Herbal Housekeeping
By: Barbara Radcliffe Rogers
Pesticides, Detrrants and Garden Deterrants
Here are some tips to aid your spring housecleaning
--and some plants you might want to add to yyour garden
this year to help with housework chores all year long!
Moths aren't the only pests you can use herbs to repel.
Fleas and mosquitoes will avoid
pennyroyal.
Rub the fresh leaves on your skin (but not on your face)
or package the dried leaves to put in a pet bed.
Salt dehydrates fleas, sprinkle baseboards and carpet
for 2 weeks, then once a month.
Tansy was often planted around the foundation of old houses
because ants do not like to pass through it.
Ants don't like catnip either, and a sprinkling of it
along an ant path will encourage them to turn around and leave.
But just try to keep catnip in the ant path if you own a cat!
When Italian cooks discovered that houseflies
don't like basil, they placed a sprig of it over
a bowl of tomatoes as they worked.
(Fortunately, the basil and tomato flavors
do like each other!)
Clover flowers and sweet bay are also useful
in keeping away flies, so a bouquet
of green and purple basil, sweet bay and red clover
not only looks and smells good in the kitchen,
but keeps away the flies as well.
Mint repels mice; long stems of it placed along the eaves
in the attic will encourage mice to seek a winter home
at your neighbor's house instead of yours.
Anise, on the other hand, attracts mice, so a little
anise oil or a few anise seeds mixed with peanut butter
is far more effective than cheese as bait for a mousetrap.
Velerian is a good bait for mice, as well as for rats.
Bay leaves will keep weevils out of stored flour,
cornmeal, and other grains.
A whole bay leaf laid on the top will not flavor the food at all,
but will protect a whole container full.
The fungus that infects dried beans and grains
can be prevented by placing a small, cheesecloth
"sachet" filled with broken cinnamon stick,
black peppercorns, coarsely ground black
mustard seed, and green garlic into each gallon can or jar.
Although dogs and cats aren't properly
classified as pests, they are not welcome in garbage cans;
very quickly discourage them by giving the can covers
a good sprinkling of cayenne pepper.
Here is a list of insects and the herbs
you can use to repel them:
- Ants:
peppermint, catmint, pennyroyal, tansy, and wormwood
--sprinkle dried or fresh in ant trails
- Moths:
lavender, rosemary, wormwood, southernwood,
woodruff, and cloves
--make sachets or sprinkle in bottom of drawwers.
- Flies:
lavender, mint, bay, mugwort, cloves, wormwood, rue,
eucalyptus, and elder.
Add them to potpourri, hang sachets from beams and hooks.
- Mosquitoes and gnats: pennyroyal, lemon baalm, or basil
--rubbed directly on the skin.
SOURCES
Herbal Treasures
by Phyllis V. Shaudys
(©1990 by Phyllis V. Shaudys;
published by Storey Publishing).
HerbalWitchcraft@yahoogroups.com
From: Daturachylde
Wed, 18 Jun 2003
Culpeper's Apprentice
Naturally Green
Jude's Home Remedies,
by Jude C. Williams M.H.
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