>I'm a Christian, so the whole moon thing is pretty over the top for me, but I respect the traditions of Herbalists Past, so I do it for them.

The moon turns the tides, and there are tides inside all living things, being mostly water. It's the most primal thing on (actually off) earth. A very primal symbol, as well.

>Wings, from your experience, how many 1/4 cups in a pound of dried Echinacea root, as received from Mountain Rose? Ummm... a lot? Lemme get my bags out, measure the herbs out, and give you an approximate estimate later this afternoon, OK?

I really hope it's a lot because I'd like to have a mass quantities of this tincture on hand. This winter we kept buying small bottles of Herb Pharm brand at the food co-op, mostly on spur-of-the-moment necessity, when someone was coming down with a cold. When I first came upon Richard Shulze's SYL manual on the file sharing site, and learned I could easily make tinctures, it was too late to purchase fresh root. I wish I'd have bought several pounds of the dry and made echinacea tincture when we made the Cayenne tincture. We'd have saved a bundle and still had plenty left.

>The horseradish roots I buried way out in back are sending up lots of leaves, so we should be sitting pretty come fall! Awesome! Hey, what do you think about sharing some of your gardening expertise with the Forum Folk?

My wife grew up on a farm, but I'm hardly an expert because while I've been gardening a long time, on and off, I've always avoided things that seemed hard to grow or offered little return for the effort. I like the vining plum (Roma) tomatos and zuchinni, both of which are kind of hard to strike out with. But one big secret and also fun thing about gardening is "companion planting," as in some plants help each other and others hinder. Marigolds discourage nematodes on the tomatos, for example. Deep roots bring up minerals and things like red clover, plantain, chickweed can be a living mulch. It's fascinating, especially when you consider that two different plants in the same soil can produce entirely opposite medicinal effects or culinary effects for that matter.

Plus....

The bottom line on gardening is that you can't fail if you keep in mind that as soon as you open some soil, the very first plants to emerge -- and they'll do it all by themselves -- are three "weeds" that could keep your family fed even if the garden crops fail. Amaranth (red-rooted pig weed aka Amaranthus retroflexus or "Calaloo in Jamaica), Lambs Quarters (Chenopodium album) , and Purseline (Portulaca oleracea). Then there's chickweed, dandelion, and plantain (two common species of the latter) which were probably there in the lawn before you tilled the lawn. So let some of those weeds survive and if the brussel sprouts don't make it you won't go hungry! No doubt you can make Kim Chi or some other lacto fermented food from most of these weeds and keep them over the winter.

 The Russian Comfrey (it doesn't seed) roots I just planted way out in back with the horseradish were recently recovered from the neighborhood where I grew up. I obtained three spindly little root segments from Gurney Seeds back around 1968 and planted them in my folk's back yard. The darn stuff got out of control and terrorized the neighborhood, spreading by long roots. This spring I recalled seeing that it was still around a few years back, so I visited one of the remaining neighbors and offered to take some off his hands. If the ground hog doesn't crop it off often enough to deplete the root's energy, this should spread in our way back yard, which is overrun with black berry brambles anyhow (who cares about comfrey's nice wooly leaves compared to those fierce thorns?).

Raised beds are certainly the way to go, and square-foot planting or "block planting" allows for a tighter, denser planting pattern than the traditional "row" garden, which wastes a lot of space. That said, when I got home this evening, I planted the "L" shaped on-grade bed that wraps around our four new raised beds. I planted nine Roma tomato plants, three Jalapeno Peppers, and some Marigolds, all purchased last night. Then I stuck lots of regular supermarket garlic around the tomatos and peppers. And I placed three cucumber seed hills between the tomato plants. Asian bitter melon and Italian cucuzzi edible gourd were stuck in here and there at the outer edge of this "L" shaped bed. These will climb the fence when I install it in a day or two. Can always crop out anything that begins to crowd out its neighbors. The Bitter Melon (Momordica chiantra, or cerase in the Caribees) is also highly tonic and medicinal. You can eat the leaves as well as the "melons" and why not juice the leaves? Finally, through out, I planted a lot of Calendula seeds, from a particularly resinous variety, obtained from Johnny's Selected Seeds. From Johnny's, I also bought seed for a Habenero that is supposed to do well in the North, but I think it's too late to plant it now (not sure and may try anyhow).

There was a steady but light drizzle when I was planting the above-mentioned area this evening and I think this will get everything off to a great start. I worked peatmoss and some humus/manure compost (from home depot) in around the tomatos.

Oh yeah, I have a packet of Urtica diocea (stinging nettles). I will try to establish a sizeable colony of these in the way back area. They spread by roots and have both culinary and tonic properties. If the nettles thrive, I may offer potted nettle plants to the "BDSM community" on eBay. Seems like a sure-fire fortune, though you never know LOL. (!)

Parasites "bugging" you?  perennial, Wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) grows like a... (what else?) weed! It also can be rather invasive, but then again, so are the parasites! And speaking of parasites, our Wormwood is hosting a whole lot of aphids that are causing disgusting stain to form on the stems. Hmmm... I wonder if we could form a "Wormwood" political party to rid ourselves of certain two-legged...err... never mind about that right now!

There are some small seed houses that offer many heirloom varieties that you could maybe ponder for hours, while looking and reading their websites. http://rareseeds.com/  In the raised beds, I will plant some small round carrots that were once the main carrot sold in the central Paris market. I will also plant a huge white "forage" or "feed" carrot because I suspect it may make some "KA" (kick ass) Juice. Maybe someone knows about this? I'd never heard of such carrots before. Almost everything this year is seed-savable. We'll see.