A New Project in 2014: Medicinal Herb Garden

When did pharmacies start to surface?  According to Wikipedia, pharmacies started to appear as early as the first third of the 19th century. However, people have been creating medicine for much longer than that.  "Archaeological evidence indicates that the use of medicinal plants dates at least to the Paleolithic, approximately 60,000 years ago." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbal_medicine)

Picture from Emerald Hills Pharmacy:  http://emeraldhillspharmacy.com/compounding/

In years past, many people understood how herbs could be used medicinally.  Many of the prescriptions we use today were created using our knowledge of naturally - occurring chemicals in plants.  The concept of growing herbs for culinary use is not a new one to us.  We have been doing this for years.  What a joy it is to go out to our herb garden to pluck fresh rosemary, oregano and thyme for a pasta sauce!  Also,growing your own herbs is a great way to save money.  Store-bought herbs are so much more expensive than the herbs grown  in your backyard.

So, we started watching videos about growing medicinal herbs and how to use them to prepare tinctures, decoctions, salves and more.  This made us think about how fun it would be to create our own supply of home-grown and prepared medicine.  I started to visualize iconic old pharmacies with all those intriguing glass bottles.  Bottom line, we were hooked and on to our next homesteading endeavor.

Picture from: http://historicindianapolis.com/revisited-indianapolis-then-and-now-better-babies-building-and-hooks-drug-store-museum-indiana-state-fairgrounds/

Step 1:  Planning the herb garden: Plots

Our garden will take up about 1/2 of our backyard so, the herb garden consists of several plots in the yard.  Out we went into the backyard with pen and paper, measuring available spaces and taking notes.

Step 2:  The spreadsheet:  Planning what goes where

Nick told me this was my project because he is in charge of planning the garden.  At first I was a little overwhelmed but then I remembered how Nick goes about planning where he will put what in the garden:  a spreadsheet.  So, I created three tabs:  Medicinal Herbs, Plots and Plant Placement, and went to work.  Result - I know what I plant and where I will plant it. 

Here are the herbs we have selected:


Step 3:  Preparing the ground

We  bumped into a wonderful man that owns a small, commercial farm that tills gardens on the side.  We will have him come out early March to till our garden and the 2 large herb plots.  Then we will mix in our home made compost and other materials based on the herb's soil requirements (You guessed it, soil preference is a column under my medicinal herb tab in my spreadsheet.)

Step 4:  Learning how to prepare medicinal herbs

This is the best part!  Check back here often to see updates as we further explore uses of medicinal herbs, how to prepare them and store them.  We will also document our progress growing the herbs so we can track our successes and where we need to improve next year.