Fifteen Facts about Fireweed

Fireweed Chamerion angustifolium is so named because it is the first plant to spread like a welcome weed following a fire.A single fireweed plant produces an incredible 80,000 seeds! Each seed is equipped with tiny umbrella-like tufts that allows them to soar through the air peppering the entire landscape with pink possibilities. The main reason…

Yarrow in the Herb Garden

Achilleas millefolium's flat white blossoms with their multitude of tiny, perfect flowers and silver-green feathery foliage are a familiar sight in the ditches and fields of Canada. Sadly, as familiarity breeds contempt, the lowly white yarrow is too often denied its rightful place in the herb garden. Yarrow gets its Latin name from Achilles, the…

A Dozen Uses for Leftover Tea!

Stop! Don't pour that cold tea down the drain! Here are a dozen uses for leftover tea... Water your plants with herbal teas. While each type of herbal tea has different beneficial properties, all herbal tea is good for houseplants. Chamomile tea has the added benefit of preventing damp off in young seedlings.Use as a hair rinse. Chamomile tea works great…

Chive Talk

If Basil is like a diva who begs for a sweater on a balmy spring morning, Chives is the guy who drapes his leather jacket over her shoulders and flexes his tattooed muscles with nary a goose bump in sight. Hardy down to zone 2 Allium schoenoprasumis the last plant to say die in the fall and the first…

What Dandelions Are Good For

Dandelions are much more than a common weed; they are a valuable medicine. Who knew the best way to rid your property of dandelions was to use them! Well, as it turns out, plenty of people. Read this list once and you will look at dandelions differently forever. Ailments dandelions have been used to remedy: Acne…

Herb Strewer an Ancient Occupation

If you’ve never heard of Herb Strewers as an occupation, it is likely because the job has been obsolete for almost two hundred years. And that’s a shame. Well, sort of. While the image of making a living strewing herbs is alluring, especially for us garden types, the necessity of the occupation was a little…

Three Great Uses for Chamomile Tea

If you would like to grow chamomile in your herb garden for making your own tea, choose German Chamomile Matricaria recutita.

Eat Your Weeds!

Think you can’t have a garden, because you tried it once and all you could grow were weeds? Think again! For one thing, you absolutely can learn to garden. It just takes perseverance and a willingness to learn. Plants are eager to grow, given even the tiniest bit of love. But secondly, just growing weeds…

Dandelions are a Spring Tonic

Dandelions supplied the early homesteaders with vital vitamins and nutrients. It was thought of as a spring tonic.

Distrust Lavender

In The Language of Flowers lavender means distrust. Find out why.