Some extremely useful herbs I like to grow:

Calendula or Scotch marigold. This rather untidy golden flower has wonderful petals. If you have a cut or a sliver or get a little infected or have a burn, chop or mash up the petals and apply.

The pain and swelling will go almost instantly and if you keep it on as a poultice (I like a little wad of it mashed up under a bandaid or bandage) it will help heal.

Quick Poultice definition: A wet lump of chopped up stuff that you apply to the area, and leave on, changing as needed till healing occurs. Used to draw infections out, bring them to a head, heal wounds, burns, cuts, scrapes.

Another plant that looks rather untidy is Comfrey. It's old fashioned name is knitbone which tells us what it does.

People used to use it internally as a tea till some studies came out that showed it to be a cancer risk if taken internally. It is perfectly safe to use externally and---

It is the best thing if you have a wound that needs to close well without scarring badly. You can use it as a poultice. A freind of mine used my patch for her sons dental surgery as a poultice around his jaw. The surgery site was in the mouth, but Comfrey will work thru the skin to effect healing deep within.

Which is it's next effect-- that of healing broken bones, sprained or strained ligaments or joints and bone cracks. You apply the poultice over the break or sprain and change as often as comfort dictates. It will help knit the bones and ligaments or cartilage underneath.

Thirdly my midwife friend, used to use my patch, she liked it as a bath tea for her patients to recover after birth. It is very soothing and healing the stretched and torn areas after childbirth. You chop it up and put it into the tub with the hot water and sit right in the "green tea" for a soak. Get up, rinse off with a shower and repeat daily for a week.

A useful fact is the healing properties of comfrey are still there after freezing, so for winter, it's nice to chop some up and freeze it.

Whatever you do, don't let this one loose in the garden or it will take over. I always grow it in a patch by itself. Right now it has 4 feet between it's bed and any other.

Comfrey and Calendula are a love hate thing for me. I love and grow them for medicinal effect, so useful that I would never be without them, but they are such untidy looking floppy plants that I wouldn't keep them in any flower bed that you want to have on display. I do display Calendula because I need it to fill in, but they aren't the beauty contest winners of the flower bed.

Borage is a useful tea plant against stress. For Courage think Borage is an old saying. The pretty blue flowers are edible along with the leaves. They have a mild cucumberish taste and make a soothing herbal tea.

Comfrey and borage are also useful to put in the compost pile (something to know is that they are vigourous, so you will be weeding out plenty INTO your compost). They are stimulants for other plants. Comfrey is known to help pull postassium out of the soil from very deep, and other minerals such as the trace minerals thus adding to the compost nutrition for the soil.

Something I don't grow, but is a useful herbal remedy for external use is Tea Tree Oil from Australia (Aussie mamma, I bet you know all about this one). This is an allpurpose antifungal, antiviral and antibacterial. Apply wherever you are struggling with an infection and watch it disappear.

One I don't grow but grows wild near me, is mullein --AKA Verbascum Thapsis. There is a garden mullein, and I don't know if it works medicinally but mullein is useful for ear infections, and colds with a lot of mucous that plugs you up.

It breaks up the mucous when you drink the dried leaves made into a tea.

So it clears glue ear in kids (I wish I'd known this years ago), allergic sinus stuff and colds and lung congestions.

Another useful one to break up gunk in the lungs, sinus and nose and throat is equal amounts of Fenugreek and THYME. Make a tea and drink it or make your own pills.

About making herbs into pill form. You can buy pill blanks, gelatin capsules in 2 peice form, at the health food store. A useful way to fill them is to put the chopped or powdered herb on a shallow plate or dish.

Take a drinking straw, and cut the end to form a scooper, then scoop up the herb and dump into the large end of the capsule, and fill the small end and shove the two closed together.

I don't do this, preferring to get my herbs if and when we do pills, at the health food store ready made.

However I like to remember this method if and when I choose to use it.

hope this is a help

What are some of your home grown remedies and how do you use them?

I'm a firm believer in Tea Tree Oil. I put it on nicks and cuts all the time. In my daughter's school system there is always an outbreak of head lice in the fall and spring, so I add Tea Tree Oil to her shampoo as soon as we buy it and it seems to keep the buggies away. If I've been out in the brush and am all scratched up, I'll even add a bit to my bath water. I also use Oil of Oregano the same way. It will help unclog sinuses and is a good antibacterial agent. When dd was small and very sickly, she had to drink a drop of this in water to help her immune system. She called it "that pizza medicine". Tells you what it smells like. LOL

I'm also big on just using baking soda and vinegar to help little hurts get better and to reduce itching and really smelly skin from hard yard work. Aloe is also great but mine has died so I have to start again.

I want to check the plants you listed Margery and see if I can get some of them to grow here. I have lots of space that they could grow in and be "out of sight" of visitors (just got to make sure the goats can't get them). I really want to learn more of these natural cures. Thank you bunches for sharing.

I am very interested in this....more and more I am going the way of natural! I too am going to check into these plants. Great reading ladies, thanks!

I'm missing Margery and thought I'd bump some of her threads back up. This is an especially good one.

oh Pat thanks.

I forgot about the useful ALOE VERA plant, indoors for burns etc. I always have a plant of it on the windowledge.