Growing – Herbal Reality

Growing in the city: How to do it and why we should

Jessika Thiele — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 19:25:27 +0000

It is a common misconception that it is almost impossible to grow food and herbs in the city. In reality, we can grow much more, and this article shares how.

At one of the most stressful times of my life, I discovered growing food at a small permaculture garden in the city I was living. It changed everything. I met extraordinary people and began a journey connecting with a much bigger world.

With over half the globe living in cities, there are plenty of practical arguments for urban food production. We need more good food, more habitat for wildlife, and as much carbon sequestration as we can manage. Another (often underestimated) reason is that urban growing is a vital way to reconnect with land and life. When you start to grow food in cities you start to pay attention in different ways. Critical questions about our built environment arise: What is that derelict plot next to Asda for? Why don’t we have fruit trees on our street? Why is that development project more important than the park?

Tending gardens is a journey of becoming more intimate with life, and it can be a powerful tool to reclaim some agency. While cities (stacked with concrete-profit-siphons-for-speculative-finance) can be intensely alienating places, they can also be places where some of the most imaginative interventions happen. The limitations of brick, glass and unequal access to power, can occasion gorgeous horticultural resistance. Let’s explore some of the ways we can all do this.

Growing in your home

Many of us aren’t lucky enough to have access to outdoor garden space. But this doesn’t need to mean we can’t produce food for ourselves. If you have windowsills with enough sunlight, plants like tomatoes, salad greens and herbs are terrific low-maintenance plants to experiment with, while avoiding plants that prefer deeper soil like beans, cucumbers, courgettes and squashes.

If you don’t have enough sunlight (or even if you do), I recommend growing mushrooms. They are absurdly easy. All that’s required is a starter spawn, either a plastic bag or a bucket, some straw from a pet shop and used coffee grounds from your morning cup or a local cafe. Oyster mushrooms are especially straightforward, beautiful and delicious. They can be ready to eat in as little as four weeks. For some detailed guides on growing different kinds of mushrooms, the FreshCap Mushrooms Youtube channel is a good place to start. After harvesting your mushrooms, which can fruit a number of times, the leftover straw (the substrate) is a great addition to your compost pile.

This is the other subtle bonus of growing even a small amount in your home: it encourages you to pay more attention to the cycles of nutrients and energy that sustain us. For those of us who have a green waste council collection scheme, we are in fact giving away enormously energy and nutrient-rich material for free. Even without an outdoor space, it’s easy to turn our food waste into compost. The 1000 Worm Farmers project has a great detailed guide on how to do this using worms which you can purchase. A small adjustment to the kitchen routine means we don’t have to buy compost, rather we can cut our waste and forge new friendships with our invertebrate allies.

Growing in small gardens or plots

If you do have access to one, you can produce an enormous amount of food in a small garden. The Instagram influencer Spicy Moustache (Alessandro Vitale) might be one of the most popular spokespeople for this at the moment. His videos show how, by using vertical space and layering different plants, as well as including mushroom logs, you can produce over 100kg of food in a year.

Alessandro’s also a great guide for thinking about the whole ecosystem. He plants pollinator-loving flowers that are also edible like calendula, cornflower and (a favourite of ours) nasturtium. He uses woodchip -which tree surgeons are always more than happy to give away!- to mulch his paths, eventually turning it into usable compost. He reuses old plastic bottles to cover his walls in strawberries and herbs. And he innoculates logs with mushroom spores which can sit quietly in an unused shaded corner.

His is an intensely managed space, which requires frequent, consistent attention. Not every garden can be stewarded so carefully. It’s important to ask at the start, what is your relationship to the plants you’re growing likely to be? Will you have a few minutes every day to tend them? Will you have a few hours one day a week to tend them? Will you have barely any time to tend them at all? This might shape whether you decide to grow low-maintenance perennial plants, like herbs, berries, jerusalem artichokes, or kale. Or whether you might grow plants that are slightly needier, like tomatoes or cucumbers.

It’s also important at this point to recognise how growing in cities is a different thing to growing in the countryside. The heavily built-up city creates different opportunities and limitations to growing. To start with, we have access to resources that farmers can only dream of. Food waste is abundant, most cafes and restaurants will gladly give away their coffee and food scraps which can be turned into extremely rich compost. The ‘heat island effect’ of cities created by the concrete, brick and glass gives us an extra few degrees to grow in and usually a longer season. At the same time, other resources, like sunlight and space can often be scarce.

The sheer diversity of a city’s infrastructure makes it important to pay careful attention to the microclimate of each garden. Ours, for instance, has red brick on both sides and is south facing. It gets incredibly hot in the summer. Because of that, we grow tomatoes, cucumbers and other warmth-loving crops. When we try to grow lettuces, spinach and rocket in direct sun it almost always bolts (goes to seed) quickly. In other gardens, it’s the opposite: buildings cast shade and leafy greens, rhubarb and brassicas will fare better.

Growing in the community

If you don’t have access to a garden where you live, there are many other ways to get growing. It’s important not to gloss over some of the reasons why so many people don’t have access to land. One of the events that shaped world history more than most others was the enclosing of the commons and the mass dispossession of English people from their land from the 16th to the 18th century. It’s globally significant because it marked the beginning of capitalism and colonialism saw it repeated the world over. Since then land ownership has become extraordinarily unequal, and where people used to have rights to cultivate common land and smallholdings, now many of us are lucky to even have a small garden.

One of the small concessions that peasants and the newly dispossessed won were the right to have allotments (1). Even though they have gotten smaller and smaller over the 20th century, allotments are still a vital route to connecting with the land. Everyone (with citizenship status) has the right to apply for one.

Because of the alienating character of cities and the unequal distribution of land, more and more people are taking to guerilla gardening as a means of reconnecting and reclaiming agency. One of the beacons of this movement in the UK is Incredible Edible. It began in the small town of Todmorden in the north of England in 2008, and has since taken the world by storm. The idea is very simple: let’s grow food in unused public places and ask forgiveness rather than permission. When you walk through Todmorden today every verge, traffic island or over-wide pavement is heaving with plants. The loose group of volunteers meets every weekend and tends to the crops. Everyone is able to take as much as they need. Ellen Miles has recently published Get Guerilla Gardening, which along with the website, is a library of information on the history and how-to of guerilla gardening. You can use the Incredible Edible website to see if one of the 150 pop-up groups is near you.

This is a great intervention in our cities, but to grow lots of food, reliably, we’ll also need long-term community gardens. Typically these consist of council-owned land leased out to community groups. In my experience, these are vibrant places held together by committed and inspiring people. For many, they offer a gateway into the world of horticulture, or at the very least a break for overstimulated urban nervous systems.

Community gardens vary in scale, scope and ambition. Some might offer small learning hubs for people to explore alternative forms of agriculture like permaculture, agroforestry or natural farming. Others might be sufficiently organised to be supplying veg box schemes or schools. In any case, they are often havens: small examples of the world we’d like to see.

Growing in the city would be important even if we weren’t in a crisis. The connection to more than human life cycles can profoundly shape the decisions we make about how to live. And cities that don’t grow food often distort and exploit the countryside to provide for it, known in social theory as the ‘metabolic rift’ (2). Our cities also contain some of the most concentrated areas of economic destitution, and access to good, healthy food is a part of how communities can survive in otherwise brutal conditions (3).

But we are in a crisis. This summer El Nino is set to combine with global heating to take us into even more extreme heat conditions. Our global supply chains are not prepared for the shocks, and many large exporters of food are likely to need it themselves. Within our current economic system any shortages and rises in price will affect people with fewer resources more. Growing in the city is a way to strengthen food security for all of us, and, if done with accessibility as a priority, can help ameliorate the unjust impact of climate breakdown.

References

Broad J. Agrarian Capitalism and Poor Relief in England, 1500-1860: Rethinking the Origins of the Welfare State – by Larry Patriquin. Journal of Agrarian Change. 2009;9:305-307. doi:10.1111/j.1471-0366.2009.00211.x
Milbourne P. Everyday (in)justices and ordinary environmentalisms: community gardening in disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods. Local Environment. 2012;17(9):943-957. doi:10.1080/13549839.2011.607158
Moore JW. Transcending the metabolic rift: a theory of crises in the capitalist world-ecology. The Journal of Peasant Studies. 2011;38(1):1-46. doi:10.1080/03066150.2010.538579

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Making sense of sustainable agriculture

Jessika Thiele — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 15:22:22 +0000

There are many different ways that we can grow food and herbs more sustainably, all with their own benefits and limitations. This article explains some of the most popular forms of sustainable agriculture.

To the outsider, the movement for sustainable food may seem like a coherent block of people. But there are important differences and disagreements about the best approach to growing food without destroying the planet. In this article, we’ll explore some of the most popular, and consider their unique contributions to the movement in turn. We’ll start with the broader labels like ‘organic’ and ‘regenerative’, and then focus on more specific sustainable farming methods like ‘permaculture’ and ‘biodynamic’.

Organic agriculture

If you thought of all of the schools of sustainable agriculture as a Venn diagram, the largest and most encompassing would be ‘organic’.

Organic agriculture has its roots in the early part of the 20th century but really gained prominence in response to the large-scale introduction of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides after World War II. Advocates of organic agriculture saw farmland as a living set of relationships that chemical additives tended to disrupt in harmful ways. What they proposed as an alternative is a return to non-synthetic agriculture, relying on fertility from livestock manure or plant-based compost and using forms of pest control that don’t introduce toxic chemicals. Today the term organic also refers to non-genetically modified food.

The organic view on the importance of living relationships has since been vindicated by soil scientists who have identified how plants produce sugars in exchange for nitrogen from soil bacteria. Artificial fertilisers disrupt this relationship, making plants dependent on them and reducing soil quality over time.

Regenerative agriculture

Regenerative agriculture is a proposal which seeks to proactively reform farming techniques to heal some of the damage caused by industrial agriculture. The Groundswell Festival in the UK describes 5 principles of ‘regen ag’. All of them focus in some way on building and protecting soil health. The popular Netflix film Kiss the Ground has been a rallying call for this movement. It urges farmers to adopt plant cover crops over the winter months, rotate their crops and mulch where possible in order to build soil health and sequester carbon. The film’s popularity speaks to the way regenerative agriculture is moving into the mainstream.

This is undoubtedly a good thing, but there are some important critiques of the movement. A recent paper by Bless, Davila and Plant summarises the concerns (1). They argue, regenerative agriculture “fails to credit Indigenous practices it draws from” and “tends to overlook the needs of farmers in the Global South and broader power inequality in the food system.” Many enormous multinational companies with terrible environmental records are adopting regenerative agriculture as a marketing tool. Bless et al. argue that this raises “concerns companies may be using regenerative agriculture to “greenwash” their image”. I have explored this in more detail on my website in my article “Land, visions, fantasies and farmers“.

Instead, food justice activists point to ‘agroecology’ as a just alternative.

Agroecology

Agroecology originates in South America and is deeply interwoven with both indigenous worldviews and radical political movements (6). Unlike the ‘regenerative agriculture’ or ‘organic’ labels, this movement prioritises thinking about the social relationships that shape the way we grow food. This includes questions like, who owns land? What kind of relationship do they have with it? And, is growing food contributing to farmers’ domination by commodity markets or freeing them from it? (7)

While regenerative agriculture is being popularised by high-budget films and large corporations, agroecology is spreading via grassroots social movements committed to justice and human freedom. La Via Campesina, a global union of land workers, founded in 1993, has been campaigning for a just farming system ever since. It now has branches in over 80 countries.

Peter Rosset and others document how the survival of Afro and indigenous relationships to land has shaped this movement in important ways, committing it to food sovereignty, healing human relationships with land, and building a powerful political movement (2). In another recent paper, Emma Cardwell points to the ways that Global North countries like the UK can learn from this movement to decolonise our own food system (3).

These broad umbrella categories demarcate important differences in priorities and ambitions in the movement. At the same time, there are more specific differences emerging in approaches to cultivation.

You can learn more about the differences between organic and regenerative farming in our article Regenerative farming vs organic farming.

Biodynamic

‘Biodynamic’ is perhaps the one most shrouded in mystery. A small subsection of organic food is certified as biodynamic, and, in my experience, most people aren’t certain of what this label means.

Biodynamic farming is one of the older Global North methods for growing food sustainably. It is a school of thought founded by the controversial (and racist) German polymath Rudolf Steiner, upon whose philosophy Steiner schools are based. Steiner’s vision of biodynamic agriculture contains elements which resonate with all the other alternatives to agriculture we are discussing here. There are also aspects of his philosophy that many scientifically-minded horticulturists struggle with.

To start with the uncontroversial elements, biodynamic farming insists on perceiving the farm as an entire living system. All of the parts of the farm should be working together as a synchronised whole. This includes a particular attention to the health and fertility of the soil. In an ideal system, a farm would be able to generate enough fertility from the manure of livestock to avoid importing any from elsewhere. Steiner also advocates planting according to lunar and solar cycles. The length of days and position of the sun has a demonstrable impact on the development of plants, and, there is also evidence to suggest that when the moon is waxing, plants are able to more easily draw up water from the soil.

All of this lines up with the aims of many other alternative methodologies like permaculture or natural farming which we will explore later. Where Steiner veers into the mystical, many practitioners who like to base their decisions on verifiable evidence struggle (4). Steiner proposes eight ‘preparations’, variations of buried stuffed animal remains, which he believes channel “cosmic forces” into the soil.

Permaculture

Permaculture has become a much more widely implemented and developed growing methodology. A contraction of ‘permanent’ and ‘agriculture’, permaculture was conceived of by David Holmgren and Bill Mollison in the 1970s. After observing the havoc wreaked by industrial-scale agriculture on the ecosystems of Tasmania, they synthesised a range of alternative practices. They drew from indigenous practices around the world to create a design system enabling more food to be produced, within more resilient ecosystems, minimising the amount of effort required.

Since its founding, permaculture has bloomed into a worldwide network of teachers and practitioners. Introduction to permaculture courses are widely available, and a vibrant network of experts, speakers and workshop leaders has emerged. This has opened up the movement to criticism as it is largely residents of the Global North making money from knowledge produced in the Global South, and, although Holmgren and Mollison were explicit about the indigenous origins of their work, many contemporary practitioners forget or neglect to cite these origins. All of this can be said to amount to a neocolonial form of cultural appropriation.

There are a few techniques that have become iconic of permaculture in practice. The preference for spirals and circles over square beds, the raised herb spiral creating many different microclimates, the keyhole raised bed and swales, and mounded ditches horizontal to a slope which help capture and store rainwater. Permaculture also tends to incorporate perennial plants into the growing system. These are plants like trees, shrubs, vines and berry bushes which live longer than one year. The incorporation of perennial plants means that the soil doesn’t need to be disturbed every year and reduces the amount of time required to sow new plants.

All of this finds its highest form in the ‘forest garden’. As Max Paschall traces, the forest garden is an ancient method of stewarding land for abundant food production. In its modern iterations, it involves thinking of the garden in seven vertical layers: from the top down you have the canopy, with a dwarf fruit or nut tree understory, followed by vines, shrubs, herbs, and finally mushrooms and annual vegetables on the lowest layer. As the brilliant Future Ecologies exploration of Native American forest gardens in North America observes, these sorts of ecosystems mimic the natural succession of landscapes into a forest and as a result are incredibly resilient. 150 years without any direct stewardship and the temperate food forest they explore is still thriving.

Agroforestry

Food forests and permaculture have a lot in common with another burgeoning farming movement: agroforestry. With similar aims and ambitions agroforestry seeks to expand the scale of a forest garden, weaving trees with other forms of agriculture, especially livestock.

In the UK, the persistence of hedgerows is arguably the most mainstream form of agroforestry (5). The Agroforestry Research Trust has formed a network of projects implementing agroforestry. The practice survives on much larger scales in other parts of Europe however. In southwest Spain and parts of Portugal, the Dehesa region comprises thousands of oaks and an enormous variety of cattle.

There are many arguments in favour of agroforestry systems, including carbon sequestration, controlling soil erosion, creating habitat for wildlife, reducing the need for artificial fertiliser, and a wider range of possible crops.

Final thoughts

A diversity of approaches to growing is a good thing, it shows the movement is alive and in a heated process of figuring out what’s needed. Each umbrella term or specific methodology represents slightly different priorities, histories and ambitions. Whichever we choose to align ourselves with will depend on who we are and what we care about. And ultimately, the garden doesn’t care all that much about what we call ourselves, but what we do.

References

Bless A, Davila F, Plant R. A genealogy of sustainable agriculture narratives: implications for the transformative potential of regenerative agriculture. Agric Hum Values. Published online May 1, 2023. doi:10.1007/s10460-023-10444-4
Rosset PM, Barbosa LP, Val V, McCune N. Critical Latin American agroecology as a regionalism from below. Globalizations. 2022;19(4):635-652. doi:10.1080/14747731.2021.1923353
Cardwell E. Their agriculture, our agriculture: applying critical Latin American agroecological thought to England/Sua agricultura, nossa agricultura: aplicando o pensamento agroecológico crítico da América Latina à Inglaterra/Su agricultura, nuestra agricultura: aplicando el pensamiento agroecológico crítico latinoamericano a Inglaterra. REVISTA NERA. 2022;25(64).
Chalker-Scott L. The Science Behind Biodynamic Preparations: A Literature Review. HortTechnology. 2013;23:814-819. doi:10.21273/HORTTECH.23.6.814
Tilzey M. The Political Ecology of Hedgerows and Their Relationship to Agroecology and Food Sovereignty in the UK. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. 2021;5. Accessed June 23, 2023. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2021.752293
Schwartz C. Agroecology | A Tale of Two Continents | ARC2020. Agricultural and Rural Convention. Published February 16, 2021. https://www.arc2020.eu/agroecology-tale-two-continents/#:~:text=In%20Europe%20and%20the%20US,an%20exchange%20between%20the%20disciplines.
What is agroecology? | Soil Association. https://www.soilassociation.org/causes-campaigns/a-ten-year-transition-to-agroecology/what-is-agroecology/?gclid=CjwKCAjwtuOlBhBREiwA7agf1lTM6epEpPCvA-MUHzzZGhYSJ7hmMmnEJpO-5Jvtk_gkB4cOHZbmmBoCxFQQAvD_BwE

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How to make your own compost

Jessika Thiele — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 14:58:50 +0000

Composting is good for the planet, free, easy and gives you high quality compost for your plants. This article shares how to do it.

We should all be composting! It’s good for the planet. When food waste goes to landfill (as 6.6 million tonnes of household food does in the UK (1)) it releases methane, a greenhouse gas several times more potent than CO2. It’s free, and home composting means high quality compost for your plants without the price tag. It’s also fun, and fascinating to watch food and waste change state in one of the most important natural processes there is.

Composting is incredibly easy. You put everything biodegradable in a pile and leave it alone. That’s it. If you want to do it quickly and create a really healthy mix, there are a few more little things to know that will help. Let’s go through it step by step.

Step 1: Find or build your compost container

Many gardeners opt for the ‘dalek’ compost bin (so named for its shape). These are sleek, plastic bins with removable lids to put food waste in and a side panel to take compost out. They are discrete, protected and simple. The downsides are, they are made of plastic, and it is difficult to keep the compost inside aerated.

For a cheaper recycled option, you can make compost bays with pallets. To make one bay you’ll need three pallets: a back and two sides. To make two bays, you’ll need five. These can be lashed together with some rope. The benefit of having two bays is that you can easily turn the compost (more on this later). They do tend to take up more space though.

If you don’t have access to outdoor space, you can still compost your food waste with a worm bin. You can order worms online (or ask friends to relocate some of theirs). Containers can be homemade with old drawers or bins. Or you can buy one. Worms are a bit fussier about what they’ll eat. They don’t like oil, onions or citrus and they need something gritty like egg shells to help them digest their food.

Step 2: Find the right spot for your compost

A simple step, but important.

Put your compost somewhere accessible and out of the way, and if possible, directly on top of soil. This will allow easy access for worms and all the other microorganisms you need.

It’s also a good idea to have your compost somewhere shaded to prevent it from drying out in the summer.

Step 3: Start to fill it

Before loading it up with food and garden waste creating a foundation of twigs and sticks will help keep your pile aerated.

When putting food or garden waste in you want to also add cardboard and/or woodchip. This is because good decomposition requires a balance of what’s called ‘greens’ and ‘browns’. Greens refer to food waste and green garden waste that is high in nitrogen. Browns refers to cardboard of woody material that is higher in carbon. If you have too much green waste if your compost starts to smell, and too much brown if it starts to look dry, inactive and filled with woodlice.

As well as balancing greens and browns it is also important to keep it moist and aerated. If it becomes too waterlogged it will produce anaerobic bacteria that can be harmful to soil ecosystems. If it becomes too dry it won’t be able to decompose properly. Keep a non-leaching plastic cover over the top to regulate how much water gets in.

Lastly, leave out animal products to avoid attracting vermin. In some places it may also be advisable to leave out any cooked produce, however this isn’t always an issue.

Step 4: Knowing when it’s ready and processing the compost

As a general rule of thumb, the longer you leave compost the better. I would suggest at least 3 months after the last addition. Compost should no longer be warm from decomposition and should smell good like the earth.

To process the compost you may want to buy (or make with chicken wire) a sieve and filter out the larger bits of wood or undecomposed matter which can go back in the next batch. What you’re left with will be a great addition to any vegetable beds and potting mix.

It’s important to remember that compost is not quite soil, and if you’ve been adding food waste it will be extremely fertile. Be cautious using it to raise new plants and in potting mixes. Add some inert matter like sand and coir to give it structure and lower the nutrient density.

Top tips for speeding up your compost

If you’re keen to make compost quickly there are a few things you can do to speed it up. This includes adding coffee grounds, which most cafes are happy to part with for free. It also includes turning it regularly. It’s a good idea to do this at least once in a compost pile’s lifetime regardless, to keep it aerated and make sure that everything decomposes properly. The more you do it, the faster the more oxygen available to the bacteria and the faster the decomposition process. When turning your compost pile you should be aiming to move the top to the bottom and the outsides to the inside. A note of caution, turning the compost does frighten off certain beneficial microorganisms, like nematodes, so I’d recommend leaving it for a month or two after the last turn to invite them back.

References

Food waste falls by 7% per person in three years. WRAP. Accessed July 15, 2023. https://wrap.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/food-waste-falls-7-person-three-years

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Growing flowers with healing powers: Easy to grow plants for the elderly

Jessika Thiele — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 18:13:16 +0000

Growing medicinal plants is a wonderful activity that generates holistic health and wellbeing. This article shares plants that are great for the elderly to grow, as well as top tips.

Planting flowers in the garden isn’t just a beautiful addition, many easy-to-grow flowering plants for the elderly have medicinal properties that can be used to treat a whole host of issues.

Today we’re going to be looking at five of my favourite flowers that have holistic powers suitable growing for the elderly.

For those of you reading who don’t know me, which will most likely be all of you, I’m Mitch, a former chef with a passion for the natural world, ecology and horticulture. I hung up my chefs apron in 2020 in pursuit of a more wholesome and natural lifestyle.

I left my hometown of London for the ancient woodlands of the New Forest. I am currently establishing an edible and medicinal showcase garden on previously conventionally farmed land. I grow in no-dig beds using pre-industrial farming techniques based on permaculture principles. My garden is a testimony to all plants edible and medicinal, with a keen focus on rare, heritage and heirloom varieties.

Calendula (Calendula officinalis)

Calendula (Calendula officinalis)

First up is a true medicinal powerhouse, calendula (Calendula officinalis). Calendula is by far one of the easiest herbs to grow, it displays beautiful orange blooms all summer long and the insects go absolutely bonkers for it. For these reasons, calendula will always take centre stage in my herb garden.

The vibrant tangerine flowers are jammed packed with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antiviral and anti-fungal compounds. Traditionally calendula flowers abundant in resin are infused with olive oil as a base for a skin soothing which is why calendula is so popular in many cosmetics products today.

When infused into oil, it becomes what herbalist call liquid gold that will make your skin glow. A simple way to prepare calendula is to make a tea from the dried flower heads. Calendula tea is said promotes the health of the skin, respiratory, lymphatic and digestive systems.

Gardeners will already know calendula to be a great source of pollen which makes for a very useful companion flower that will attract beneficial insects who assist with pollination and the control of pests. It’s pretty much a magnet for attracting biodiversity to the garden and comes in a whole host of colours. One of my favourite variates is the ‘Art Shades’ mix a popular strain with large blooms in unusual shades including tangerine, peach and apricot, it sounds more like a fruit salad than a flower bloom.

Growing tips

Sow Calendula undercover 2 weeks before the last frost and plant out once all risk from frost has gone. I like to cover young seedlings with horticultural fleece or netting during the plants early stage to prevent attack from slugs and birds. A quick tip to keep the plant in continuous bloom, remove the spent flower heads sometimes called deadheading remembering to keep them aside to dry and store for future use in teas and ointments.

Cornflower (Centaurea Cyanus)

Cornflower (Centaurea Cyanus)

Second on my list of flowers with holistic powers is Cornflower (Centaurea Cyanus). A lightly fragrant annual flower that produces brilliant colourful displays of white, blue, pink, red and purple. These old fashioned wild flowers are super easy to grow, they’re not fussy on soil type and are super drought resistant.

One of my favourite things about cornflowers is they grow nice and tall. Some varieties can even reach heights of 2.5ft plus. The long, narrow hairy stems with fringed flowers make cornflower an excellent choice for freshly cut flowers bouquets.

The most popular and famous of the Centaurea Cyanus is the vivid sapphire blue variety. This year I’ve interplanted blue cornflower with a striking orange Indian Prince calendula. The contrast of blue and orange looks visually stunning along my border of the garden and the bees and butterflies can’t keep away.

Cornflowers have a long history of being used in the medical and cosmetic industries. It’s primarily the dried flowerhead that have been used medicinally for its anti-inflammatory properties. I personally use the dried petals to brew herbal tea as I’m a big fan of its lightly floral flavour with a hint of spice.

Cornflower tea is thought to aid in soothing stomach ulcers, while using the tea as rinse or wash is used to speed the healing of bleeding gums. Cornflower tea can also be good for improving digestion as the herbs high antioxidant content aids in detoxing the liver.

Growing tips

Cornflower can be sown directly on the surface of freshly raked compost or soil. Scattering seeds on the surface mixed with other seeds like poppies, borage and chamomile is a great way to create a mini wildflower meadow. Taller varieties of cornflower can benefit from being stacked with a bamboo support to help them from toppling over.

Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

Next up is a vigours vine like bushy plant that grow low to the ground. The leaves are a round and sometimes almost heart-like shaped, the flowers come in bright shades of oranges, apricots, yellows and creams with long spurs protruding out from behind them. It’s one of our favourites- nasturtium.

Beauty aside, one of the main reasons why I love to grow nasturtium is I’ve found it to be one of the most effect cabbage white caterpillar trap I’ve come across. Veggie growers will know that if you don’t cover your brassicas you’ll be spending all summer picking cabbage white caterpillar of your kales, broccolis and cabbages.

So how do nasturtiums help? Well… the peppery leaves of nasturtium are a delicacy for cabbage white caterpillars, growing them in or next to your brassica’s is a great form of natural pest control. The humble cabbage white get’s a lot of flack and growing some decoy plants is the perfect way to give them a safe place to breed.

It’s worth noting that I advise growing dwarf compact varieties of nasturtiums in the veg patch as the trailing varieties will have vigorous growth and can literally swallow a whole veg bed in just a few weeks.

In the kitchen nasturtium blossoms are great for bringing bursts of colour to the plate. The flowers contain as much vitamin C as parsley, and more lutein than tomatoes which is great for eye health. Even if all you do is toss them into a salad, nasturtium blossoms are good for you. I like to collect the newly open flowers early in the morning so they’re extra sweet and full of nectar.

For me, what makes nasturtium the complete plant for the garden is it has strong antiseptic properties found in its leaves that can be used on wounds to help fight infections. The seeds which are the size of large peas can be ground into pastes to fight fungal infections in toenails. It doesn’t stop there, when you chew nasturtium leaves pungent vapours are released which are said to help ease the effects of bronchitis and other infections in the lungs.

Growing tips

Nasturtium sometimes doesn’t respond well to being repotted so it’s a good idea to direct sow seeds in their final planting position. Dib a hole slightly bigger than the seed and around 5cm deep. I like to sow two seeds per hole for an extra bushy and abundant bloom.

Catnip (Nepeta cataria)

Catnip (Nepeta cataria)

Coming in at number 4 is Nepeta Grandiflora, also known as catnip (also known as cat mint), yes that’s the stuff your fluffy kitty goes silly for! Despite being famous for its effects on felines, cats aren’t the only ones who can enjoy catmint. The leaves and flowers can be steeped to make a soothing herbal tea with a cool minty taste and a sweet floral fragrance. Some people enjoy eating young cat mints leaves.

I think they have a delicate fresh minty flavour, making them a great aromatic salad topper. Older leaves can be used as a potherb in cooked dishes. Catmint tea is said to relieve tension and improve sleep quality. Much like many herbal teas, cat mint can aid digestive problems such as upset stomach and nausea. It is also particularly useful for treating fevers.

One of the many benefits of growing Nepeta is that it has a long flowering season and its aromatic leaves and flowers are loved by bees and other pollinators. It’s an easy to grow perennial which will come up and flower reliably every year. Nepeta is notorious for sprawling, especially as the summer goes on it can almost develop a bald spot in the middle. A good way to avoid this is give the old Chelsea chop.

A pruning method which allows you to limit the size of plants and control the flowering season of many herbaceous plants. It gets its name The Chelsea Chop because it is usually carried out at the end of May, coinciding with the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The Chelsea chop has several functions. Firstly it makes the plant compact, while delaying flowering. It is useful to use on plants that love to sprawl such as Nepeta.

Growing tips

A plant best grown from cutting so you’re better off buying pot plants at any time of the year, although spring and autumn are ideal times to plant in the garden. Once growth dies back in autumn, cut back to the ground before spring.

Mexican marigold (Tagetes erecta)

The fifth and final flower with holistic powers that I will be writing about today (and I must say I personally feel we have saved the best ’til last!) is none other than the humble marigold or tagetes erecta.

Mexican marigolds are my favourite flower to grow in the veg garden for so many reasons, but please note that tagetes erecta and calendula officinalis are two different species that both share the common name marigold so be sure to check the Latin name before you buy any seeds.

Dwarf marigolds are my go-to companion flower, particularly for lettuce and tomatoes. Marigold roots release pheromones which deter cutworm, interplanting marigolds with lettuce is a great way to deter those pesky pests from nibbling away at the base of your lettuce plants. Alongside tomatoes marigolds act as a double-edged sword. Deterring pests like aphids and black fly with their strong odour they emit from their leaves and flowers.

They also attract beneficial insects who can assist with pollination of your tomato crop and control pests. Ants farming aphids on your tomatoes can be a real pain, lucky enough marigolds are great for attracting lady bugs and guess what a ladybugs favourite meal is? That’s right aphids.

Now the reason why I love the dwarf varieties so much is they can easily be planted on the corners of your beds without losing too much cropping space. Dwarf varieties also fit perfectly under cucumbers and tomatoes growing up string or canes.

Pest control aside, marigolds are incredibly useful in the medicine cabinet. Marigold flowers support skin healing, their petals contain natural antiseptic, anti-inflammatory and hydrating properties. The flowers are generally used in herbal medicine, fresh or dried. The flowers are often used to prepare ointments, oils and gels. Its relaxing and soothing qualities help promote wound healing for sunburns, scratches, eczema and dermatitis.

Growing tips

Growing from seed is super easy. Sow 2 weeks before the last frost date and plant out after the risk of frost has completely gone. When the plant reaches 4 branches high pinch out the stem to encourage the plant to become more compact and bushy, resulting in more blooms.

Top tips for easy growing

Short on space? Try growing these flowers in baskets, pots or containers, you’ll be surprised at how well the grow with limited space.
Try growing in raised beds to ease the burden of bending down, alternatively a foam kneeling mat is a great way to make long periods kneeling more comfortable.
There are lots of lightweight tool options available from plastic wheelbarrows to spades and watering cans.
Wild flower meadows like the cornflower mentioned are not only beautiful, but they require less maintenance and bring the benefits of nesting habitat for wildlife for ladybirds to butterflies, hedgehogs and birds.

Happy growing!

The post Growing flowers with healing powers: Easy to grow plants for the elderly appeared first on Herbal Reality.

Our favourite healing gardens in the UK

Jessika Thiele — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 18:35:58 +0000

Medicinal plant gardens are a delightful way to immerse yourself in nature, and get to know natures medicine for yourself. Here we list our favourite gardens around the UK for you to visit.

We have always lived in close connection with the greatest healing garden of all – Nature. The forests, savannahs, mountains and meadows have long been the source of our healing medicines. Ethnobotanists now think around 30,000 of the 300,000 or so flowering plants have documented nutritional and therapeutic uses. Our ancestors knew Nature.

As we started to cultivate food and gathered in cities, we needed to find a way to bring these traditionally wild healing plants to the burgeoning concentrations of people. And with this early trade there naturally arose a need to better understand and be able to identify the correct species, how to select the best quality, and in time how to scientifically assess the efficacy of the plants.

Early on in our agricultural adventure, we probably would have harvested those opportunistic medicinal plants that occurred naturally in the freshly turned land. Over time we established small herbal plots at the edges of our culinary fields. We have been taking herbs from the wild, cultivating them and trading them since time began.

Some of the earliest knowledge we have of cultivating therapeutic plants is from Mesopotamia and the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon where over 64 types of plants were grown from the milder fennel and roses to the powerful opium poppy. Also the Egyptians established herb gardens near their temples with frankincense, myrrh, mandrake and chamomile all featuring for the potent ability to heal wounds and soothe pain. Across China, India, the Americas, Arabia – in fact the whole world – our knowledge of how to identify and grow medicinal plants flourished until today about 500 species are grown commercially.

From around the Middle Ages dedicated Healing Gardens started to spring up in Europe; known first as the Garden of Simples (a ‘simple’ being a medicine made from one plant) and later, as interest in the global breadth of botanical diversity flourished, Botanical Gardens. The Botanical Gardens of today are really the legacy of these early Physic Gardens that were started in monasteries.

The priests and monks, in line with their commitments to serve the poor and sick as well as care for their own community, appear as early centres of medicinal plant collections. Prior to them, we had largely been dependent on the knowledge of local wild harvesters – and for many species we still are today (of around 3000 species commonly in trade, some 75% come from the wild, amounting to a fifth of all volume).

Healing and Botanical Gardens hold a special connection with the local healers, plant collectors and sum total of the human knowledge we have gathered about our plant world. From Padua and Pisa in Italy, Jardin des Plantes in Paris, Hortus Botanicus in Amsterdam, The Linnaeus Garden in Sweden, Nanjing in China and beyond through the main cultural centres of the world, the Healing Garden thrive as centres of academic, artistic and spiritual upliftment.

Here in the UK, there are a host of fantastic botanical gardens and these are some of our favourites with a heritage in herbal medicine.

The Chelsea Physic Garden, London

The Chelsea Physic Garden is the perfect representation of a Healing Garden. Smack bang in the middle of London, it’s the city’s oldest botanic garden. It was established by The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London in 1673, as an educational garden to train the apprentices in identification, cultivation, harvesting and making medicine.

Its favourable climate by the Thames river and wind-dissipating walls keep the environment perfect for growing over 4000 edible and medicinal species from ashwagandha to zanthozylum.

There are different themed areas within the garden, offering a ‘Historical walk’, ‘Edible plants’, ‘Medicinal plant s’ areas – including beds dedicated to Dioscorides (the Greek herbalist), an Officinalis bed of recognised medicinal species, traditional medicinal species of the British Isles. A must visit.

Visit Chelsea Physic Garden

Dilston Physic Garden, Dilston Mill House, near Corbridge, Northumberland

This is a gem of a garden tucked into the side of the Northumbrian shire. Established in 2007, inspired and run by two neuroscientists focusing research on how plants can improve memory, focus and attention.

Brimming with over 700 species of well-signed herbs, attractively laid out and filled with quirky corners. They also serve a delicious cup of herbal tea. Well worth the detour.

Visit Dilston Physic Garden

Chinese Medicinal Herb Garden, University of Bristol Botanic Garden

The inspiration of the Register of Chinese Medicine Chinese and the University of Bristol Botanic Garden, this is one of the best places in the world to immerse yourself in the diversity of Chinese herbs. Tucked into a corner of this fascinating garden you are transported to the healing potential of one of the longest medical traditions in the world.

With over 180 species used in Chinese Herbal medicine it is the largest collection in Europe where you can meet such favourites as the medicinal paeonias, polygonums and panax.

The Botanical gardens themselves are a delight of phlyogenic classification beds, a western herb garden – and even an Evolutionary garden. The tropical glass houses host a range of Ayurvedic herbs including ginger and turmeric too amongst the remarkable lotus house. Bristol Botanical Gardens are a veritable herbal feast.

Visit the Chinese Medicinal Herb Garden

Oxford University Botanical Garden

Recently celebrating its 400^th Birthday, Oxford University established its own medicinal garden in 1621, making it the oldest Botanical Garden in the UK. Laid out in a formal design its brimming with taxonomic beds, a medicinal collection and glasshouses with various temperate zones. A long-standing centre of medicinal knowledge, botanical insight and art. A place to soak up some serious knowledge.

Visit Oxford University Botanical Garden

Mount Grace Priory, North Yorkshire

English Heritage has recreated the herb garden at Mount Grace priory established in 1397. Worth a visit to see what a monk’s life would have been like and their connection with growing medicinal herbs such as wood betony, clary sage and hyssop.

Visit Mount Grace Priory

Poyntzfield Herb Nursery, Scotland

Nestled between the Scottish Highlands and the sea in the Black isle, sits this picture perfect herb nursery. Lovingly created since the late 1970s the nursery has a huge range of native, naturalised and international medicinal herbs.

Visit Poyntzfield Herb Nursery

The Queen’s Garden, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew

A true classic of Botanical gardens. Established in 1759 it is entwined with early plant-hunting and the evolving science of Botany. With over 50,000 plants and 3 million herbarium samples, Kew is a definitive destination for all plant-lovers. A leading global centre of plant expertise, scientific enquiry and artistic inspiration – you need a whole day to explore the varied arboretums, beds and glass houses.

Visit The Queen’s Garden

The Secret Herb Garden, Scotland

Just a few miles south of Edinburgh at the Secret Herb Garden, this serene garden holds a bounty of treats. With over 600 different species, including over 50 types of mint, you will be sure to find many of the most important medicinal herbs.

It’s a place to soak up both the beauty and the practical side of the plant world.

Visit The Secret Herb Garden

Whilst these Healing Gardens developed to grow medicinal herbal species, they are also a good example of how just being in Nature, even in its most managed and curated human-form, can lift your mood, calm your nervous system, and bring a moment of joy to your life.

If you have any favourite herb gardens do let us know at info@herbalreality.com. We’d love to visit them and share with our community too.

The post Our favourite healing gardens in the UK appeared first on Herbal Reality.

A beginner’s guide to growing medicinal herbs

Jessika Thiele — Thu, 21 Apr 2022 17:50:56 +0000

Growing herbal medicines is a very enriching practise, which supports our wellbeing in its own way. This article gives you top tips for when you are starting your medicinal herb garden.

Growing medicinal herbs is one of those rare things we can do in life that is truly wholesome and beneficial. It is good for the land, it is good for the birds and the bees, and it is good for our health and spirits.

And the great thing is that for all that they give, they ask for relatively little in return. Most medicinal herbs are easy to grow and so long as you follow a few key principles, you can create a stunning herb garden in no time.

This article explores some of the main themes to think about when starting a medicinal herb garden for the first time. It is by no means a comprehensive guide but will hopefully give you some ideas to go away and explore in more detail.

Which medicinal herbs to grow?

A thriving herb garden full of healing potential

With so many options to choose from, how do you choose which herbs to grow? A good starting point is to do some research into which herbs are best suited for the climate and growing space you have and to consider which medicinal herbs you may want or need in your life.

Is your garden sunny or shady? Is there a specific condition you would like to treat? Or are there specific herbs you feel drawn to? You’ll normally find there are a few key herbs that are perfectly suited for both you and your garden.

It may be that you are someone who suffers from nervous tension and happen to have a shady garden – a perfect opportunity to grow skullcap, lemon balm and St. John’s wort. Or perhaps you have rich, loamy soil in a sunny garden and just want herbs that can be harvested for herbal teas, in which case you can’t go wrong with the likes of chamomile, fennel and catnip.

Or do you just love bright colours and aren’t so bothered about its uses; if so, fill your garden and brighten your life with the oranges and yellows of calendula, California poppy and meadow arnica.

Make your herbs feel at home

Marshmallow root (Althaea officinalis)

It always helps to have some knowledge of a plant’s natural habitat and – where possible – to make those plants feel at home by mimicking or matching some of those conditions in your garden.

Obviously, the easiest approach is to grow native plants that are already very much at home in our own climate. The likes of marshmallow and meadowsweet, for example, will cope just fine with the wettest and frostiest of British winters.

But if you are growing medicinal herbs such as lavender, thyme or sage, which are native to the Mediterranean, it helps to grow them in a warm, sheltered spot, and maybe even add some sand into your soil to improve drainage and prevent waterlogging.

South-facing walls of a house can create remarkably warm micro-climates that can be perfect for sun-loving herbs.

Some herbs grow in very specific environments. Gentians, for example, are most commonly found growing in high mountain pastures. Obviously, it’s hard to replicate mountain conditions in an English garden, but you can mimic some of the mountain environment by creating a rock garden and growing your gentians somewhere that is shaded from the heat of the midday sun.

Similarly, there are quite a few woodlands herbs that naturally grow in the shade of trees in rich, loamy soil that is the result of many years of rotting autumn leaves. Goldenseal, Himalayan valerian and black cohosh are examples of herbs that thrive when they are grown in shaded areas with compost made from leaf litter.

How much space do the herbs need?

Herbs come in all shapes and sizes. From the tiny Lily of the Valley to the majestic 8 foot Angelica, your choice of medicinal herbs will always be influenced by the size of your growing area.

Allow each plant sufficient space to grow into and don’t forget that – if you have a small garden – you can use vertical space as well.

Codonopsis and passion flower are two beautiful climbers that can be trained up a trellis, and there are many shade-loving herbs, such as sweet woodruff and Tibetan gentian that can happily grow in their shade.

Understanding the life cycle of the plants

California poppy (Eschscholzia californica)

When choosing medicinal herbs to grow it helps to know the difference between annual, biennial and perennial plants. The majority of medicinal plants are perennial. In other words, they live for many years; their foliage usually dies back in the winter and grows back in the spring.

Perennials can be slow growing and need plenty of care when they are young, but once established they require little maintenance other than occasional weeding, watering and cutting back.

Annual plants complete their life cycle in one growing season. They are reliant on seeds for their survival, and as a result they tend to be prolific self-seeders. So, although annual herbs such as German chamomile, calendula and California poppy only live for one season, they can easily be encouraged to return year after year simply by allowing the seeds to mature and fall onto the beds where they have grown.

Biennials are plants that take two growing seasons to complete their life cycle. Angelica, mullein and burdock are examples of biennial plants; they usually produce a rosette of leaves in the first year and flower in the second. Like the annuals, you’ll need to sow fresh seed every year if you want your favourite biennials to be in flower every summer.

Land preparation and medicinal properties

High altitude lavender growing in the French Alps

There are many ways to prepare land for growing medicinal plants – too many to cover here, but in essence the main principle is to encourage natural soil health through organic practices such as using a mulch or cover crop and adding compost where appropriate.

The no-dig method, as taught by Charles Dowding, is a favourite of ours – partly because it doesn’t disturb the ecology of the soil, and also because it can significantly reduce the amount of time spent on weeding.

But before you order a trailer of rotted manure to pour over your lawn (a common no-dig practice), it is important to consider the effect of soil nutrition on the medicinal properties of the plants. Many of the healing compounds found in medicinal herbs are produced in response to environmental stress or external threats.

For example, lavender grown at a high altitude in more nutrient depleted soil has higher levels of essential oils – most likely a result of having to tolerate greater solar-radiation and nutrient stress. So it’s not always best to grow herbs in rich, loamy soils as we would with our vegetables; plants that are grown in poor soils may be smaller in size but can produce much higher quality herbal medicines.

Interestingly, research has shown that herbs grown using organic practices (i.e. without artificial fertilisers), contain higher levels of secondary plant phytonutrients such as the protective polyphenols and flavonoids. The same applies to herbs grown in wild settings. So when it comes to preparing your land, sometimes less is more.

Propagation

Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla)

Once you’ve chosen your medicinal herbs and prepared your land, it is time to introduce the plants. Essentially, you have three main options; you can start by sowing seed, you can take cuttings from existing plants, or you can buy new plants (either potted of bareroot).

There is something very satisfying about raising plants from seed; it helps create a stronger relationship with the plants that can add another layer of potency if and when you use them to prepare herbal medicines.

Looking after your seedlings requires patience and care, and most herb growers will agree that the more you give to the plants, the more you receive in return.

There are of course some disadvantages when growing from seed; not everyone has suitable indoor growing space, and it takes longer to reach maturity. Many perennial herbs, such as echinacea, wild bergamot and St John’s wort, will only start to produce flowers in their second year. So, if you prefer not to wait that long and are willing to spend more money, then buying mature plants may be the best solution.

Keeping your plants in good health

Ladybird larvae eating aphids on a valerian plant

Having raised your seedlings or purchased your plants and planted them in a suitable location in your garden, ensuring that tender plants are protected from late frosts, all you really need to do is keep on the top of the weeds, water them when needed, and protect them from potential pests.

Most herbs are quite resilient and suffer few problems with pests and diseases, but there are a few potential issues to keep an eye on. Seeds waiting to germinate can be a tasty snack for birds and mice; young seedlings can be susceptible to slugs and aphids; and herbs of all sizes can attract hungry rabbits and deer.

Protecting the plants with some kind of physical barrier (traps, mesh cages or fencing) is an effective way to keep larger creatures away. And there are many organic practices for dealing with smaller critters; aphids, for example, can easily be controlled by releasing ladybird or lacewing larvae – both available from Dragonflii.

If you do experience repeated issues from certain pests, you can normally find herbs that are resistant to the pest in question. For example, slugs appear to have no interest in valerian, licorice mint and sweet woodruff. And both deer and rabbits have no interest in lovage, thyme or mullein.

But if you are growing mullein, keep an eye out for the brightly coloured ‘mullein moth caterpillars’, which – as the name suggests – are big fans of the mullein’s soft, juicy leaves. Left to their own devices they can decimate a plant in no time.

When to harvest medicinal herbs

Ginseng (Panax ginseng)

The interval between sowing and harvest can vary enormously. Annuals, by their very nature, are quick to grow and can only be harvested in the first year. German chamomile, for example, starts producing flowers in less than 3 months from sowing. But some perennials take a lot longer; Panax ginseng, for example, should be grown for 6 years before its roots are ready for harvest.

The harvest time and frequency will of course depend on the part of the plant that is harvested. Leaves, flowers and seeds can be harvested repeatedly without any serious detriment to the plant; harvesting roots on the other hand is less sustainable, usually requiring the whole plant to be uprooted and new plants grown in its place.

That said, it is possible, for example, to dig around the base of a marshmallow plant to harvest some of the surface roots without killing the plant. And if you only have a few precious echinacea plants, you don’t need to use the roots – their seeds are also packed with the same immune-boosting tingly alkylamides, and when ground up into a powder make a surprisingly delicious tea.

Once harvested, there are many ways to process them into different herbal preparations, but this is a big topic – one that we will look at in more detail later in the year as it is a special skill to harness all the healing vitality of medicinal herbs.

Until then, happy growing!

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