Stay healthy with winter herbs

Build up your immune system and help fight the flu with a selection of freshly grown herbs and vegetables. With so many flu types around, it is not always guaranteed that having a flu injection will prevent you from catching the flu. By infusing herbs or adding them to your cooking, herbs are a very economical way to care for your wellbeing. Try the following herbs to help combat those nasty germs.

We also have a natural pesticide to use and info on what veggies to plant together.

Lemon Balm - A handful of fresh lemon balm and mint make an excellent hot or iced tea when honey is added. It can be used in place of lemon peel in recipes. Lemon Balm aids fevers, colds, headaches and decongestion

Chilies - Not only can chilli peppers help to clear the sinuses, they have also been associated with controlling insulin levels after eating which could benefit the overweight or diabetics. To be more precise they reduce the amount of insulin the body needs to lower blood sugar levels after a meal by up to about 60%

Garlic & Garlic Chives - Garlic is a broad spectrum antibiotic with powerful antibacterial properties

Ginger - add to stir fries, baking and fresh juices, ginger benefits digestion. Ginger grows really easily and you can just replant part of the root if there is a little green shoot coming out of it.

Parsley - a widely used herb in cooking rich in vitamins A & C, parsley acts as an anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory. As you all know this is great to keep in a pot near the kitchen for easy use in scrabbled eggs for breakfast.

Echinacea  - I don’t need to give you any further information. The flowers are beautiful and you can even use them as a tea infusion.

Garlic water - Crush three or four cloves of garlic and infuse them in half a litre of hot water until it is cool and suitably smelly. It is most effective against soft-bodied insects such as aphids or bean fly. It can even be used on vegetables in the harvest season-though they may taste a bit garlicky.

Vinegar in a spray bottle will kill weeds. Cider vinegar has a higher acidity so works best

Companion planting

• Plants that like living together and offer some benefit by being planted closely with certain plants.(beans enrich soil with nitrogen – so good with corn and most other veg – carrot, celery, corn, eggplant, peas, brassicas (broccoli etc.), and strawberry)
• Carrots with tomatoes, beans, lettuce, onion, pea, radish, tomato
• Legumes (beans and peas) with brassicas (cabbage and broccoli)
• Basil with tomatoes
• Corn with climbing beans (let them climb the corn)
• Chives with carrots
• Celery with Cabbage, leek, onion, spinach, tomato
• Eggplant with peas
• Spinach with peas and strawberries
• Beets with brassicas, onion, sage, lettuce
• Brassicas with sage and rosemary
• Celery with cabbage, tomato, spinach and leek
• Chive increases growth and flavour of tomato and carrot
• Leeks with carrot, celery and onion
• Peas and celery
• Capsicum with tomato, parsley, carrots, basil
• Chilli with tomato, eggplant, basil, oregano, parsley, rosemary
• Strawberry with spinach, beans, onion
• Beans with Carrot, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber, marigold
• Broccoli with Celery, chamomile, dill, rosemary
• Cabbage with Beetroot, potato, oregano, sage

Not Suitable to plant together (Don’t plant these together as they don’t like it)

• Cabbage does not like strawberry, tomato and climbing beans
• Corn doesn’t like tomatoes and celery
• Mint doesn’t like parsley
• Strawberry doesn’t like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower

Repelling pests

• Tomatoes repel cabbage moths (so plant near cabbages)
• Garlic spray for repelling bugs (mince garlic, add water and spray on garden)
• Mint repells many insects – so plant around the garden (in pots – it takes over garden)
• Oregano near broccoli and cabbage repell cabbage moth
• Rosemary cuttings – repel cabbage moth, bean beatles and carrot fly
• For slugs – get a shallow dish and pour beer in it. This works a treat near strawberries. We get sometimes 10 a night.

Other Tips

• Use mulch of mint leaves around brassicas
• Grow shallow rooted onions among deep rooted carrots
• German chamomile good for all plants and puts nutrients into soil
• Compost beet leaves – good source of magnesium
• Sunflowers attract aphids to them (good to lure them away from roses)

If you are after other handy and simple natural health information which you can use at home visit our resources page on our website by clicking on how to stay healthy naturally.