Very cool idea. I am trying to sift through in my brain what are lesser know herbs :) You could always pick up any of the carrot family. Various Yarrows (Achilea millefolium) come in many flower colors, and is beautiful as well as abundant. It will easily reseed itself. All parts of the plant have applications. I let a couple of varieties grow wild around my yard and weed/harvest to keep it under control. My mom favors the red to orange range of flowers, and I have several white and some slight bluish ones. It is also know by the folk names Milfoil, Old Man's pepper, Soldier's Woundwort, Herbe Militaris, Thousand Weed, Nose Bleed, Carpenter's Weed, Bloodwort, Staunchweed, Sanguinary, Devil's Nettle, Bad Man's Plaything, Gearwe (Dutch), Yarroway (Saxon), Yerw (Swedish), and Field Hop. It is diaphoretic, astrigent, tonic, stimulant, and aromatic. Teas are usually made from the leaves or flowers (whole heads). The tea is often used to bring on sweating to break a fever in colds. The whole plant has been decocted for bleeding piles and kidney problems. Makes a good blood stopper as you can tell from the folk names when the leaves are used in a fresh poultice. It also has a rumor of preventing baldness if the head is washed with a decoction made from the roots. There is Wild Carrot (Daucus carota) also, a fun herb. Commonly known as Queen Anne's Lace and Bishop's Lace. It is a biennial, and also self seeds quite readily. The roots are edible when young and tender, but when the plant is mature they are woody and chewy and not terribly tasty. The most common medical application is to use the seeds as birth control in women (it disrupts the implantation of a fertilized egg). Although, the caution always needs to be repeated, it looks really similar to Poisonous Hemlock (Hemlock has purple spots on the stems). It is a good bee attractor, and does neat stuff when put in colored water. The flowers will soak up the coloring and change while it is in the vase. Kind of considered in both the herb and veggie category are mustard plants. Of course the greens can be cooked and eaten, and are quite tasty, but the seeds are also valuable and have medicinal applications (as do most of our kitchen herbs). Most often the seeds are roughly crushed and made into a poultice or plaster to irritate the skin to draw blood to an area. But fresh mustard seed is incomparable in a dish and just makes pickles soooo good. Especially with fresh dill and cucumbers from the garden too. Common Rue is an evergreen that doesn't mind rough treatment. They like dry soil, and the prunings will root for more plants. Low doses are usually used for cough and or flatulence (Gods help if you h ave both at the same time eh?) Like many things, the doses makes the poison. High doses cause severe vomitting, bleeding in women, and eventually death. Chewing just a leaf is often a quick cure for a nervous or tension headache. Usually the leaf is chewed a bit, then taken out of the mouth and pressed on the temples. I am sure there are many more. See what grows wild in your area and go from there. 2008-07-18T20:21:32-05:00 false 4080 1173 2008-07-18T20:21:32-05:00 3716 Hi Om & Thelibra - I love all your herb info. That's fabulous! I wish I had a bit more space to create a really extensive herb garden. I still have some Rue seeds, I might give those a go - I'll make sure not to eat too much! I also find a warning for using rue on the skin on Wikipedia: "Caution should be taken with using rue topically. When applied to the skin with sun exposure, the oil and leaves can cause blistering. Rue oil can cause severe stomach pain, vomiting and convulsions and may be fatal." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue I absolutely love languages, I'm a translator and native speaker of Dutch. So, I just had to look up that Dutch word for Achilea millefolium or Yarrow. I think you've got a very old word there, I googled it and found an entry in Old English, reffering to Yarrow als Gearwe. http://www.websters-online-dictionary.com/definition/GEARWE In modern day Dutch, Yarrow is called 'Duizendblad', literally translated this means 'Thousand leaf' (just like 'millefolium' or 'Milfoil'). I don't know what I could add to the herb conversation. I don't have any really unusual ones up my sleeve. I had chamomile in my garden this year, which makes a lovely tea, it's very calming and has a nice flavor. I sowed it last year and it came back on its own this spring. I would also love to try some yarrow. I also read you can eat the leaves, and appearantly the plant was used for making beer, before the introduction of hop. 2008-07-19T08:17:35-05:00 false 4083 1173 2008-07-19T08:17:35-05:00 372 Great info! Now I've got to see if I can find any of those locally, or if not, maybe I can grow some from seed. I got a really good process from Jerry Baker than supposedly does wonders for seeds, which I'll post as soon as I can find it. I'd be curious to try it with others and see what kind of success we'd get. Annet, feel free to join the VGS if you want. It's no longer just North Texas, it's Worldwide. A Victory Garden for every home in the world would probably alleviate most hunger and a ton of transportation and food costs. I'm hoping this weekend to accomplish 2 things: take a photo of every herb I've got, and separate my online "Victory & Spice garden" into a Victory Veg garden and a Victory Spice garden. That way they'd be sorted a bit better. 2008-07-19T10:09:07-05:00 false 4088 1173 2008-07-19T10:09:07-05:00 3667 Oh, cool info about the Dutch names! I love stuff like that too. I am sure the other names are rather old words too. Information like that tends to get stuck in odd corners of our cultures and kind of skips out of time. 2008-07-19T11:58:48-05:00 false 4091 1173 2008-07-19T11:58:48-05:00 3716