Growing Herbal Medicine Gardens Top Herbs I Love To Plant

It’s spring and I’m beyond thrilled to dive into my medicinal herb garden. In this episode I’m sharing the must have herbs to  grow for my family. You’ll learn about chamomile, elecampane, and Tulsi and  their numerous health benefits, including supporting respiratory health, aiding digestion, and combating stress. I shared some tips for growing these herbs and suggest ways to source quality seeds and starts. 

If you want to dive deeper, join us for an upcoming Medicinal Herb Garden Planning Party inside the Apothecary Momma Community.

You can join us here:  https://www.theherbalistspath.com/apothecary-momma-herbal-mentorship

01:03 Embracing Spring & Garden Dreams

01:58 Must-Have Herbs for Your Garden

04:05 Chamomile: The Sleepy Time Super Herb

07:27 Elecampane: The Respiratory System's Best Friend

10:35 Tulsi: The Respiratory and Stress Relief Hero

15:23 Growing a Medicinal Herb Garden

16:36 Seed Sourcing and Community Engagement

If you've been trying to figure out the best remedies to have stocked in your natural medicine cabinet, you are in luck! I've got a free guide for you where I'm sharing the best remedies to have for all the things from colds and flu, to tummy aches, sleeplessness, and daily well-being. You can get it right here!

If you're done struggling to keep your kids healthy as cold and flu season comes about, then you are going to LOVE Oregon's Wild Harvest and their Kids Echinacea with Raspberry flavoring. I know my daughter LOVES it, in fact she asks me for it all of the time, even if she's not sick!
Be sure to get yours w/ 15% off here!

Transcript

 Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Herbalist's Path podcast. I am so happy and so honored that you are here. I know it's been a minute since I've done an episode and it's because I got really sick for a few weeks right before the summit that I was hosting. If you didn't partake in the Holistically Healthy Family Summit, then you're lucky because you didn't have to hear me coughing all of the time.

but you're also unfortunate because you missed out on some incredible speakers, tons of great prizes and amazing community of people and just so much incredible knowledge and information that was shared during that summit. But for me, it was a super bummer to get sick the week before. And I was having such a hard time being able to talk, but here I am back and in action.

And I am so darn. I am happy to be able to chat. I think a lot of that might have to do with the fact that daylight savings time just happened and it's a bit sunny where I am and I just got done with a beautiful hike through the woods and I can see new plant friends starting to pop up and I can hear the birds singing and I don't know about you but I am So ready for springtime.

Winter just does it in for me. It's a tough time. I love the snow. I appreciate nature and the seasons, but I need that sunshine. And I need to dig in the garden. I need to see my plant friends popping up all around. Sure I'm blessed to be in a evergreen forest with lots of plants around even during the winter.

But. I think you get what I mean. Springtime is exciting and it's really close. At the time of recording this, we're six days away from the first day of spring and again I'm elated about it so I'm also thinking a lot about my garden and what I'm gonna do with my garden this year and so I figured I would hop on and share with you some of the herbs that are absolute must have in my garden. 

And mind you, I do not have a big garden anymore. Once upon a time I did, but the home that I live in is not big enough for a big garden, so we just have a little bit of space, but yet I am able to grow so much good medicine in that little space and I'm so grateful for it. So grateful for it. I'm going to chat about a few of my favorite herbs in there today and maybe share where you might want to go and get yourself some seeds or some plant starts or whatever it is that you want and then later this month I'm going to be doing an herbal blog.

garden planning party inside of the Herbalist's Path community. So if you are a part of that community, I would love to have you show up and do some garden planning with me, really get some good medicine rolling for yourself and your family this year. To do that you can either, you can become an Apothecary Mama member, where I help you learn how to use herbs safely and effectively and really start to think strategically about those kinds of things.

You can do it when you're a Medicine Making Mama student where it's all about how to make all the remedies. Kids Safe Herb Club, basically like any of my programs, gets you inside of the Herbalist's Path community and I am going to be hosting that class for the entire community. I do hope that you will join me in there one way or another.

And even if you don't, I hope that you learn something about the plants that are must haves in my garden. Let's get started. Let's start, shall we? I think one that I'm really excited about right now and I think because over the years I've learned a few lessons about growing it, I tend to get a little late into the garden, like I'm in an area where it's scary to plant before April because it's cold or we'll get those like springtime tease days which we're about to get this coming week.

It's going to be like almost in the 70s and I know right after that it's probably going to dump a bunch of snow and boom, womp, then all my plants die. But then I forget to plant the ones that need to be planted early sometimes. So one of those that I have discovered really needs to be out there earlier this year is chamomile. 

And I talk about chamomile a lot in my podcast and in the blogs and in all of my programs because I love chamomile. It is so much more than just like that sleepy time herb. Most people are like, oh I'll have a cup of chamomile tea and I'll go to bed, which lovely, it is really fantastic for that, but it is so much more of a powerful herb than most people think about.

For instance, If somebody is dealing with anxiety, they can absolutely benefit from chamomile. If somebody is dealing with conjunctivitis or pink eye, which my niece had this weekend when we went down to go hang out with her chamomile in a warm compress on the eye can work wonders. You can use it like as a wound wash or something along those lines and it happens to be great.

It's fantastic for digestive health, so  if your child or yourself you're dealing with like tummy upset or gassiness or bloating, chamomile is what's called a carminative herb and can really help alleviate a lot of that. It's also really rich in bitters, so In our society, we are given a lot of sugar, and we've been taught to hate the bitter flavor, but bitter is actually really beneficial for us, and when we taste that bitter, it sends these chemical messages up to the brain that then sends more messages to the digestive system to release all of your digestive system's fluids, like your bile and enzymes, and all of those things to really help you.

improve the digestive process all over, and it helps to break down fats and proteins within your body. So trying to embrace and love that bitter flavor and taste a little bit more is a really good idea. And you can get that from a beautiful plant just like chamomile. So she's relatively easy to grow when you don't. 

she does like the cooler seasons, at least where I live. And she's an annual she'll easily self seed if you let her and it gets going, or you can just plant some seeds nice and early in the spring, or go get some starts from your favorite local herbalist or gardener, whichever one you want to do. But I think that this weekend I'm going to give it a shot and try and get some chamomile going.

And make sure I'm not late this year. Another plant I'm really excited to have popping back up. I'm not even planting it this year, it's just doing its own thing. It's the third year this particular plant has, or these plants have, particular plants have been in my garden and it's elecampane. Elecampane is a really fantastic powerhouse herb.

It's also incredibly beautiful, like very tall and has these gorgeous yellow sunshiny flowers that some people might just say, Oh, it's a sunflower, but it's very much not a sunflower, but just stunning. And right now, I am all about the Yella campaign after dealing with this major respiratory tract infection that I had during the Holistically Healthy Family Summit, where like my, I couldn't stop coughing, and I kept having this very pestery little nagging cough.

cough, but I wasn't producing a lot of phlegm, so the alicampane was actually pretty soothing for my respiratory tract and it is inexpectorant, so normally I would take inexpectorant herb like that more when I have a very phlegmy, like wet, congested cough, but I chose to use the alicampane anyways in this particular case because it was like I couldn't get whatever was tickling me.

out of my respiratory tract and it was so darn frustrating especially when I was talking for like hours a day and leading an event and like the person like I couldn't have somebody else talk for me I was the one putting the event on so it was a super bummer but anyways Ella Campagne definitely will be a star of my garden this year she's again absolutely stunning like it's gonna make you smile if you grow Ella Campagne in your garden.

I will say that you do want to grow it, like I'm on year 3, so this year I will be harvesting my plants and gathering the roots because it takes 2 3 years for the roots to be fully mature and the best medicine for your garden, I'll be saying goodbye to those plants this fall, but I will also be saying thank you for being amazing medicine for myself and my family.

Ah, what a joy and a pleasure, right? It's such an honor to be able to do these kinds of things and not have to rely on the whole system. Speaking of, if you're listening to this as it goes live, Check out the sustainable living bundle going on if you don't want to rely on the whole system and you want to Know what kind of good medicine you have around or maybe grow your own food or just you know be able to be a bit more self sufficient, then you have to check that out.

I'll put a little plug in it in the show notes for you. Okay, back to like herbs and what we're here to talk about and the garden and let's talk a little bit about the respiratory system. So  This next herb that I'm so excited to have an abundance of in my garden this year is Tulsi. I love Tulsi so darn much and one cool thing about it that I'm really appreciating right now is that Tulsi is actually, also fantastic for the respiratory tract and most people don't think about that, but it can be a great expectorant, but where I'm really appreciating it right now is it has this ability to increase your lung capacity and overall prana and for me right now that has been great, like I was really sick and I don't know where it came from or how it happened and I can't even say exactly what I had because I did not go tested.

I get tested. I just stayed at home and tried to treat myself with everything that I had around. Regardless, I was having a hard time taking like full deep breaths and like really filling up my whole lung cavities and I went for a few walks in the woods and just noticed that like my breath was very short and like I almost couldn't breathe that deep and so I was like, oh yeah Tulsi could really help me right now and so I grabbed some and you know what?

Tulsi really helped me expand my lungs and take an actual deep breath.  And while I'm like singing praises to it because that's why I've really needed it right now, that's totally not the reason I started growing tulsi in my garden for the first place. In the first place, there are so many other reasons to absolutely love tulsi and want to grow it for yourself and for your family.

And this year for the first time, I'm going to try starting Tulsi from seed. So one of my apothecary mama students gifted me some of her Tulsi seeds, which I'm so grateful for. And I'm going to give it a shot. In the past, I have always bought starts and planted them and hoped my Tulsi would grow in amazing ways.

But now I'm really excited to take the seeds that she grew and plant them. See how I can make amazing medicine and plants out of it. So that'll be really beautiful.

Yeah.  There's so many reasons, like I said, to love Tulsi, and one of the things is like, it's delicious. A cup of Tulsi tea is an absolute delight to drink. Even my daughter absolutely loves it. And the medicinal benefits we could have six podcasts just on the medicinal benefits of Tulsi. One thing that's fantastic for me, particularly, is it's got an amazing ability to cool. 

Fight the negative effects of stress, so like elevated cortisol and elevated blood sugar, things along those lines, so it acts as an adaptogenic herb and helps your body adapt to these various things, but also lowers those cortisol levels when they would normally rise to much, much higher levels if you weren't using something like Tulsi, if you're in some type of, stressful scenario, which I think this day and age, a lot of us are with like, our society and inflation and I think post COVID a lot of people have been dealing with more stress than normal.

So hopefully you can find benefit in Tulsi in that way if you need it. Other reasons you might find benefit in it is it does a great job of bringing circulation to your brain. So it will improve your overall mental clarity, your focus, like just being alert. It's been shown to help people manage ADHD and even prevent.

Alzheimer's and dementia from happening. It's great for tummy upset. It is just, it's a superhero. Again, my daughter loves Darnier NET I make with Tulsi. And the other thing is like in general, it just does this fantastic job of  Lifting your energy, building your spirit, and just creating this true sense of overall health and well being.

And I love, love, love Tulsi for that. And I love it because my kiddo loves it too. And that's a lot of love. And I love. So don't judge me for that.  Anyways, there are so many great plants to grow in a garden. Like this is something I could talk about for so darn long. Of course, I'm growing my peppermints and my spearmints and catnip and lemon balm and basil and dill and fennel and all these amazing  herbs that are culinary herbs, but great medicine.

Motherwort,  Marshmallow, arnica, I've got St. John's Wort that grows all around me and it pops up every once in a while in my garden too and I let it do its thing. Just so much good medicine to plant and as I think about, as I was like thinking about this episode and which herbs I was going to talk about in my teeny tiny little garden It made me realize oh my gosh, I really do get to grow a lot in that teeny tiny little garden.

So I hope you also get to grow a lot no matter how big or little your garden is. Again, I am doing the medicinal herbs I'm going to be having a herb garden planning party a little bit later this month of March, so if you want to join us inside the Herbalist's Path community and take part in that little class, I think it'll be a lot of fun.

I would love, love, love to see you there.  And I did say that I would suggest some places where you can get fantastic seeds or starts or things like that. I'm a huge fan of a local seed library or connecting with your friends and doing seed trades and swaps and like I was so lucky to have my students send me some seeds.

I'm so darn grateful for that. I also love supporting my local herb farmers and gardeners and checking to see if they have any starts or seeds that I might be able to You know, purchase off of them and help them with everything they do in their livelihood and their great work. Beyond that once you've exhausted your local people. 

I do love Strictly Medicinal Seeds, fantastic quality of seed. You can also buy starts and they'll ship them to you overnight and things like that. Territorial Seed Company, fantastic as well. Mountain Reserves is a great place to get seeds too. And really again, it's just all about quality.

If you can gather your seeds each year so you don't have to get new ones the next year, that's a really great way to be self sufficient and to keep your medicine garden going in a way that's not going to break the bank every single year that it becomes garden  That's what I've got for you today.

I hope that you are inspired to start going and digging in the dirt. I know I am beyond ready for such things and yeah, let me know if you have any questions. Reach out to me on Instagram in the DMs or hit me up on my email at buddingherbalist at theherbalistpath. com. I'd love to hear about what you are growing this year.

Thanks so much, have a great day, and Happy Spring!