Category Archives: herbs

Spring Clean up

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I love the coming of spring but hate some of what I find. No, I don’t mean the sticks and all. I’m talking about all the plants that are winter killed.

Like my roses. I went into the winter with 11 bushes. I now have six and two of them do not look good.

I have two butterfly bushes. One is budding out very nicely. The other? Well, when the snow had melted I went out and found it lying flat on the ground. I replanted it but I doubt it will survive.

Thank goodness for the bulbs. Daffodils are blooming and now the tulips are coming up. I see the feathery spikes of the peonies and the first leaves of the daylilies. Did the azaleas survive? I don’t know. Stay tuned.

More superstitions about health

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Folk beliefs (superstitions has a pejorative connotation) cover  all kinds of things, from seeing the face of one’s future husband to scaring away witches. However, not all of these beliefs are silly. Some, especially the ones relating to health, have arisen from trial and error or simple observation.

For example, the Navahos have a prohibition about sweeping their hogans at a certain time of the year. Come to find out the hanta virus is spread in mouse excrement which, at that time of the year, dries up and goes into the air. So what seemed like a superstition actually had a scientific basis. Another such example is willow bark tea for aches and pains. Since willow bark contains the active ingredient found in aspirin, another true belief. And drinking rose hip tea is good for what ails you. Rose hips are a great source of Vitamin C.

Other beliefs, not so much. You can remove warts by rubbing it with a live toad until they are drawn into a toad’s skin. (really!)  You will never have arthritis if you wear a ring of dried raw potato on the middle finger of your right hand. You can cure a simple headache by wearing a necklace of corn kernels. You can cure respiratory illnesses by placing the skin of a black cat on the afflicted person’s chest for three days.  If you place an ear of corn between a mother and her baby, he will have a long and prosperous life.

Other beliefs I think need some investigation. Wounds will heal much faster if you place cabbage or plantain leaves on the affected area. This one sounds to me like it might actually work. Another is curing sunburn by placing a mash of wet tea leaves on the area. Since tea leaves are full of antioxidants this one may work as well. You can cure diarrhea or colic by drinking a tea made of blackberry leaves. This treatment at least would do no harm. Diarrhea was a killer of babies back then and one of the other treatments of choice was giving them opium.

The saddest day of the year

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I love the fall. In my opinion, it is the most beautiful of all the seasons.

But I hate taking down the garden. still, it has to be done. We are beginning to see frost at night. The cucumber plants all died and the tomatoes are starting to exhibit dead leaves, curled in the characteristic ‘I am too cold” manner.

So I picked all the green tomatoes and brought them into the house to ripen. All the pepper plants and beans are gone. I left one tomato plant that is gamely trying to survive and flower, the broccoli – I think we might have a late harvest -, the turnips and the swiss chard. Even they will have to be cut down in a few weeks. The compost will be spread on the ground and the whole thing covered with black plastic for the winter.

empty garden

everything but broccoli and swiss chard are gone.

A word about the beans. I love green beans and always plant a lot of them. Beans are the plant that keep on giving. This year, somehow, I ended up with pole beans and they really keep giving. I cannot even guess how many pounds I froze. Anyway, I have always planted the bush variety. And after seeing the stalks on the pole beans I have a whole new feeling about Jack and the Beanstalk. The little tendrils that clung to the fence, the strings, the poles, thickened into strong green vines. I had to cut them off the supports. I now believe that if a bean plant grew that tall, the stalks would indeed support a giant.

beanstalk

Of corn and raccoons

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Since there is nothing as delicious as fresh veggies, especially corn, I have tried to plant the latter over and over. What happens? The raccoons beat a path to the garden, scaling the fence and trampling everything in their path to get to the tasty morsels.

This year I thought I’d outsmart them. Burpee developed a special desk variety.The stalks grew tall and lush.

stalks

 

 

 

 

 

Ears were clearly growing on the stalks. So I picked some.

corn

 

 

 

 

 

this is three ears.

Laughter may commence.

Exploding garden

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I can barely keep up with the garden produce. The zucchini has taken over, the basil is huge. Even I may get tired of pesto.

 

basil

 

 

And the beans!

beans

 

beans two

Do you see the twine? These are supposed to be bush beans but some of the seeds didn’t get the message. They are twining up the cucumbers and squash and have taken down some of the poles. Hence, my little fix – twine tied to the fence. I will be freezing them this year.

A groundhog moved into the abandoned burrow and has eaten all my mums. But Shelby is on patrol and the hog hasn’t made it to the garden.

shelby on guard

 

 

vegetable garden

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Now that the ground hog is gone, my garden is doing well. Something, and I think it is a rabbit, is biting the tops off my peas. But all the other plants are lush.

First, a note about recycling. I recycle all my kitchen garbage. Not bones or anything like that but all the peelings, spoiled fruit, coffee grounds and tea leaves. I keep a bucket in the kitchen to put the stuff in.

bucket

When the bucket is full I take it outside to Big Bertha, my recycling barrel.

bertha

I used to have a barrel that looked like darth Vader’s helmet but I couldn’t turn it. This one turns. In the fall, I spread the compost on the garden, cover it with black plastic, and turn it in to the soil in the spring. I took clay soil and after five years of this turned it into great garden soil. Then we moved but that is another story.

Anyway, with what I have in the earth boxes on the garden I have ten tomato plants. Why so many? I can’t bear to kill any of them so I let them live. And I will have tomatoes coming out of my ears this year. All the plants already have tons of flowers.

tomato flowers

We have already eaten swiss chard.  the cucumbers and squash are covered with blossoms.

s. cukes and squash

Finally, I have several rows of green beans. I fill in empty rows with beans. They grow well, produce heavily and, like peas, put nitrogen into the soil.

beans

I also began a row of turnips. The beets are doing OK. My root crops don’t do as well as I’d like. But next year I plan to put in a row of kale and a row of spinach. I am pondering potatoes.

More about baking

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The replacement for the pearl ash (or pot ash) I discussed in my last post was something called salterus.

Salterus is bicarbonate of soda – yes, the stuff used for stomach acid or whitening teeth. We know it as baking soda and it is the leavening agent in soda bread.

This substance has been known for millenia. The Ancient Egyptians used it as a component of natron, the salt they employed to mummify bodies.

Umm, yummy. Using it for cooking seems more recent. (I read that the Native Americans used it but haven’t found additional documentation for this.) Anyway, baking soda works with something like buttermilk, which has a lot of lactic acid. In chemistry 101, we learn that the combination of an acid and a base yields carbon dioxide and that is what raises the bread.

Baking soda itself is pretty bitter. When I make soda bread I usually use baking powder as well. Pop quiz: what is baking powder? Well, it is baking soda combined with the powdered form of a weak acid but it also leaves less of a bitter aftertaste.

baking in the old days

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Since I haven’t seen a workman for my kitchen for ten days (and counting) and I still am missing doors, knobs, and my new refrigerator, I am moving on in my blog.

I began to think about how cooks baked in the past. They had yeast but what leavener did they use for what we term quick breads.

There was no baking powder. They had yeast but that requires rising. Beer dregs can also be used – I;ve made beer bread but you would not want cookies made from beer.

So what did the cooks use? Pearlash. Wood ashes when soaked in water yield lye. Lye is used to make soap. Lye was also used to soak hominey and for other cooking purposes. Some where in 1780 some enterprising cook used it to make cookies and bread.

I’ve read, however, that it left a bitter alkaline taste in the mouth. The use of pearlash was short-lived. After 1840 a precursor of baking powder was produced.

Natural dyes

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I learned to quilt at a young age (and still do it), as well as knit, crochet and weave. But some where along the way, I became interested in dyes.

When I was researching the Dyes for “Death of a Dyer”, I started to think about the bright colors we take so much for granted. Most natural dyes produce pastels, which is why indigo, madder and cochineal were so prized. They yield bright colors, especially when used with appropriate mordants.

So, what would people use who had little or no access to indigo, which was expensive, or cochineal, which was VERY expensive?

I started with onion skins. I saved the papery covers up for about three months. I mordanted a cotton towel with 2 tsp alum and 1 tsp cream of tarter.

onion skins

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Simmering the onion skins until they are transparent yielded a yellow brown dye. I tried the dye with the cotton towel and also with unmordanted plain yarn.

fabric

 

 

 

 

Native American Herbal remedies used by the Shakers

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The Shakers’s herbal business was in full swing by the early 1800’s and most of the communities participated. Sabbathday Lak, the still existent Maine community, still produces herbs and teas which can be purchased in the shops of the Shaker Museum/Villages.

The Shakers used many herbs that had been imported to North American, either by accident or design. The common plant, now considered a weed, dock, is one such example. Lavender, boneset, barberry are just a few of the imports which the Shakers grew in their herb gardens. They also imported medical plants, such as opium, which they did not produce themselves.

They also studied various Native American remedies and added them to their medicines.

I found it surprising how many plants I recognized, although I know them simply as trees or ornamentals rather than herbs. Some are much in favor still today as medicines or for alternative healing.

Both prickly ash and white ash were used for digestive troubles. The Prickly Ash is called the Toothache tree or toothache bush.

Several bee balm species, which I plant for scent for attraction for butterflies,  have a long history of use as a medicinal plants by many Native Americans. The Blackfoot Indians recognized the strong antiseptic action of these plants and used them in poultices. A tea made from the plant was also used to treat mouth and throat infections.  Bee balm is the natural source of the antiseptic thymol, the primary active ingredient in modern commercial mouthwashes.

Bee balm was also used by Native Americans as a seasoning.

Boxberry – wintergreen and checkerberry The fruits are edible, with a minty flavor and were used as a diuretic.

Bloodroot  -Sanguinaria carnadensis), was used for typhoid pneumonia as well as ringworm, scarlatina and jaundice. One of its common names is Indian Paint. In fact, several of the herbs used by the Shakers, betrayed their origin as Native American remedies by using Indian: Indian cup, Indian Hemp, Indian Physic and Indian turnip. All of these were part of the Shaker herb stock.Cup weed or Indian cup weed,  Silphium perfoliatum is native to North America. It resembles Rudabeckia (black eyed Susans) but the center is yellow instead of brown. It was used primarily for chest complaints but is now used as an ornamental.

Lest we disparage the herbal knowledge of the Native Americans and the Shakers, here are a few examples of plants they used which we use as well.

Black Cohosh. (Actaea racemosa) Other common names: black bugbane, black snakeroot, fairy candle . Black cohosh was used for epilepsy and, like today, for ‘female complaints’.

Witch hazel.tract of the plant is used in the astringent Witch hazell Varieties of this shrub are also native to China and Japan. It was used, as it is today, as an antiseptic, particularly for skin complaints. Soaking a toothbrush in witch hazel on a regular basis also helps with the bacteria in the mouth. Hamamelis virginiana produces a specific kind of tannins called hamamelitannis . One of those substances displays a specific cytotoxic activity against colon cancer.