• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

• Mullein (Verbascum spp.)

• Nasturtium (Nasturtium officinale)

• Poke (Phytolacca decandra) (toxic)

• Oriental Poppy (Papaver spp.)

• Sunflower (Helianthus annuus)

Fertilizer

• Aged animal manure

• Kitchen and garden compost

• Urine (diluted with water 1:5); do not put on leaves

Pest control

• Healthy plants

• Safer soap

• Garlic-Cayenne spray

• Beneficial insects (i.e., ladybug, praying mantis)

• Picking snails and slugs off plants every morning throughout the season. This will drastically reduce their population the following years.

• Gophers are highly territorial, so remove one and your garden is free until another moves in.

• Moles don’t hurt anything; they merely plow the soil and eat creepy-crawlers, not plants.

• To discourage deer (glorified cows), hang from your plants nylon stocking bags full of smelly little motel soap bars.

Equipment

• Dehydrator

• Pruning shears (Good quality)

• Root-digging tool (Strong trowel or Japanese hori-hori)

• High-quality garden tools

• Gloves

APPENDIX C

EIGHT PRINCIPLES OF EXCELLENT MEDICINE-MAKING

THE THREE ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

Harvest only abundance

Harvest only in areas of plant abundance, leaving plant communities with no particularly noticeable physical evidence that you were there. Harvesting is not always the taking of plant parts, but often merely visiting their turf, observing, and harvesting feelings of connection, insight, and kinship with plant and animal companions (ally bonding).

Exchange energy

Leave an expendable but intimate part of yourself in exchange for your harvest: a power object that you previously found, a ritual, a prayer, a meditation, or some other personal, special expression of gratitude. Sanction the exchange with your gift, making the herbal harvest yours to transform into your potions and brews and dispense as you will.

Plant seeds

The wise carpenter and foresightful printer will honor and support the healthy life of forests and conserve their range of diversity. The bright plumber will assist in protecting water resources and esteem the Earth’s bodies of water so people can continue to draw healthy fluid through their water pipes. The green herbalist will sow seeds throughout Gaia, participating in the circle of giving and the simple cycle of sow and reap. Every occupation draws its primary resources from Earth and can promote balance by contributing energy to conserving, recycling, and restoring, learning from Earth’s intelligent technique for ensuring perpetual abundance.

THE INTUITIVE PRINCIPLE

Be intimately aware of the common life force in all things

Appreciate Unity. Experience, enjoy, and be nourished by your connection with all life. Recent evidence from several disciplines, including brain and consciousness research, anthropology, microbiology, neurophysiology, elemental physics, and mythology (and simple observation) reveals that body, mind, and consciousness are inseparable, an indivisible whole, a dynamic continuum. The universe too, so long thought to consist of innumerable separate parts, appears to be at its primary level an unbroken wholeness, a single dimension independent of time and space in which the seemingly separate parts are not in the least separated but are all intimately connected. All knowing is available to all beings.

THE TWO SPIRITUAL/SOCIAL PRINCIPLES

Have fun

When you are having fun, at that moment, you are experiencing most intimately and clearly who you truly are and what you enjoy doing. This self-knowledge can escort you to further creativity and joyful activity in your chosen work/play. Seek responsible instruction from an experienced teacher to build a foundation, but ultimately make medicine in your own unique fashion. This is self-fulfillment, self-nourishment, creativity, and independence. You are at your best when you’re having fun with life; when you are joyful, you uplift others which is your most precious gift.

Hurt no one

Kindness is the foundation of peace