Post Archives tagged ‘seeds’



Herb Growing… The saga continues

Posted on: May 5th, 2015 by
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Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to post on this blog as much as I’d have liked over the past year… I have found myself rather busy setting up my herbal medicine business and trying to kick-start that side of my life.

But we didn’t stop working on Cae Non, and the land didn’t stop growing things!! The herbs I planted 1 – 2 years ago in the raised beds are now all mature, and doing really well. I got a goodly crop of plant material from them last year, which is presently sitting in tincture form on my dispensary stock shelves. There is no reason to think that those plants will not give equally as good a crop (if not better) this year.

So, how am I continuing to grow the herb garden? Well, there are two avenues which need developing now: Firstly, making more raised beds for the smaller herbs and perennials, and secondly, clearing some more ground and creating larger beds or places to plant larger medicinal shrubs and trees.

I have about 10 additional species of smaller medicinal plants and shrubs to go into the new raised beds… when I get round to building them(!!!), and I have got a couple of larger medicinal shrubs waiting for a home. These are more suited to planting straight into the ground, albeit with some compost or manure turned in to give some biomass to the heavy clay soil. But I have also ordered seeds for 9 more larger shrubs that I don’t presently have.

The list of shrub/tree seeds for planting this summer are:

  • Echinacea pururea (Echinacea)
  • Eucalyptus globulus  (Bluegum)
  • Phytolacca americana (Pokeweed)
  • Albizzia julibrissin (Silk Tree)
  • Solidago canadensis  (Golden Rod)
  • Dature stramonium (Thorn apple)
  • Prunus serotina (Black Cherry)
  • Lycium barbarum (Goji berry)
  • Vitex agnus-castus (Chaste tree)

It is worth noting where I bought these seeds: an ebay seller called ‘seedsworld’, a Lithuanian seller/shop who stock many unusual, interesting, and medicinal plants. Go and check out his shop if you are interested in growing these sorts of plants – his seeds are very reasonably priced, and of good quality ( I have bought from him before), and postage is very reasonable – about £2 to Britain for 10 packets of seeds. He is also friendly and approachable and will readily answer questions if you email him. Cannot rate his service or seeds highly enough!

The spring is sprung…

Posted on: July 8th, 2013 by
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…If not yet literally, then certainly in terms of activity!

This week a few things really seem to have fallen into place! The two most exciting thing from my point of view is that we have just taken delivery of a ton of top soil ready for the herb garden. It is bagged up waiting for me to use it where I need (mainly in raised beds). This is great news as it dramatically increases the list of herbs and medicinal plants I can grow at Cae Non.

Next, and equally exciting for me is that I have just sent in the first seed order of the year! So far the list looks like:

Angelica – Angelica archangelica
Borage – Borago officinalis
Burdock – Arctium lappa
Chamomille – Anthemis nobilis
Elecampane – Inula helenium
Foxglove – Digitalis spp.
Wild garlic – Allium ursinum
Gravelroot – Eupatorium purpureum
Marshmallow – Althea officinalis
Motherwort – Leonurus cardiaca
Milk Thistle – Sillybum marianum
Valerian – Valeriana officinalis
Vervain – Verbena officinalis
Wormwood – Artemisia absinthum
Yarrow – Achillea milefolium

If I could get these herbs prospering at Cae Non by the end of this year, I’d be very happy! I also have a load of other herbs in pots waiting to be planted out, and some bigger, shrubbier herbs waiting to go in too!

Hopefully, next winter will see me able to give you all an update on what took and what didn’t grow so well!

I’m aiming to get my first proper raised bed up and ready soon (next few weeks) but the others might have to wait until the summer… more on that in a separate post (I can promise it will be interesting as it involves other people giving me a hand – lips are pursed but will reveal all soon!).

Enjoy the spring guys, and whatever you do, take some time to get soil on your hands!

Plant shopping and availability

Posted on: July 9th, 2012 by
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Well, it’s been almost three months since my last post on the herb garden blog. Ironically, the last post was made on my birthday! Due to a traffic accident, I haven’t been able to do any gardening – certainly not the heavy-duty Cae Non variety anyway!

What I have been doing is tracking down suppliers of the kind of herbs and plants I want to buy – unfortunately I often want to buy plants that are 1) hard to get to germinate, and, 2) are considered by many horticulturalists as little more than weeds. Usually seeds are available but not roots/tubers, cuttings or growing plants. If the plant I want is available, it is usually some tarted-up cultivar. For instance: No, I do not want a hybrid, variegated, gold-nugget-for-rhizome forming blue flag. I want a bog standard (literally in this case!) Iris versicolor.

This has got me thinking… a usually dangerous state for me to be in. Perhaps there should be some way for people interested in growing medicinal plants (and not necessarily limited to medical herbalists) to share, swap, trade, or sell such hard to find and grow ‘weeds’ at a reasonable cost or in exchange? Maybe there is already such a system that I don’t know about? Leave me a comment if there is!  If not i would be interested in sharing my plants and exchanging cuttings, etc with others… and at some point may very possibly sell some plants at a reasonable price to others in the area who are interested in these sorts of plants.