Growing A Medicinal Herb Garden

Gardening

oi-Amrisha Sharma

By Amrisha Sharma

Wednesday, June 29, 2011, 17:00

A medicinal herb garden is useful for the house owner as it can be an effective home remedy to cure ailments at home. The medicinal herb garden can be used to make a herbal tea or to mix with other ingredients to cure ailments like cold, cough, fever etc. Herbs can also be used to make creams and oils for skin and body care.

Medicinal herb gardening is easy. Following are steps for setting medicinal herb gardens:

1.The first step is to grow herbs in rows, circles or random patterns in the same pattern used to plant vegetables in the garden. Planting herbs in this pattern helps in maintaining the garden, protect the fences apart from easy harvesting form.

2.Use hedges as a garden bed to help the herbal plant spread in the desired area. Herbal plants like lavender and hyssop can be planted in hedges.

3.Cover the borders of the garden with by planting mixed herbal plants like borage (chota kalpa), parsley, comfrey, mint and calendula (marigold) to make a colorful boundary of the garden.

4.The lawn can be used for planting herbs like thyme, bear berry, pennyroyal and German chamomile.

Tips to maintain medicinal herb garden:

Take out the dry stems and plants from the garden and cultivate new herbal plants in that area to avoid empty space.

Use mulch in the garden to protect the soil from pests. It is goos to use gravel while mulching herbs such as lavender or rosemary which thrive in drier soil.

Water plants if the weather is dry or else water them every alternate days. If the herbs are planted in ground then pour very little water as herbs are drought- resistant and can withstand drier conditions easily.

Herb gardening requires homemade non-toxic pesticide can be made by using dry leaves which are unaffected by pests. Mint plant leaves are best non-toxic pesticide for the herb gardens. Boil the leaves in water and spray the boiled mint water in the pest affected area to kill pesticides and protect your garden.

To protect the plants from freezing, cover the frost-resistant herbs with a thick layer of mulch. Use this method whenever the ground freezes.
To prevent the plants form rotting, uncover the mulched herb gardens in the sunny days to allow new growth.

Medicinal herb gardens are helpful to the house owner and it also beautifully covers the garden with plants. One can plant herbaceous herbs which are seasonal, evergreen herbs which grow throughout the year and requires less pruning or biennial herbs which stay for more than two years.