Lemon balm and thyroid hormones

A new flu. Lemon balm is said to be good against viruses - and I've tried lemon balm tea during previous flus and think I've noticed a difference (though I wasn't scientific enough to be able to tell if it was because of the herb of because of placebo). I'd like to quaff said tea right now, but I can't;

1. I don't have enough lemon balm.

2. I'm on levaxin.

For those of you who don't recognise the name levaxin it's basicalle thyroid hormones. I eat it since my own thyroid gland doesn't work properly. Lemon balm prevents the body from absorbing the medicine, which means I need to limit my use of the herb to stay generally healthy.

Think of this as a simple exemple on the fact that herbs too are "chemical" and may react with conventional medicines (with unwanted results). Keep that in mind if you are growing herbs for health reasons indoors and buy a good herbal encyclopedia.

(I'm a friend of books, but while you're looking for the perfect paper version you can take a look at Plants for a Future's website. Here's their page on lemon balm.)

Everything but housemaid's knee

The illnesses of winter broke into my plans a few days ago. I've planned my lemon balm plantation for quite a while now, to have leaves enough for tea for cold and other viral diseases. Then vomiting disease struck our little family, and we put ourselves in voluntary quarantine. I'm ever so grateful that our friends Cicci and Monika did some shopping for us during that time. They called us from ICA (swedish equivalent of Walmart)
"Hallo, did we write the note wrong? Do you really want five lemon balm plants?"

Yes, that's what I wanted. I showered the plants brutally to rinse off most of the thrips, and planted them in my aging herb garden. Some day I'll have to empty the entire container and replant everything with fresh soil, but not untill I've got rid of this cold. My nose feels as thick as an elephant's trunk, and the container do look good on the windowsill.

Reading "Håll krukväxterna friska!" (transl: Keep your potted plants healthy!) by Maj-Lis Pettersson doesn't make this any better. There is an horrible amount of diseases and deficiences for a little plant to contract, and all of them results either in yellow leaves or dry leaf edges. Did you know that mealybugs can hide among roots? And I was so proud that my calamondin at least was free from them. The calamondin and my lemonbalm are currently suffering from all maladies in the book, except for, possibly, fungus as a result of a humid climate.

The cure Maj-Lis Pettersson recommends is simple and full of work; keep the soil humid and shower the plants once a week. My mother used to shower her plants twice a year, and I - well, let's just say that I do it even less often. Mrs Pettersson's methods involving ec-meters and luxmeters seems more fun, since I'm a gadgeteer on a grand scale. I don't care if these contraptions are expensive, I want one of each!

Well, it's time to nurse the cold and my fataly ill calamondin. I'll be back.

Winter

You won't stand free from seasonal changes, even when you are growing stuff indoors under plant lights (as I said before). My lemon balm growth has slowed down to a fourth of the summer pace. On the other hand its leaves are much darker.

Next project

Doesn't look good, does it? Seems like only the lemon balm is doing fine. Lemon balm, on the other hand, is among those plants that grows uncontrollably once you've got them started. The only reason this plant is small is my habit of making lemon balm herbal tea every other day. I have no idea why the parsly is white (thrips?) or why the chives are ridiculously thin.

My ignorance is certainly a hindrance. Perhaps the best thing is to dig this garden up, sterilise the soil and start afresh. I dream about using plants from seeds this time, but I have no money to buy the seeds*. Next sowing will be strawberries instead (I have the seeds, the leaves are good for herbal tea and the fruit are good for bribing kids - perfect!)

My seedlings are mostly fine. In some dull thought of doing good I put on the plastic hood on the green house - and didn't see that mildew started to grow on the ice plant pots. I've removed the hood and I hope the molding will die as the air starts to circulate around it. If the ice plants survive they'll probably kill their 'guest' all by themselves. They have a habit of poisoning the soil around them with salt. (Hm, I realise this means I have to create a separate soil bin for ice plant soil. Yes! Another project to loose myself in!)

*If you want to make it possible for me to buy some more seeds do click the banner ads. Google AdSense is kind enough to convert my enourmous revenue from peanuts to swedish kronas ;-)