If you are looking for new ideas for your herb garden, consider the Lifeline collection from Horizon Herbs.
Horizon Herbs put together a $24.95 collection of seeds of basic medicinal herbs for gardeners to grow for good health. Here's what they say in their catalogue:
"Pretty regularly gardening friends tell us that they are a bit overwhelmed by our catalogue and the hundreds of choices of rare, common, aromatic, smelly, ponderous, piddly, floriferous, leafy, weedy, picky, poisonous, nutritious, sour, sweet, bitter, toothsome, fruity, barren, hard, soft, stemmy, creeping, rooty, viny, night-blooming, day-blooming and just blooming CONFUSING medicinal herb seeds and plants that we offer. One evening Mayche and I were taking a stroll in the gardens. I took her elbow and guided her between the evening primroses with their yellow, mucilaginous blooms and the burdock, with its velcroed seedheads ready to burst into genetic infinity. A dragonfly swooped by, while a striped pheonix moth unfolded its inch-long proboscis into a waiting garden sage flower. In the sky, an amorphous white cloud was illuminated from behind by the setting sun, superimposed against the darkening blue of the heavens. Inspired by this tiny set of events, or perchance listening subliminally to the chattering of the plants themselves, we began to discuss putting together a set of herb seeds that would embody the foundation for a diverse medicinal garden that would contribute to every aspect of health and well-being, and making this set of seeds available to people at a very low cost, so that more would find it possible to buy them and realize the benefits. That way, our gardening friends wouldn’t have to choose. We would choose for them. “Let’s call it the LIFELINE garden,” said Mayche. “Its like throwing people a lifeline to bring them back to health.” “I like it,” I said. Then Mayche (ever the shopper) said, “And, its like lifeline pricing at the co-op, where they sell organically grown stuff like brown rice, potatoes, and dried beans for just over cost, to make sure that everybody has enough to eat. “OK,” I said. So here it is, folks, the LIFELINE medicinal herb garden. 100% USDA certified organic seeds from our garden to yours. You can’t find them fresher. I even had to harvest and winnow the yarrow while Mayche waited, in order to construct the first set.
There are 18 packets in all, packed in earth-friendly recycled paper and cellophane, under our colorful sprouting herbseeds logo: Astragalus, Holy Basil (Rama Tulsi), Gobo Burdock, Mixed Calendula, German Chamomile, Echinacea purpurea, Elecampane, Evening Primrose, Brown Flax, Lemon Balm, Marshmallow, Official Motherwort, Stinging Nettles, Cayenne Pepper, Garden Sage, Official Valerian, Wood Betony and Yarrow. Available to you barely over our cost. And, you don’t have to choose. "
http://tinyurl.com/yfxzyl
LIfeline collection of medicinal herbs
YOWZAH!!! This is great! I seem to have several, but if there are some I can't use due to either already having them or wrong zone, there's always the trading forum!
Thanks, g_m!
Edited to say, having just looked at the link and chosen the "gift collections" options, they also have a very nice set of herbs for the South -- hurrah!
Now back to my shopping. g_m, you're almost as bad an enabler in herbs as zuzu is in roses. (Thank you.) ;)
This message was edited Dec 14, 2006 10:17 AM
ooohhhhh, roses! I'll have to go search on zuzu's posts. I'm looking for the really old fashioned roses with a very strong frangrance, so the petals can be gathered and used for rose marmelade and rose water.
GM,
I couldn't get your url to work. Is it me or has it changed. I get 404, not found.
Never mind. It worked this time.
This message was edited Jan 15, 2007 8:59 PM
I got the seeds (plus a bunch of others) and can hardly wait. I have some jiffy-7 peat pellets. Maybe I'll start some soon. Right now it's WAY too cold, of course, but I suspect we'll be way past freezing in a few weeks.
Don't you just love gardening?
Thanks for the suggestion - that sounds like a well-thought-out collection. I'm off to peruse the entire catalog!
I'm also ooking forward to a seed swap at Pantheacon in mid-February with a cheerful bunch of other "earthy-crunchy" types -- we're cleaning / dehulling the pink california poppy seeds (the orange state-flower variety are already cleaned, along with the borage and various tomato seeds)