This is the time of year that gardening really starts to drive me crazy. I spend so much time taking care of and babying my plants and they just seem to be growing so s-l-o-w-l-y! Thankfully there are herbs growing in that garden and many herbs are ready to harvest before the veggies come in!
English Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) is one of the first herbs I harvest each year. The pretty purple flowers make a lovely addition to many lotions, salves, sachets, aromatherapy items and even teas. Lavender can also be added to many dishes and most people don't realize that it is edible.
I love to use lavender for it's aromatherapy properties. It's known to help induce sleep, calm anxiety, reduce stress and soothe headaches. I keep some lavender flowers in a sachet in my pillowcase to help me fall asleep at night.
It's also included in my sleep tea recipe. Some of us are more sensitive to aromatherapy and it knocks me right out! For sleep tea make sure you're using culinary lavender or it'll taste perfume-y.
According to Time Magazine the scent of lavender can even make people trust you more.
Both the flowers and leaves have that beautiful scent, but if you plan on using them in cooking make sure your lavender has not been sprayed with pesticides. Lavender can be brewed into a tea which is great for digestive issues like nausea.
Fresh lavender leaves can be used in pork or lamb dishes instead of rosemary. Lavender can also be used for many different skin ailments.
What do used coffee grounds, broken eggshells and ash from your fireplace all have in common? They can all feed your garden with important nutrients! Plus they are all organic soil amendments, which is always an added bonus when gardening!
Garden soil is the most important part of a successful garden, but it doesn't get that way on it's own. While it may start out as what we would call 'good' or 'bad' soil, it can be changed in many ways.
For instance, certain vegetable plants add nitrogen to the soil while others use it up. Companion planting can be used to balance these additions and subtractions but sometimes you have to turn to soil amendments to fix what's wrong.
You garden needs nutrients to support healthy growth. While there are lots of nutrients that go into healthy plants the three main nutrients are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
Unfortunately nitrogen gets used up pretty fast, so it's important to add it back. This is why many gardeners fertilize regularly. Both potassium and nitrogen are water soluble and can get washed away with heavy rains. Phosphorus is essential for producing flowers so your flowering plants will have a higher phosphorus requirement.
This is gross, so I apologize in advance. Unfortunately somewhere over the course of summer I ended up with toenail fungus. Was it from the shower's at the gym? Something I stepped in by the lake? Did I pick it up at the pool? Who knows! What I do know is that it is painless and it moves slowly, so when I first noticed it I may have already had it awhile.
I also know that every over the counter treatment I tried failed completely. I considered getting a Rx for it but was hesitant to put a medication in my whole body just for something under my toenail.
Finally I decided to try essential oils since I'm really more of a natural healthcare chick anyway. I was absolutely amazed when it only took a few weeks to start seeing results from this simple treatment!
Let's go back to the beginning. It started when I removed my nail polish one day and noticed a spot at the top of my right big toe. It was under the nail and it was slightly yellow and went into the nail bed a bit.
I thought maybe I bumped it somewhere and part of it had bruised so I grabbed some tweezers and used one side to scrape out the yellow stuff. I cleaned it up with some rubbing alcohol, repainted and thought that was it.
A few weeks later when I was changing my polish again I noticed it went down further under my nail now. I figured I had a problem so I looked it up online and found WEB MD's site. I realized it was nail fungus and decided that I better get something to fix it so I headed to the drugstore.
