What herbs are you growing?

[Guest USMC 2013]

Trying to guage what grows well here in TN herb wise. I'd like to plant some medicinal herbs and am looking for some advice. What are you growing? Have you taken any special steps to get certain plants to grow? Any of you particularly talented with medicinal herbs?

I'd like to expand my gardening for my health and for the uncertain future. I would be more than willing to trade some other knowledge, buy some beer, etc... if anyone in the Clarksville area would like to help me get some herbs going. Semper Fi,

Joe

[Garufa]

Is this a loaded question?

[Motasyco]

Hmmm, I'm interested to see where this goes.

[Motasyco]

That Garufa beat me to the draw again!

[DaveS]

I don't grow "medicinal" herb persay....just some celantro, sage (for seasoning and religous purposes), rosemary, oregano and basil. I also have peppermint, spearmint and lemon balm. These are used for various ailments.

[Guest USMC 2013]

Is this a loaded question?

LMAO...No, not a loaded question. Trying to find varities of herbs grow well here, for example, what kind of encinea (sp?) do people grow and where can I find some.

Joe

[Guest USMC 2013]

I don't grow "medicinal" herb persay....just some celantro, sage (for seasoning and religous purposes), rosemary, oregano and basil. I also have peppermint, spearmint and lemon balm. These are used for various ailments.

WD, actually your list does help. Most mint are great for digestion and stomach issues. Unfortunately my medicinal herb knowledge is elementary and I really need a mentor on what does what, how to use it, etc... Thanks for the responses so far,

Joe

[TripleDigitRide]

In other news: Medical marijuana bill fails in Tennessee legislature.

[dlm37015]

Is this a loaded question?

i plead the 5th

[VERO1]

Hit your local health food store for info. They can entertain you for hours on the benefits of natural herbs etc.

[Guest USMC 2013]

Hit your local health food store for info. They can entertain you for hours on the benefits of natural herbs etc.

Will they be there post SHTF? I need info to help plant my own, how to properly use them and store them. Not what processed, half worthless pills GNC is selling this month.

Joe

[f3joel]

http://herbgardening.com/

[UncleJak]

I am well versed in medicinal herbs (not the illegal ones) but have only recently began to grow anything. Last year I grew some radishes and sunflowers because they were supposed to be easy to grow for beginers. They did well so this year I am growing sage and lettuce. I know it's a weird combo, but I wanted to grow sage and my daughter wanted lettuce. My natural medicine cabnet currently contains: white willow bark, stinging nettles, witch hazel, pine needle tea, and sage. These are the basics and treat a good number of ailments. I hope to increase this all very soon and have a mini natural drug store.

[Ebow1]

I'd like to have some land to grow some spices and tobacco for personal use someday. Although natural medicines for SHTF do seem to take more priority these days.

[subsonic]

There are varying degrees of hardiness with certain herbs...some rosemary does well, others will not survive a hard freeze. A good nursery will have proper advice. We currently grow rosemary, sage, thyme (regular and lemon), oregano, cilantro (seeds are coriander), lavender, lemon balm, garlic chives, peppermint. These are all perennials. Certain herbs like basil are annual, although they'll sometimes reseed themselves. Echinacia and St John's Wort are also perennial.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Dunno nothin about herbs. Mom had told me about a few southern po folks herbs from the old days but don't remember all of them. Maybe some borrowed from the Indians. I looked up a few last night (well actually the ones I remember are probably more like weeds but can probably be cultivated). Each one described different soil conditions, so if that goes for all herbs, guess an herb garden would need different patches of soil?

She mentioned sassafras, which is a tree root. Looked it up to discover it is banned by FDA for commercial product because of cancer risk. Supposedly it actually was effective for certain ills if you didn't mind liver damage and cancer. Maybe Indians and early settlers didn't live long enough to get the cancer. Also found out that it is the typical raw material for manufacture of mmda, ecstasy. Whooda Thunk? It also said the wood is beautiful to make stuff out of.

[QuietDan]

My favorite kind of thread: Humor and knowledge, all mixed together.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

One po folks herb mom mentioned, can't recall if she described what old folks she knew used it for-- rabbit tobacco. Looked it up and there are apparently a couple of varieties, a western and eastern variety. The medicinal uses vary slightly between the two but they seem in the same ballpark. Maybe both species are about the same but the "local folk tradition" is different between the two? Dunno. The references mention asthma primarily, but also astringent and maybe a couple of other uses. Couldn't find any cancer or liver damage warnings.

It said that some folks out west (most likely hippy type health nuts) will smoke the stuff as a "more healthful" tobacco substitute. I didn't see any reference claiming that it contains nicotine. Ya'll who get into the herbs, if you get too into it, you risk getting labeled as hippie-dippies ya know! Next thing ya know you'll be signing up for sweat lodges, pretending to be Indians, and perhaps even searching for traces of Cherokee in yer blood line. Which is not difficult to find in these parts. Supposedly some Indians considered rabbit tobacco a smoke which made it easier to contact the spirits, but they considered tobacco the same. I think when they contacted the spirits with tobacco they would huff a lot of the strong stuff, which has a different effect than toking on a Marlboro or Camel. I don't think rabbit tobacco is considered mind-altering, unless the effect is so subtle that most folks don't notice it.

One fall I was about 10 years old me and my cousin were out in the woods shooting BB guns and came across a patch of rabbit tobacco. It seemed like a good idea at the time to smoke it, so we made corncob pipes. I think we used dried hollow weed for the stem, but it was a long time ago. Maybe small diameter cane. So we smoked some rabbit tobacco that one day, but it didn't do much except make us cough. Didn't make us sick or whatever. Only did it once. It was several years later afore I snuck a ceegar to try. Just a few puffs on the ceegar turned me green and sick as a dog.

Anyway, using big stick matches to light up the rabbit tobbaco I managed to burn off my eyebrows. It didn't hurt. Just a little flash. No pain or red later. So when we came home out of the woods mom asked what happened to my eyebrows and I said something creative like, "What? Is there something wrong with my eyebrows?" She didn't give me the third degree about it. Never said another word. We had already started making gunpowder and blowing stuff up pretending to be rocket scientists, so she might have figured it had something to do with our "research". Or maybe she knew we had been out smoking rabbit tobacco but didn't figure it was worth giving us the third degree about. The parental units were not "permissive" but they let us do a lot of stuff they would put you in juvenile detention for nowadays, such as making explosives.

[VERO1]

By local health food store, I meant locally owned, not a GNC or Vitaminland type place. We have a small sole proprietor store here in town. The owner is very knowledgable on herbs and their various benefits. She also knows what will and will not grow in our area. Skip the chainstores and talk to people that actually have some knowledge on the products they carry.

[Oh Shoot]

She mentioned sassafras, which is a tree root....

Hence root beer. Don't know when they quit using the real thing in it.

... rabbit tobacco.....

I smoked it some growing up too, but was able to score Bugler and Topps rolling tobbacky early on, which gave a buzz in addition to the cough.

- OS

Edited April 18, 2012 by OhShoot

[Ebow1]

There is nothing hippy dippy about growing my own spices for my red meat meals and my own tobacco for dippin.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

There is nothing hippy dippy about growing my own spices for my red meat meals and my own tobacco for dippin.

I was just joshing. Reading last night, some herbalists who write web pages about it, seem to speak about the herbs in a "mystical" fashion. Some practical mixed with some mystical ideas on even dirt-common herbs and spices. In other words, speaking of chemical analysis in one paragraph and the "spiritual benefit" or "enhanced wholeness" of taking the herb in the next paragraph. Speaking of plants that DO NOT get you high, unless it is extremely subtle.

Edited April 19, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[Ebow1]

I gotcha. It is annoying though, to try to get into anything self-sufficient that also has to do with nature and be labeled a hippy. All of this is a long way off for me anyways, what with actually having land and what not.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Paternal grandparents had a farm, which at one time they cultivated but had retired back to keeping a dozen or so cattle and growing hay. Once in awhile gramps would load up a cow and drive it down to the stockyards in montogmery for some spending cash.

Grandma had some pepper bushes I think were perennial. They were a couple or three feet tall potted in old paint cans. The peppers were perfectly round red berries about 3/8" diameter. Maybe habeneros or some other pepper is hotter, but those little red peppers were incandescent. They were mostly full of seed with a little juice. Put just one of the tiny seeds in your mouth and it would about burn yer tongue off. If you got the juice ferinstance on the skin of your arm it would raise a red whelp. Getting the juice on nether regions was unthinkably painful.

Maybe these pepper bushes couldn't stand even central AL winters, and perhaps that is why grandma kept them potted rather than planted in the dirt. I don't recall her bringing them in the house in the winter, but that may explain why they were potted rather than planted in the yard.

A common pepper concoction they would put on turnip greens and such, was little glass bottles like texas pete shake bottles, with a few peppers inside and vinegar to absorb/dilute the hotness. So you would spice something by splashing out some of the incandescent vinegar. Mash a few of those little round red peppers in a shake bottle full of vinegar made excellent hot sauce. Edit-- Maybe a little oil would go in the bottle too. Dunno. IIRC, oil is better than water to dissolve the capsaicin.

Some time would like to find out what kind of pepper bush that was and get a few. They were pretty little bushes when full of the red peppers. Dad doesn't recall the name but said his folks brought em back from texas when they lived down there awhile. One time did an internet search but didn't find exactly that kind of pepper described. Maybe they are dirt-common if I knew the name.

Couple of times me and the cousins had epic pepper fights. Little burr-headed sweating shirtless redneck kids in 100 degree weather. Chase down a cousin and smear a pepper on his belly or back and it would burn! All in good fun. One sunday dad got into the fun. His sis was asleep after lunch in a wicker rocker, snoring with her mouth open. So he crushed a pepper and dropped it in her mouth. Which woke her up real fast and then it was fun watching her chase dad around intending to inflict retribution. Somehow I got the idea that maybe they had pepper fights when they were kids too.

Edited April 21, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[Timestepper]

She mentioned sassafras, which is a tree root. Looked it up to discover it is banned by FDA for commercial product because of cancer risk. Supposedly it actually was effective for certain ills if you didn't mind liver damage and cancer. Maybe Indians and early settlers didn't live long enough to get the cancer. Also found out that it is the typical raw material for manufacture of mmda, ecstasy. Whooda Thunk? It also said the wood is beautiful to make stuff out of.

At one time Sassafras was the "New World's" biggest export to Europe. It does indeed seem to have very good tonic qualities and my wife and I drink Sassafras tea on a fairly regular basis. Besides the tonic effect, it also has anti-coagulant properties.

Sassafras was banned from commercial sale several years ago (1960, I think) because safrole is indeed a carcinogen and anecdotal evidence seemed to show that extended consumption could cause liver damage over time. What the freak-the-f*uck-out panic spreaders of the FDA didn't bother to take in account about safrole is it can not be metabolized by humans and so poses (in my understanding) no real negative health risk. I also seem to recall that in the early/mid 90's the ban was removed from Sassafras extracts from which the safrole has been removed.

Aside from that (we have sassafras growing all over our ridge and ready to hand), we also have mullein (Indian tobacco), rosemary, sage, calendula, purslane, cinnamon basil and a few others that I can't think of right off hand.