Spring into action and grow

The raspberry leaves are starting to bud this year 🙂

There is nothing quite as connecting as getting your hands in some mud, in a world where we walk about with shoes on all the time (rubber soles are insulators) we can become quite disconnected to our planet. If we each planted a tree would there really be an issue with global warming? Why not plant five? Or one a year at least on Earth Day (April 22nd). A pip from an apple will grow into a massive tree which will supply our children, our future generations with delicious food. As we are near the end of Gardening Week I wanted to discuss ways in which you can grow fruit/veg and herbs without it costing the earth.If money is an issue please do not give up before you have started, if you buy fruits and vegetables to eat then you already have access to free seeds… save the inside of peppers when you cut them up and allow them to dry out. The seeds can now be planted to grow pepper plants which will taste so much better than the ones you bought in the supermarket originally…. and they will be organic (if you don’t spray them with horrible chemicals that is). Seeds can be harvested from apples, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, peppers, passion fruit, melons, strawberries and raspberries.

I can hear you shouting at the screen saying “They are food plants not herbs!!” You are right, but in the famous words of Hippocrates “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food”. Our diet has a huge impact to our health. We literally are what we eat.

Growing raspberries is an excellent example of getting delicious food AND herbal medicine from one plant. Raspberry is a native plant to the UK although it isn’t found in the wild any more 😦 (I hope you can prove me wrong on this one!!). It is a delicious fruit which is quite pricey to purchase from the supermarket but easy to grow in your garden or in a pot. The fruit tastes ten times better and as a bonus the leaves are medicinal. Herbalists use the raspberry leaves in herbal tea blends. They have an affinity with females and help to tone and tighten the womb and uterus – great if you have experienced a miscarriage and would like to ensure it doesn’t happen again. You can drink a tea of the leaves in the lead up to you trying to concieve another baby – preferably 1-3 times a day for three months. You can add delicious tasting herbs to the tea to suit your taste if required.

You can even go to poundshops and pick up raspberry canes for £1!!  Poundshops even stock vegetable seeds, herb starter kits, strawberry root stocks, blueberry, gooseberry and current canes too!!

Grow your own blueberries? I don’t mind if I do!!

Seeds are quite cheap and offer the opportunity to grow your own herbs. If you get bored staring at a pot and waiting for it to sprout you could always set aside a small plate or bowel with moistened cotton wool pads. Place your seeds a space apart on the cotton wool pads and keep dry, you will then get to see the seeds sprouting, once this occurs you should pot them into compost so that they can continue to grow. This technique is a bit like the cress egg heads that were completed in junior school.Supermarkets offer packets of fresh herbs – these are plants which have been forced to grow quickly, you can always separate the packet into several pots of soil and allow them to develop into maturity. Once they have established they can be planted outdoors. Parsley is classed as an annual herbs but several of the plants I have grown have lasted for two years instead of one, which is an added bonus.

You don’t have to spend money on expensive plant food either! A plants food source is cellulose – or starch. Potatoes and rice are full of starch. If you have cut up potatoes to make a meal for yourself/friends or family – save the water that you used as it will extract starch and be an excellent plant food to both water and feed your plants with. Same with rice – soak rice before boiling and save the white water from soaking. If you drink herbal teas, use the tea bag again to make a weak brew, dilute till it is a similar colouration as wee and pour over your plants. They will love you for it.

Hate weeding the garden? Do you know that alot of the plants you dig up may actually be medicinal? Dock roots, dandelion herb and root, nettle herb and root, plantain, chickweed, shephards purse, bramble leaf, bark and root… all can be turned into cosmetic and medicinal products. Don’t see it as weeding, look at it as harvesting 🙂

Gardening is an excellent form of therapy – its doesn’t have to cost alot and as well as the emotional, mental and physical benefits of nurturing a plant into maturity you also get to either eat it or make cosmetics or medicine out of it too!! Free therapy but you get tomatoes!! Walks in the outdoors (generally in the Autumn) will give you the opportunity to harvest seeds – yarrow grows in the middle of Grimsby town centre and also along Cleethorpes coastline. The seeds can be collected in the autumn.

Can’t wait till them? Sage and Rosemary are excellent plants which grow together very well, they are also both great plants for vegetative propagation – this is taking a cutting (roughly 2″ long), planting it in a pot of compost and watering it for several weeks to create a new plant. If you know someone who has either (or both) of these plants in their garden already the majority of the time if you ask nicely they will not mind if you take a cutting (especially if it is established and large) and you can grow your own plant 🙂 Both smell divine, are great to use in cooking, can be added to baths, made into a tea and used to support your health and wellbeing.

Great eh? I think so 🙂 Happy Gardening Week everyone