Blog - Page 5 of 12 - Simply Me DIY - Make it instead of buying it.

August 6, 2019June 14, 2021

The Virtues of Lemon Balm

Lemon Balm is one of the easiest plants you’ll ever grow with a bonus of the awesome lemony smell. It’s the Balm! (Yeah, that was a bad one I know, but I couldn’t resist).

Lemon balm tea blend. — Lemon balm and lavender tea blend.

The plant itself and the essential oil have many uses and all of them are enjoyable.

Lemon balm tea has a soothing, mild taste that I love. Because of this, I add lemon balm to a lot of my tea blends. Don’t miss my article on making your own homemade herbal teas here.

Another good way to enjoy the taste of lemon balm is to crush the leaves up, which releases the essential oils, then add them to your ice water. This gives the water an ever so slight lemon flavor that’s really good, plus you get the benefits of the herb too.

A little Lemon Balm history.

This herb dates back to the ancient Romans and Greeks, with one of its first recorded uses being a wine infused liniment.

The Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus (1493-1541) believed that Lemon Balm was the “Elixir of Life” and that it would increase strength and lengthen life.

The botanical name for Lemon Balm is Melissa Officinalis.

The word Melissa comes from the Greek word for honeybee. Lemon balm was given this name because bees love this plant.

“Melissai” was the name for a group of nymphs in ancient times, known as the nymphs of honey bees. They were credited with the discovery and use of honey and were believed to be able to morph into bees.

Lemon balm was traditionally used to uplift the spirits and used in spells to heal broken hearts and attract romantic love. It was said to balance feelings and emotions.

Ancient texts recount folk medicine practices using lemon balm tea as a support for heart health, and to promote healthy skin. It was common practice to use lemon balm externally or internally for it’s relaxing effects.

Today, many of its uses are the same.

Just running your hands through the plant and inhaling that scent will make any day more relaxing.

If you’re just looking at it, it looks like any mint plant. But run your hand through it and you’ll know the difference immediately.

Some of Lemon Balm’s relaxing qualities.

Once known as an herbal cure all, Lemon Balm supports the body in several different ways.

It’s most known for it’s relaxing properties. It’s used to help reduce stress, anxiety and depression because of its uplifting, yet calming tendencies.

Lemon balm and lavender tea. — A cup of lemon balm and lavender tea.

It’ll help reduce anxiety and promote sleep when insomnia is an issue.

Of course, this virtue is also going to help the support the body in reducing all the effects of anxiety and stress like headaches and nervous stomach issues.

The vasodilating properties, properties that allow the relaxing of blood vessels, allows for good blood flow. Another reason it’s good for headaches and migraines. Constricted blood vessels are usually the root cause for throbbing headaches.

Some of Lemon Balm’s “anti” properties.

Lemon Balm has a lot of “anti” properties.

It’s known as a mild anti-spasmodic helping to reduce muscle spasms. This includes things like leg or stomach muscles as well as bronchial tubes where asthma is an issue.

It’s anti-viral properties are good for helping to heal or prevent cold sores, among other things. And it’s considered an anti-oxidant, helping to prevent free-radicals from floating around in your body.

Now, this isn’t to say that Lemon Balm is going to cure any of these issues. But what it does say is that it may lessen the affect of these issues in duration and intensity.

A few unusual uses I ran across.

One thing I found, that I HAVE to try is making jelly. I’m not sure why, but this is something I wouldn’t have thought of.

It sounds awesome. And after trying dandelion jelly, this is something I have to try. I also read you could use it as a substitute for lemon in jams and jellies. This would be for the flavor only as there is no citrus acid in Lemon Balm. I haven’t done this either, but I’m sure I will now.

It was used to polish furniture in Europe. I’m sure this was a long time ago. But, can you just imagine how good your house would smell? Not sure how they did that, but it might be worth a try just because it would smell so good. I can see making a tea from it and using it as an ingredient in a cleaner or freshener.

It was also tossed on the floors, in the old days, to help freshen rooms. Can’t say I blame them. I’m guessing you needed a lot of smell good to cover all the other everyday odors of yesteryear.

Pollination is another thing lemon balm is good for.

A bunch of lemon balm. — A bunch of lemon balm

We read earlier how bees are really attracted to it. So plant it near where you need lots of pollinators, like a veggie garden or a flower garden.

BUT BEWARE–It is part of the mint family, so make sure you plant it in a container. As great as it is, it literally grows like a weed. So unless you have plenty of space for this plant to grow, you’ll want to contain it or it’ll take over everything.

I hope you found something useful and enjoyable here. Let me know if you’ve used lemon balm before. If you have, how did you use it? What did you think? Did you like it?

If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe. There will be more herbal information coming in the future. Information for learning about the herbs and how to use them and to build your own personalized tea blends.

Thanks for stopping by.

Until next time –

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

Disclaimer

The article above is written using my research and how I’ve seen this herb work for me. It is for informational purposes only.
As I said above, every person is different. So just like anything else, herbs will react differently from person to person. What works for one, will not necessarily work for another, or it will work to different degrees. So don’t relay just on what one person says. Try each herb in small amounts and give it time to work or give your body time to react. Make sure it’s doing what you want it to do. Also remember that herbs are not like modern medicine. It’s not an instant result. Some times it just takes time and for other herbs it takes several doses (or several cups of tea) before you will notice anything.
If you have any medical conditions, always check with your doctor before using herbs as a medicine.
Drinking herbal tea for the enjoyment of it, is generally no big deal, unless you have an allergy. But if you are attempting to get some kind of bodily reaction from it, you should do your own research. The FDA hasn’t approved any of these statements regarding the use of herbs as medicine. So it’s up to you as to how and when you use an herb(s) for a specific purpose.

July 30, 2019July 29, 2019

Second Garden Update – Things Are Really Getting Big

Wow! This garden has a ton of tomatoes, but most are still green, some peppers, radishes, a few okra so far, and a hand full of yard long beans.

Sunny garden plot plants — My garden looking more to the east

The garden is growing and I’m a happy camper. Here’s a look at what the garden looks like now. You can see the differences in this post, my last garden update.

Sunny garden plot — My garden looking more to the north.

Let’s start with the tomatoes.

Pink brandywine tomato plant. — One of the Pink Brandywine tomato plant.

I have 7 pink brandywines, 1 mortgage lifter and 1 large cherry tomato and the roma in the compost pile.

The pink brandywines are late blooming, but they’re slowly catching up. There’s plenty of tomatoes starting, but they’re small and still green. They seem to be about a month behind where they should be, but they’re getting there, so it’s okay.

In due time I’ll be canning and/or drying tomatoes. More on making sauces and paste from dehydrated tomatoes later.

The mortgage lifter has a TON of tomatoes on it. They’re not getting near as big as they’re supposed to before blushing and turning red. But what they lack in size, they’re making up for in quantity.

Tomato plant full of tomatoes — Mortgage Lifter tomato plant

There are so many of them, the plant is covered.

The big cherry tomato isn’t over doing it, but it’s doing okay. Those are being real slow to turn too.

Cherry tomato plant with green tomatoes.

I’m getting 1-2 small tomatoes a day. So far that works. I’m just eating them as they come in almost.

Now the Peppers.

The peppers have made a come back. We had some really HOT weather in the last few weeks. Maybe that was it.

The peppers that were scrawny have begun to fill out and get more leaves.

Banana Peppers. — One of my 3 Banana peppers.

I have 2 plants that are producing really well now. I have several peppers on both of those plants.

Red Pepper with a bad spot. Maybe sunburned?

Then I have the 1 actual red pepper. It looks like it didn’t like the sun on it’s west side. Maybe sunburned?

The other plants have a lot of blooms on them and looks like they will explode here soon. I guess time will tell.

We’re really liking the banana peppers and I have 3 of those so I really hope they keep going.

The yellow pepper has blooms but I’ve not seen a baby on it yet. And then I have 1 more red pepper with a ton of peppers on it.

The 2 big ones are still green though, so I’m being patient.

Then we have the radishes.

You can see we’ve been picking the radishes.

Those are big and we’ve been using them like roasted potatoes. They’re so good that way, I just can’t get over that.

These radishes are really big. I’ve tried them raw a few times and I just really don’t like them that way. They have such a big bite, it’s just too much for me.

But when they’re roasted, they are just so good. A spicy potato is what it comes out like, we love them that way.

I have a ton more seeds for these, but I’m anxious to try different kinds next year.

The okra

The okra plants are so pretty. I’d grow them just to look at, if nothing else. I’ve only gotten 2 okra so far, but there are a few more coming on.

I’ve heard these were usually early to bloom. I haven’t seen that, but I attribute that to the rain and earlier temperatures. There are a lot of blooms just coming on.

I have yet to see a flower. They get to this bud stage and by the time I go back out to look again, the flower’s gone. That was just from morning to afternoon too.

Sometime this week we’ll fry them up. I really hope we like them, but if not, that’s okay. There’s plenty of family that like them.

The cantaloupe and pumpkins are coming along nicely.

We’ve had a major issue with squash bugs. I’ve sprayed neem oil, but that doesn’t get rid of them completely. I know you have to keep respraying, and I’ve tried to keep up with it.

I’ve learned to use a strong hose and cold water too. They really hate that.

They haven’t killed the plant yet. I’m kind of surprised how well it’s doing. It is time to spray again though. The thing about an organic spray is that it has to be done often.

We counted about 7 pumpkins, so far. Not sure what I’ll do with all of those. Most of them are pretty small, so I could probably cook several of them myself for pies, muffins and breads.

My daughter-in-law likes to make pumpkin soup and my grand-daughter loves it. Maybe she’ll like a couple.

I also saw I have several cantaloupe now too!!! That excites me. I love cantaloupe and this one was so good a few years ago. I’m dying to see what it will be like.

Hopefully they stagger themselves just right. One a week. Wouldn’t that be great.

The Chinese Yard Long Beans are beginning to come on.

I’ve picked a handful of these so far. I’ve been told you’re not supposed to boil these like you do regular beans. Just blanch them and then sautee or stir fry them.

We’ll I had to be different and try something new. I recently bought myself a fermenting kit. So I am making Dilly Beans.

I found a recipe using these kind of beans, with the Dilly Beans recipe, so I had to give it a try.

I’ve never tried pickled beans and it sounded good. We’ll see.

Out of the 7 plants we have, only a couple look like they are really growing well. I have one plant that has grown up the trellis and then started crawling sideways at the top.

Another one is almost to the top of the trellis and the rest are still pretty short. They’re almost all producing or have produced, so not sure what’s up there.

We’ll see if I want to keep growing these. I’m just not real sure about them yet.

The corn and carrots are still growing.

Both of these have a ways to go yet.

The corn has tassels on top now, so that was encouraging. They’re growing well too. Not sure how much longer that will take.

The carrots are growing well too. But they usually take a good amount of time, so I’m in no hurry to pick those either.

I’ve got a notebook I used when we planted everything that tells how many days to maturity and then I put dates to them all.

None of those dates have worked out this year. Everything is really late where maturity is concerned. So I’m not putting much stock into any of those dates.

I still want to plant a fall garden so I’ll have to go by the frost and maturity dates in getting that planted. I just hope the fall garden isn’t as late at producing as the spring and summer one or I’ll not get much.

I really believe that the 30 inches of rain we got and the really cool temps had a lot to do with what’s happening with my garden now.

I guess next year I’ll have something to compare to and we’ll see.

A random broccoli plant is still growing.

This plant has been here since the beginning, but it has barely been doing anything.

In the last several weeks, this thing has been going nuts, except there’s no broccoli head. But it sure does look pretty.

I hope you enjoy watching the garden grow as much as I do. We get a handful of things most days, and I’m happy with that, for now.

I’m learning something new every day is what’s most important to me right now. As long as I’m get anything out of the garden this year, I’m happy.

Next year will be another learning experience and will be even better. I hope.

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to subscribe, if you haven’t already.

Until next time –

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

July 23, 2019July 22, 2019

The Many Ways of Making Herbal Tea

So a week or so ago I told you about mixing your own herbal tea blends. You can find that here. Now, here’s something a little different.

When I first started making herbal tea, it felt very foreign to me. That seemed like an exotic kind of thing for this small town country girl. I never considered there was anything beyond the store bought tea bags.

These days I’ve discovered so many ways to prepare and steep your herbal tea, I have to actually decide on which one I’ll use each time.

The Different Methods I Use to Prepare My Herbal Tea

There are several different ways to hold your loose leaf herbal tea. Let’s go over a few.

Tea Bags

There’s a couple of different tea bags you can use. I use both of these and like them both for different reasons.

This one I get from Mountain Rose Herbs. I like this one because you can quickly make a bag of tea, just fold over the edge and pour your water over it.

I use this one at home a lot. It’s good for trying a new herbal tea blend and don’t want to make up a lot.

This is another one I like to use. I get them at Mountain Rose Herbs too. You can find them in different sizes all over Amazon, but I’m never really sure of the quality from places I don’t know.

herbal tea in tea bags — Iron close tea bags.

I like this one because they’re easy to prepare and have several bags pre-made and ready to take with you when you want. They’re just like regular tea bags, and easily portable because they seal.

Both of these tea bag types are compostable too, which is a plus for me since we compost everything possible.

Tea Balls

Tea balls are another way to steep your herbal teas. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. I have a few different styles and I use them both. I don’t have a specific purpose for either, just depends on my mood at the time.

Some tea balls have smaller screen sizes or holes which means some will leave small bits of leaf in the bottom of your cup and others won’t.

Handle spoon type tea ball. — This style is more like a spoon

I don’t mind little bits of tea leaf in the bottom of my cup, but that may be something you’ll want to consider when you decide on one.

Then there are a few other styles that I like.

A Couple Other Styles

A friend bought me this next style a long time ago. I love it. This one is a basket type thing you put your herbs in and set it in your cup and then pour your water directly over your herbs.

herbal tea straining basket — Herbal tea straining basket and holder.

This one works very well. It even comes with a little thing to set the tea basket in when you get ready to drink your tea.

Making herbal tea with a tea basket — A basket full of lavender and lemon balm tea.

This one is really good for using enough herbs to make several cups of tea.

And lastly, I have a steeping pot. I found it on sale at my local grocery store several years back and have been very happy with it.

Glass steeping pot — I found this at a local grocery store during a clearance sale. I love it.

It’s a thin clear glass pot, so after I pour my water over the herbs, I usually wrap it in a tea towel to keep it hot. I use this a lot more in the winter, cause I can drink a whole pot on a Sunday afternoon.

Brewing Your Tea

Teas or herbs with a high volitile oil content, or those that smell really good, need to be covered when you steep them. This will keep the properties of the herb from evaporating while the tea steeps.

A covered steeping tea blend. — Steeping herbal tea.

So if you’re making a tea using, say lavender, you’ll want to cover it while it steeps.

I’m sure there are several more ways to prepare your herbal tea. But these are the ones I use regularly.

I hope you see one you would like to try. Or maybe you saw a few that interest you. Even better.

Thanks for stopping by and reading about making herbal tea. Let me know what method you use or let me know which method you want to try. I’m curious.

Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already. See you next week.

Until then –

Health, Wealth & Blessing ~ Tracey

July 16, 2019July 29, 2019

Berry Jam

I love berry jam. Don’t you? It goes good on everything, in my humble opinion.

This is where I found my berries.

Early this year I bought a few blueberry bushes because I eat a ton of blueberries. They’re my favorite.

My blueberry bush with berries. — One of my 3 blueberry bushes.

I’d always heard or read, can’t remember which for sure, that, like strawberries, it would take a year or so to start getting any berries.

Apparently, that’s not true. I was happy to see that these bushes were going to produce lots of berries. They didn’t produce a lot at one time, but as they matured, I harvested them and put them in the freezer.

Then one day I was out walking around the yard and found a mulberry tree. My husband had been hacking at it with a machete for quite a few years trying to kill it. Of course, we all know you can’t kill a mulberry tree, at least where I live. They grow like weeds.

Ripe mulberries in a bowl. — Mmmmmm mulberries.

There’s been a large mulberry tree on the property for years and I never got a berry from it. The birds ate them all before I could get to them. There’s always been purple bird poop on everything, every year.

But, this year, this tree, which is now a bush, continued to survive. And not only did it survive, it was covered in mulberries. Beautiful, ripe, purple berries, that tasted awesome. I couldn’t believe the birds hadn’t noticed this bush!!

So I started picking berries daily. I only got about 1/2 cup of a mix of the two at a time. I collected them, washed them and let them set out to dry overnight and then put them in jars in the freezer the next morning.

Me and My granddaughter discovered frozen berries make a great summer snack. Note to self for next year.

I decided when I got to 5-6 cups of berries I’d make some berry jam. It did’t take too long to collect about 5 cups. That seemed to be the magic number, because at about 5 cups both bushes finished their production.

I’m not complaining, I’m totally happy with what I got from them. Beside the 5 cups worth, I also got to eat some too.

Now it’s time to make some berry jam.

I found a non-pectin berry jam recipe on the Farmer’s Almanac web site. This is what I loosely followed. I’ve looked but I can’t seem to find the same recipe again to post a link.

I say loosely because that recipe used a different kind of berry and didn’t add lemon juice. I wasn’t sure about the acidity level of berries, so I figured it was better to be safe than sorry.

Better Homes and Gardens Canning Book. — The canning book I used as a reference for this recipe.

This is one of the books I use for my canning.

I have several, but this happened to be the one I used.

It has a chart that lists the acidity levels for several different types of foods.

If the acidity level is high you can water bath can your jam for preservation instead of pressure canning.

But if the acidity levels are lower you need to use a pressure canner to be sure you kill any kind of nasty bug that may make you sick.

Acidity levels for different types of food. — Acidity levels from the book.

As you can see, lemons and limes are at the low end of the pH levels which you would expect, and the berries are kind of in the middle.

There probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but since I had lemon juice, I decided I’d go ahead and use it.

Since I had the time I still decided to not use the pectin.

All I had to do was cook it a little longer. Actually, I probably cooked it a bit too long, cause it’s really, REALLY thick. But I’m okay with that.

It’s the first time I’ve made jam without the pectin. I wanted to make sure it got thick enough. I’ll call it an experiment instead of a mistake.

So I started with the 5 cups of berries I had been picking and freezing over the past month or so. It was a mix of mulberries and blueberries.

Frozen berries beginning to cook down. — Cooking down my berries.

I poured them into a stock pot and heated them on low until the blueberries began to break and the mulberries got mushy.

Then I added the 3-3/4 cups of sugar. The recipe I found said 3/4 cup of sugar for every cup of berries. That seemed easy enough to remember and it’s less sugar than some of the recipes I’ve got for jam. I cooked this slow and stirred a lot so the sugar didn’t burn at the bottom. It won’t take long to melt.

Mashing cooked berries. — Mashing the berries as they cooked.

Cooking berry jam. — Cooking the berries.

Then I mashed them with a potato masher. You can mash these down as much as you want. I like the larger chunks so I didn’t worry too much about it. I knew the blueberries would cook down to pretty much juice, but the mulberries, which are sweeter, didn’t break down so much.

The recipe I read said without using the pectin you needed to cook it about 1/2 hour to 45 mins. I decided to go about mid way and cook them about 40 min on low. Next time I’ll probably just cook them about 25 min, maybe 30.

Make sure you stir a lot. I couldn’t get my burner down low enough, in my opinion, so stirred it almost constantly.

Now it’s time to can the berry jam.

Sterilizing canning jars. — this is an easy way to sterilize your jars. Put them over the water in your canner while you wait for it to come to a boil. I just put the lid on it and let it go.

I began by boiling water in the water bath canner. Then I put the jars in the canner while the water boiled to sterilize them.

Once the water boiled and the jars were sterilized, I filled each one.

Filling jars with berry jam. — Filling the canning jars.

While I fillied the jars, I boiled the canning lids. I’ve heard recently that that is a step that you don’t have to do anymore.

I’m not sure if there are new lids that don’t require boiling or if Ball just changed the rules. But since my lids are older, I’ll continue to boil them until it get new ones that read that it’s not necessary.

Cleaning the jar rim. — Make sure the rims of your jars are clean.

Once your finished filling the jars, you want to make sure the rims are clean. This will ensure there is nothing to obstruct the sealing process.

Then add the lids and rings. You don’t want to crank down the rings. Just finger tight. When you add them to the canner you want about an inch or 2 of water to cover your jars.

Jar of jam ready to be canned. — My canner has a rack in it. I set the jars on the rack and then I can just lower the rack into the boiling water.

I waited until the water was at a rolling boil, then I lowered the jars into the canner. You can add them sooner, but you don’t want to start your timer until your water is at a rolling boil.

Then I processed them in the boiling water for 15 min.

Now they’re done.

Now you can turn off the heat, and raise your rack.

The best part about this is hearing the lids seal. They’ll begin to ping one at a time. In my opinion, this is the best part. Makes me smile every time.

Now you just wait for them to cool and you have preserved berry jam.

I put one of them in the fridge without processing it, so I could have some berry jam to eat now. I wanted to try it out. Then I labeled the rest and put them in the pantry.

If you have the equipment canning your own jam is really easy. Do your research and be sure to follow the best safety rules when canning. They are listed in all the canning books. Don’t be afraid to it a try. It’s really not as scary as it sounds.

If you have canned your own jam, let me know what kind. I’d love to hear what you’ve been preserving. Add your pictures to the comments.

Be sure to subscribe and comment. I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time –

Health, Wealth & Blessings ~ Tracey

July 10, 2019July 10, 2019

We had a visitor in the garden last night.

As a rule we go outside and check the garden every night, just looking at plants, checking on any veggies that might be ready to harvest and to water if it’s necessary.

Last night we found this guy in the tomato patch. It’s the dreaded tomato horned worm. Now, that’s just not cool, at all.

Horned worm on a tomato leaf — Horned worm

So far we’ve only found 2 of these guys, but they were plump little dudes. It’s amazing how fast they can eat a tomato plant down to the nubs.

We’ve began searching for them regularly now. With any luck we won’t find anymore.

You gotta know where to look to find these horned worms.

Be sure to check your tomatoes regularly. They’re really hard to see. Their color matches the plant color perfectly and they are always on the underneath side of a leaf.

I find them by looking for where they’ve eaten. You can see here where he had eaten the end of the stem. Those sort of stick out to me.

I found the exact type of same eaten off stem right next to the last one I found.

When I was a kid, part of my summer garden chores at home was to pick off tomato worms, and I did it well. Dad would give me an old tin can and put about an inch of gas in it.

Then I’d use a stick and knock the worms off into the gas. We always had chickens and I’ve often wondered since, why he just didn’t feed them to the chickens.

We’ve heard that you they glow when you search for them at night with a black light. We’ve decided that’s something we’re going to have to try. That would certainly make finding them much easier.

How do you get rid of tomato horned worms? Let me know in the comments below. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would like to hear your answer to that one.

Until next time – Health, Wealth & Blessing ~ Tracey