It's Official: We're Hippies.

Well, I'm sick and Jon just had a busy work week, which means this weekend was a low-key one. We have been talking about creating an indoor herb garden for about a month now, so figured we might as well get started! Since everything Hailey is so expensive, even buying a rudimentary shelving unit to store the pots was way too pricey. So, we got a little creative and came up with a pretty simple indoor garden.

First, we had to decide which plants could germinate and thrive in a winter climate. Sure, we are going to keep the heat at a certain level, but can't make it too hot. I checked out a book from the library called Rosemary Gladstar's Medicinal Herbs, A Beginner's Guide. The book is full of information on various herbs and flowers that have medicinal properties. It even lists certain ones that are more hardy than others and can grow easier indoors during the winter. We chose to start out with Spinach, Echinacea, Basil, Lavender, St John's Wort, and Red Clover.

Here are some of their medicinal uses (I put them in their true colors):

Spinach: It tastes good in omelettes. 

Echinacea: Boosts the immune system, has antifungal and antibacterial properties,  and is "particularly effective against bronchial and respiratory infections, sore throat, and oral infections". Overall, it helps to fortify the immune system.

Basil: Eases gas and stomach cramps, helps in relieving nausea/vomiting, helpful in treating irritability, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and insomnia, and also has antibacterial properties.

Lavender: Helps relieve tension, stress, and insomnia, has calming effects, and is also proven to be affective in treating infections (i.e. staph, strep, colds, flus, yeast infections, ringworm, etc).

St John's Wort:  Effective in treating depression, stress, tension, nerve damage, and seasonal affect disorder. It is also promotes tissue repair and helps soothe and heal bruises, sprains, burns, etc (any injury to the skin). 

Red Clover: Is super rich in nutrients (beta-crotene, calcium, vitamin C, and many B vitamins) as well as minerals (magnesium, manganese, zinc, copper, and selenium). It has been used to treat skin problems such as eczema and psoriasis. Can help menopausal women by diminishing hot flashes, mood swings, and night sweats.

Clearly, the basil and spinach can be used in cooking, but we like the fact that we can also make them into a tea, salve, or oil and use them for other purposes as well. We are obviously turning into dirty hippies...

The book describes in much more detail how these herbs have the effects that they do. I suggest anyone interested in natural remedies to check this book out, because it is an easy read with lots of pictures. Also, I personally like knowing why something has the effect I am being told it has. I like knowing the scientific/biological explanations of how the properties of these herbs interact with the properties of the human body in order to produce these desired effects. All of this is in the book, and squeezed into a nice little paragraph...not 3 pages.

So here is our dirty hippie indoor greenhouse that we created today:

Ingredients:

4 pots from the thrift store = $10

2 desk lights = free (already had them)

2 hand towels = free (already had them)

1 manila file folder = free (already had it)

1 thermometer = free (already had it...Thanks to Gram, Christmas 2012)

1 cardboard tubing system for heat = free (Jon's science project today)

4 bags of SEEDS = $10

As you can tell, we haven't started growing the St John's Wort or the Red Clover yet. We weren't able to find those seeds at our local stores, so we are ordering them online. I hope we have room for them once they arrive.

The hand towels were to place on the windowsill (southwest facing) for cleanliness, and the cardboard tube you see sticking up is to direct heat from the floor vents to the general direction of the plants. Obviously, the thermometer is so we can keep track of the temperature, which we are trying to keep at around 68-ish degrees Farenheit. If we notice that the temperature is not getting up high enough, we are considering putting clear plastic over the whole operation to trap in some of the heat during the day.

Here is a closer picture, and you can see the temperature right now (at night) is at 66F. Not bad! Now for the file folder, we decided to keep track of the daily temperature and height of the plants. We want to see how long it takes certain plants to germinate and which ones thrive better depending on the temperature (although, we hope it doesn't fluctuate too much). The info will hopefully help us next winter as well, to remember what conditions the plants grew in this year. Exhibit A:

Well, that's all for now! We probably won't be seeing any green popping up for another few weeks, since many of these plants take 10-20 days to germinate. What's cool is that a lot of these herbs are actually flowers, and it will be nice to see some color!