken bone broth using herbs from this above list. And both times, after the first portion of broth, they both let me know that they felt a difference. One family member was hit extremely hard with nausea. The broth drastically cut that back so that they could get nutrients and liquids into their body. The second family member’s biggest complaint (other than lack of smell and taste) was that they had a sore throat. Immediately they felt a difference in their throat, again allowing them the ability to get more nutrients and liquids into their body.
In both of these examples, the point of the herbs was not to cure them. The human body is an amazing thing when it’s allowed to do what it does best. But for our bodies to function properly, we need food/nutrients and liquids.
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How I make my C-Soup
I’m still finding my precise measurements to give a proper recipe. But for the first family member I used fresh Lemon Balm. For the second family member I used dried Lemon Balm that I stored from this past summer.
First you prep for making your bone broth. Clean off your chicken bones and put them in your Instant Pot, Slow Cooker, or Stock Pot. Add water to the level of your cooker of choice (a full chicken’s bones, I usually add 32 oz of water)
Next, add your herbs. Here is what I use:
Lemon Balm: antiviral for the whole covid family (which covers your bases for all colds and flu)
Bay Leaves: antiviral
Oregano: antiviral, stomach soother
Basil: antiviral, Immune system support
Sage: stomach soother
Garlic: antiviral
Rosemary: antiviral, fights C-19
Ginger: stomach soother
Shallot or Onion: some antiviral properties
Black Pepper
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Cook. In my Instant Pot, I run it for 2 hours. You can run the bone broth for as little as 1.5 hours. I run mine a little longer than everyone else because I want to make sure to extract all the goodness not just from the chicken bones, but also from the herbs. In a slow cooker, you will want to run it on high for about 24 hours. I haven’t made bone broth in a stock pot, so I can’t tell you the precise cook time. You will still want to run it low and slow like you would with a slow cooker. As you can see, you know why I prefer my Instant Pot. If I run out of my canned bone broth, I can have the soup on the road and delivered in a couple of hours. And it’s generally still warm so my family members don’t even have to warm up that first serving. It’s ready to go.
Strain out the herbs and season the stock with salt.
Adding the salt is important. If you can taste, the broth tastes better when it’s well seasoned with salt. And the first thing my taste testing children note is the lemon flavor after I seasoned the broth. Salt is also an electrolyte. So when someone is sick and not drinking, they need that salt to get their system going. In return, a well seasoned broth with naturally cause a thirst in their body where they will want more broth (meaning they’re getting more nutrients in their body) or water (which is needed to get rehydrated)
Typically, when broth making, people cool the broth to solidify the fat content. In this instance with feeding someone who isn’t really eating anything, keep the fat content in the broth. There are countless studies where there is a connection of fat with brain health. But more importantly, the fat in the broth is adding calories into a person who isn’t eating at this point in time. These calories are necessary for cellular function.
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Forgive me for not having a precise recipe for you to follow yet. I felt an urgency to get this information out because I know of so many families who are feeling the pressure of not having grocery stores stocked like they use to be a few years ago. It’s important for people to know that you do have options still available to you, even when it feels like you’re playing a waiting game.
Take a look in your cupboard. See what spices you already have in your kitchen. Or in the tea you may already have in your pantry. You might be surprised at what nature’s medicine you already have at your fingertips to help you through the time that your body heals.
Other Valuable Resources
This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased at no additional cost to you. These items listed here are from Amazon but may be purchased at local markets. (This post contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links, but at no extra cost to you.) [Sarah’s Disclaimer: FTC Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that give us commissions on products purchased. These items are what we used in the recipes. This includes both Amazon and Thrive Life. All thoughts and opinions are ours. Product was paid for by us, to review.]
The Forager’s Guide to Wild Foods has other herbs not mentioned here, shows where in the US they are located in the wild, their uses, and other valuable information.
If you go through the author’s site (not an affiliate link) you will also have the option of adding other books of hers at a discounted price.
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