Gardening Note 1: Gardening is value for money

When you consider the benefits of gardening, giving us a space of beauty and inspiration, reducing stress and improving overall well being, its popularity comes as no surprise.

Even more so when you consider that you can add plants to your collection that has the same value as the family’s weekly take away menu but will give you joy for  years to come, while the take-away meal will give satisfaction for about twenty minutes.

If you buy vegetables and herbs to the same value you will even add nutritional and health benefits to it all, not to mention the satisfaction of a home grown and home-made meal.

Value your Family - Value your Garden.

Gardening Note 2: Herb focus – Horseradish (Armoracia rusticana)

The pungent horseradish sauce that delivers a kick to salads, sauces, mustard and even mayonnaise, is made from the grated raw root. The ground root also has many healing actions; as a mild antibiotic, expectorant and diuretic that promotes perspiration making it useful for breaking fevers, especially those associated with colds and flu. In other words, it is a good winter herb.

Horseradish is a fairly substantial deciduous perennial with a 1metre spread and garden height of 40cm. It requires full sun and well drained soil. Before planting prepare the soil to a depth of at least 30cm and add lots of compost to the top soil so that the soil is friable and drains easily.

It is a good companion plant for potatoes, and plum trees and an infusion of the root can be used as an anti-fungal spray for fruit trees and as a repellent for cucumber and potato beetles.

The main harvest of the roots is in autumn, although fresh roots can be lifted at any time during the year when needed. Digging up the entire plant and pruning the roots as well as the top growth, prevents the plant from spreading and becoming invasive. New growth will sprout in spring and the very young leaves can be added to salads or cooked like spinach.

Gardening Note 3: The Family Garden

Our demanding lifestyles desperately need a garden space to add quality to family life.

• Spend quality time together to grow and harvest food for the table. It is during these informal and relaxing time periods that you can have a relaxed conversation and do creative problem solving,
• Garden spaces also provide opportunity for reading or writing under shade of trees. People relax in the gardens during evenings and children play. Sometimes a family can sit in the garden and have a pleasant family dinner.
• Relief from day to day stress are extra-ordinary benefits of a garden.
• A garden usually attracts birds and insect of different species. This allows us to watch them, enjoy nature as the season change and connect to life’s natural rhythms.

A family that gardens together stays together!

Gardening Note 4: Herb focus: Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis)

This is an amazing multipurpose herb. Besides its cleansing and tonic actions, Lemon Balm is a stress relieving herb that lifts the spirits, reduces anxiety and depression, relieves indigestion which usually accompanies stress, and is supposed to encourage a clear head.

Lemon Balm does not dry or store well so it’s best to grow your own for daily picking. It benefits from being harvested often, otherwise it can get leggy.

It is a perennial that grows easily in moist rich soil and can take filtered shade. The leaves have a light lemon scent and the flowers attract bees. Although it is a perennial, it tends to die down in winter so it’s a good idea to cut it back hard in spring to encourage new growth.