15 MEDICINAL HERBS TO GROW AND THEIR COMMON USES

hey you guys this is not a normal setting for a sunday pantry chat but um today we're gonna be talking about one of my top favorite topics and that's medicinal herbs [Music] the cottage garden doesn't look like there's a lot going on and we haven't even done the spring cleanup yet so it's a bit of a wreck out here but if you look closely you can see that there's plants starting to pop up all over the place all my medicinal herbs and flowers i'm so excited even some perennial greens and vegetables so this is going to be a really exciting space in a few weeks and it's just so exciting to see the snow go away and plants start popping out of the ground if you are not growing medicinal herbs this is a great year to start you know with an overwhelmed medical system it means that things that you could normally get help for maybe the help may be less accessible and you know honestly as somebody who wants to help out the medical system to be able to care for people who are most in need this is a great time to learn how to treat the more common illnesses or issues health issues that you have at home to be able to lessen the burden on that medical system and herbs are a great way to do it in fact they're one of my favorite ways to do that so one of the questions that i get asked most often is which herbs should i grow in my garden and if you have joined me for any of my live trainings on herbs you'll know that my answer is the herbs that you need to treat the health problems that you have regularly in your family um but for some people they don't even know where to start they don't even know which herbs those would be so i went ahead and put together a list of about 15 herbs that are easy to grow in a home garden setting and between them they're going to cover a large majority of the basic health problems the common illnesses the things that households and families run into regularly to be able to treat it so that you have options in your yard to be able to treat them now these herbs are in no way the only herbs that treat these issues they're also this list is like you know it's kind of like asking you to choose your favorite child right like asking you to choose just a handful of herbs that treat things is kind of a hard thing to do and that's because all the herbs are amazing and all of them are wonderful so for this list i just picked things that i really felt were accessible easy to get either in seeds or maybe at a nursery to get starts things that are going to cover multiple health issues or give you a well-rounded coverage of different issues that you might experience so please feel free to add herbs to your list take them out change it around again this is not in any way a conclusive list there's a lot more okay so we're gonna start oh and this is not in order of importance because you know what the most important herb for you to grow is the one that answers the health problem that you have most often nobody can tell you which herb is the most important or the best herb for you to grow for your family because it's going to be different for every family so this is not an order of importance and a lot of these herbs are perennial which i just absolutely love not all of them but a lot of them because right now i can't even put my earliest spring seeds in the ground it's just too early here and yet i already have perennial herbs and vegetables coming up all around me that just tells you that i have done no work this spring i haven't done any i haven't even gotten out here and cut down the old like sunflowers you can see back there that i left up for the birds to eat all winter i haven't even come and done any of those types of chores and these plants are already sprouting and growing all by themselves let me tell you when life gets hard having your garden just out there doing its thing whether you show up or not is an amazing amazing thing and something you'll be thankful for year after year okay so let's get right to it herb number one on my list is peppermint peppermint now some of you have to be really careful with peppermint because it can be invasive and it can spread in some environments it will just take over your whole garden so you may want to grow peppermint in a container but peppermint specifically and peppermint although the mints have different actions in the body medicinal medicinal actions so that means peppermint is going to be a little different than spearmint peppermint is so incredibly useful it's useful for stomach issues it's useful for sinus issues it's very useful for cooling whether it's because internally you're getting really hot maybe it's a hot summer day and you're working a cup of peppermint iced tea can be a wonderful thing to do but it's also cooling topically that means if you have a sunburn that can really help with the pain of it of course it's a great flavoring for everything right i love peppermint not everybody does but it's a most people enjoy peppermint so you'll probably find somebody a friend that's going to come over somebody who enjoys getting to have that peppermint iced tea it's also really powerful for headaches helping with headaches whether it's applied topically or internally taken and another one that i know for me is really important because i struggle with motion sickness and i struggle with morning sickness when i'm pregnant is that peppermint can help with motion sickness i know ginger is what is really known for that but oddly enough ginger makes me feel sick to my stomach when i already have an upset stomach from motion sickness and so peppermint is the thing that i grab for plus it grows really well in my environment whereas ginger i have to grow indoors okay so plant number two is calendula now calendula is an annual but a lot of times it's a self-sowing annual that means it will drop seeds in the spot that it's in and then come right back in that same spot next year calendula is such a wonderful plant and this is really known and and does a great job at covering all of the skin issues if you have a rash if you have something that's uncomfortable if you have a wound usually anything to do with skin is helped by calendula it is even anti-fungal so diaper rashes a great place to use that or any fungal issues that you have topically but you know another really great use of calendula that we actually find ourselves using often in our house is that it's a lymph stimulant that means if you have like swollen achy lymph glands when you're sick this is going to help move that along so we'll take it as a t tea i can't say i love the flavor but mixed into something else like peppermint it can really help to move along lymph stagnation issues it's also great as the insects love it for its flowers so it's a wonderful pollinator plant and it's wonderful for a dye food dye fabric dye or just putting that pretty pop of color into some herbal tea that you're mixing up it's just a wonderful thing for lots of uses around the house so i really really recommend getting calendula another great thing is it's super easy to save calendula seeds so that you once you get it in the ground you don't need to keep buying the seeds over and over again okay the next one is bee balm now this goes by several different names there's bee balm there's bergamot the technical name is monarda and this is another plant it's in the mint family and it does have a tendency to spread and take over so again if you're in a climate where plants just go crazy they just are going to kind of become invasive then you may want to get this into a container it's a little hard to keep contained so you might even want to put it out kind of on the edge of the yard where it can take over and the wonderful thing about that is it's got these beautiful flowers the insects absolutely love them and they're really pretty so they kind of can just look like their own flower garden put them in a spot where they can just go wild and you look like you have a beautiful flower bed the wonderful thing about bee balm is that it is um sorry my paper is blowing away in the breeze here i want to make sure i cover all the things i didn't want to forget anything um is that it is a very anti-microbial um so it is very much known to be anti-fungal anti-viral and antibacterial but it's also very soothing so this really comes into play for things like coughs skin stomach cramps things like that where you really need to deal with calming tissue down while attacking a microbial problem that you've got this is really good because it is very gentle it's considered a very gentle herb and so it can be really good for children really good thing to have on hand if you're a family and you have children especially if you have children that kind of get stomachaches or they start with a cough and it just won't go away this can be a great herb to have on hand and again once you plant it you're going to have it for a long time so it's just going to be out in your yard waiting for you to have a health problem ah it's my favorite favorite kind of health herb herb to have on hand okay another one that is also in the mint family is lemon balm and again like i said earlier all the mints and all the plants in the mint family have different actions on our body and i've got to say if i had to pick one herb one herb it might be lemon balm because it's got so many uses it has so many actions on the body and yet it's incredibly gentle and it's actually very good tasting it has a nice light lemon flavor but lemon balm is just one of those things that children can have um you know it just is applicable just about everywhere but even though it's very gentle it is actually very strong so you know this is kind of hard for us to understand when we've been trained in the pharmaceutical world that things in the herbal world can be both gentle acting but very very effective in our minds a pharmaceutical the stronger it is the more dangerous it is right and the harsher its action on the body it's not that way in the herbal world which is a wonderful thing that means you have very very many very effective herbs that are also very gentle acting on the body they really affect the tissue or the one thing that they need to affect but the rest of the body it just is very harmonious with it and it works really well so lemon balm is one of those things it is incredibly good for breaking fever so if you have a fever it can be really really helpful with that colds and flus coughs it's helpful for calming nerves in fact i wouldn't really want to highlight that because it's very helpful for calming nerves if you feel stressed and you have a patch of lemon balm you can literally go out and just smell it and just the aroma therapy of kind of crushing up a few leaves in your hands and smelling it will make you feel almost instantly like oh it's okay things are okay it's called a nervine that action on the body is called a nervine and it helps to soothe frayed nerves um this is wonderful and i often say this is the best herbs for families with children because it helps moms calm down or frazzled dads calm down and find their smile again so make sure that you get some lemon balm in the garden it's also good if you're having a hard time calming down and going to sleep even if you're small child so a lemon balm tea is just a wonderful thing very easy to make okay keep moving number five tulsi which is holy basil this is a great herb for energy issues it's called an adaptogen which means that it's going to help your body adapt in stress not just your nerves like the lemon balm but actually your physical body so it's going to help your body to regulated stress response which is really really important a lot of you guys if you have blood sugar issues will realize that they get really exasperated when there's a stressful situation it's because your body's doing all these different hormonal things to account for the stress and help you deal with the stress an adaptogen like the tulsi is going to help your body respond in a better way that helps you not have so many health problems um and so this is a really wonderful thing to have another thing that this tulsi is good for and this i think right now in this circumstance that we're in um in you know with a pandemic a lot of people are realizing they're having a very hard time feeling focused that they're very stressed and that it comes out in a lack of focus a lack of ability to concentrate tulsi is just this amazing herb for being able to ground you like get your brain to focus on what it's in make you kind of come back down and exist in your body instead of being all up in your head all over the place i love this herb for this reason um and it really helps if you're a type a personality and you get yourself spun out like i do and it's like i gotta do this and i gotta do this and i really wanna do this thing and i can i do this and do i have time to do that this is really gonna help you just come back down and like focus and just do the thing you have on hand it's also really good it's a slightly anti-microbial are antibacterial and it can be specifically good for mouths like antibacterial in mouths so people play tulsi a lot in mouthwashes because it can be very good for that it's also known as an anti-depressive if you're feeling a little bit depressed this is going to help a lot because of that action on the brain and just helping center you and ground you okay echinacea of course we all need some acne it's such a wonderful thing to grow but something you need to know about acne is you can't harvest it really until the second year now you can harvest it you're just not going to get much from it because you harvest the roots so it's great if you don't have ignatia growing grow it right now get it started get it in your garden get as many plants as you can manage to get in the garden because when you harvest it you pull out the whole plant um the leaves the aerial parts like the leaves and the flowers and the stems are beneficial but the um the roots are the most beneficial so usually if i'm going to make an acne nation tincture i'm going to make it with all the parts of the plants including the roots now one of the good things about ignatius once it gets established it's really going to be easy to spread by root division so it's just one of those good things get a patch going this year and then try to leave it alone for a few years if you need to harvest it off this year get some extra because you're going to need to harvest multiple whereas if you let it grow up and get larger then you know you probably get by with just harvesting one now let's talk about uses for ignatia obviously we know it kind of as an immune response and it is an immune stimulant that means it's gonna make your body take this quick action against invaders now it's not historically really known for its immune boosting what it is known for and has long historical use is for anti-infection that's why it's useful for that like quick stimulation of your immune system is because it's actually going to fight an infection right there so this is just a great herb for any form of infection that you have going on in your body whether it's phys you know topical something on your skin or whether it's something internal so it's really should be looked at as this infection fighter a great example of that is taking a little piece of ignacio ignatia root if you have it growing in your garden you can go out and just dig it up and just break off a tiny piece cover it back up so the plant keeps growing and you just chew on that that if you have a sore throat or a problem in your throat or your mouth that is not only going to numb it for a while but you'd be amazed at how quickly it can get you over a sore throat or a cold in that way um so really ignatia is one of the top things that we have as a infection fighter one of them not the only one but one of the top ones okay another plant that's very similar in that you're going to use its roots is a plant called ella campaign now i know that this you don't hear about this herb very often and i'm not entirely sure why because it is a wonderful wonderful herb for bronchial issues if you have any sort of a tendency towards colds flus anything that gets down in your chest you want some ella campaign growing in your garden and again you'll want to get it started early because you'll be harvesting the roots just like the ignatia and it's just a good plant it gets very large and just like ignatia it gets a beautiful flower on it so this can just be mixed into flower beds in some places and you know most people have no idea that this is a medicinal plant so it's a really wonderful thing if you can just take your pretty flower beds up front and just fill them with these beautiful medicinal herbs okay another one this is a great herb and it's sage just your regular old culinary sage now sage you generally use the leaves of and really sage shines for mouth issues and throat issues that's going to be one of the first herbs that i grab if there is a cold sore there's a sore throat there's a tooth problem there's a i already said a sore throat maybe a horse throat all of those things really respond to sage and it's just a great herb to have on hand it's also whitening for your teeth so a lot of tooth powders herbal tooth powders include sage to help whiten your teeth again it's a great herb to have because it has multiple uses obviously it has a culinary use too and we just love using it in different dishes in the house okay oh you know it also um has some effects on correcting menopause issues for women and it enhances oxygen in the brain and blood flow to the brain so a lot of people use it for brain issues memory issues sometimes after things like a concussion or an injury to the head that might have some brain impact people use it on that for that and i haven't had to use it for those things yet but i have it on hand in case i ever need to okay the next one is oregano and this is another one i wouldn't want to have a garden without oregano because it's so great on pizza and everything else but it's such a strong antimicrobial herb that i love having it on hand to blend with other things or to have as a backup it is just known to just really really be antimicrobial in that it's anti-viral anti-fungal antibacterial some studies out there say because it is so it is so high in antioxidants that it is protective of cancer that it will protect you in some ways from cancer just with those antioxidants because it's super super high in antioxidants anything um you know a flu tea a cold tea anything like that is really benefited by the addition of some oregano to help fight the invaders whatever they are be it um bacterial or viral now the next thing right along with that is garlic and garlic or onions just really should be grown in every garden every medicinal garden just for medicinal purposes and of course garlic is a super antibiotic it's anti-fungal and it's anti-viral so it really helps with a lot of issues in that way it can help with things like tooth abscesses infections in the skin viral infections like colds anything like that can be helped by garlic and of course we know that it is kind of a food source so we can feel pretty safe about taking it you can consume a lot of garlic pretty easily just by cooking with it which is a great thing to do okay next is horseradish now even if you don't like the flavor of horseradish it's a great thing to grow it is something that will spread so make sure you put it in its own little clump somewhere and let it do its thing and it'll just sit there until you're ready horseradish um used to have the common term of the poor man's antibiotic because once you get it in the garden you don't have to touch it again like it's just gonna be there for you waiting so you're not gonna spend a lot of money on it it's a very very hardy as a plant but it really really shines for a few different types of infections sinus bronchial and urinary tract infections in fact one of the major pharmaceutical drugs that we have on the market for urinary tract infections is made from a base of the compound of horseradish so this is a very very useful herb to have on hand again even if you don't like eating it but i think it's delicious so i enjoy spicing up a lot of different beef dishes with it okay then you want marshmallow or hollyhock marshmallow is the common thing that you would see that would be um you know listed as the medicinal but holly hawks are very very closely related and they have the exact same medicinal properties as the marshmallow and of course they're a little bit prettier their flowers are a little flashier than the marshmallow flowers which are a little small not as showy they're still pretty in their own way i love having hollyhocks in my garden because they're so beautiful but every single part of the plant is also edible it's roots it's leaves its flowers even if it's it's stems if you could figure out how to make it palatable maybe when they're very tender and small but they're also very medicinal in that they're very mucilaginous which means that they're very soothing so whether you have a sore throat you have a stomach that's a little upset or you have a rash or a skin problem something like that holly hawk or that marshmallow is going to be very very soothing to irritated tissue so i love having that on hand next for me would be yarrow a lot of places you can forage for yarrow and i'm really not putting the herbs that i forage in here on this list there are some herbs that i wouldn't want to do without and if i didn't have them locally i would be growing them herbs like elderberry and mullen and in a lot of places yarrow grows all in all the grassy areas and in fact um it's like that here but i also grow it in my garden because um i want it quick on hand and the reason for that is it's one of the best ways to stop bleeding that i have ever seen it will stop bleeding from deep wounds very very quickly and so i like to make sure i have that on hand but it is also famous for its use in flu mixtures because it can bring down a fever it helps to regulate the body induce a sweat and thereby bring down fevers so it's just a wonderful thing to have in your yard quick at hand for bleeding issues but also ready for tea mixtures or tinctures for handling flues okay two more to go chamomile i wouldn't know what to do without chamomile chamomile is just such a great herb it's so gentle for for children in fact i've used it for brand new babies with upset tummies very very successfully um gassy tummies anything like that this is just a wonderful thing to grab for of course it's going to help promote sleep it's also going to promote uh home which is a really good thing sometimes you just need to calm people down and a cup of chamomile tea if brewed strongly enough can absolutely do that another wonderful thing that we use chamomile for is for eye problems a light chamomile tea washed into the eye can help with conjunctivitis it can help with all sorts of issues and irritants of the eye which is a wonderful thing to have on hand it can bring down a fever and honestly i have seen that work really quickly when used as an insert i'm trying to think of the right word for it when put it into the intestines so for babies sometimes they have or young children sometimes they can have kind of that mysterious fever all of a sudden they're feverish they're upset they're hot maybe and grumpy and they just don't feel well maybe a lot of malaise with it and you just can't track it down nobody else is sick you're not seeing signs anywhere you know amazing thing to do it would be a chamomile insert which is like a small enema and that i have watched bring down a fever in five minutes flat and then people get up and feel great and um i think a lot of times it helps to clear any obstructions in the bowels and that can often be the cause of that type of kind of mysterious fever in younger children so you can imagine i keep chamomile in my garden it is another annual often it's a self-sewing annual but i don't mind it so useful that i really don't mind planting it again every year to make sure it's there and another one this is herb number 15 for me that i would make sure to have in the garden is dill dill is a wonderful thing to grab for a quick relief of an upset stomach and i just find that that is super super helpful to have on hand you can give out a little dill seed people can chew it up and it's amazing how fast that can help an upset stomach particularly if your stomach's upset because of gas um or bloating of course it tastes great in pickles and every garden in my opinion has to have dill in it so that you can have your cucumber pickles your fermented pickles but it's also there have been clinical studies on it helping with depression which is a really good thing if you're having a problem feeling down then some dill can amazingly bring some sunshine into your life um it can also help with painful menstruation so you can see a lot of the herbs here when you put them all together they give you this kind of package that says you're going to have a lot of things that you can treat right out of your garden with just these 15 herbs so i really really recommend that you get those into your garden this year if you don't already have them um you know other herbs that are really quickly close to the list for me are things like rose a rose plant lavender valerian you know honestly there's a whole list of them but those are some of my top plants um some anise hyssop and some regular hyssop all of those things oh catnip is another really good one all those things are really good really useful herbs to have but if you just have to start with a few start with some on this list because it's going to help you cover a lot of health issues all off of just a handful of plants hey you guys i hope you're well take care and get some plants in the garden see you soon [Music] goodbye

Channel: Homesteading Family

Views: 606,638

Keywords: Homesteading, Self-Sufficiency, Sustainable, Living, Permaculture, Homesteading Family, medicinal plants and their uses, medicinal plants and herbs, medicinal herbs, medicinal plants, home remedies, herbal medicine, medicinal plants at home, medicinal plants and their uses in english, medicinal plants and their uses with pictures and scientific names, home remedies for cough, medicinal herbs to grow, medicinal herbs and plants, medicinal herbs and their uses with pictures

Id: 0xxJJNNH6LA

Length: 31min 17sec (1877 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 19 2020