Perilla - A Garden Favorite for Tummy Trouble

A photo of Perilla that I took at Bastyr University in Seattle. 

Perilla is one herb that I always have growing in the garden.  It is simple to grow from seed and once it gets started is self sows easily.  It doesn't need any special attention.  The scientific name is Perilla frutesces, but other names include Beef Steak Plant and Shiso.  The Chinese name for the plant is Zi Su, or purple fish-smell.  It does have an odd smell and mild pungent flavor.  Different parts of the plant are used in Chinese Medicine, the leaves Zi Su Ye, the seeds Zi Su Zi and the stems Zi Su Geng.  It is used traditionally to relieve nausea and vomiting, for morning sickess, and seafood poisoning.  I use the leaves exclusively.  

Perilla leaf up close under the microscope.

The first time I used fresh perilla leaf was when my daughter Moira was a baby or toddler.    I forget exactly how old she was, but she had been vomiting.  It is so sad to see little kids sick like that when they are so young.  What I did was just take a new leaf of Perilla and chew it up a bit first and then give it to her.  It really cleared up the vomiting right away.  I know that there was at least one other occasion to use it.  The perilla is very safe for pregnant women with vomiting also.  I have also tinctured perilla to have on hand to use in the winter when no fresh herb is available.  

Here we were on a day when she was feeling her normal happy self.  This picture is from our old house on Palmetto Ave in Daytona.

It had been a while since I had needed to use any Perilla, but this week Tessa had an upset stomach too.  She threw up before bed, then again in the morning.  I was so glad that I have always let this 'weed' go to seed.  Tessa is an avid gardener and always happy to try new vegetables or edible weeds in the garden.  She even likes tasting my herbal tinctures by the drop.   Her she is watering my Rosemary bush that she likes to take little bites of.

Tessa watering the plants.

But after being so sick and throwing up, Tessa was not her usual self.  She was scared to try a new leaf or a new tincture.  Luckily for me I was able to reason with her.  She is such a smart little girl.  I told her that when her sister Moira was a baby, I gave her the Perilla leaf to eat when she was sick and it made her feel better.  Tessa looked at me very seriously and took 3 very small bite of a quarter-sized new Perilla leaf.  After that there was no more vomiting, so I was very happy.  I put 3-5 drops of tincture in her milk the rest of the day just to be cautious.

Perilla is such a common herb.  I found seeds easily for my Perilla on a Garden Swap Forum.

Celebrating Earth Day with my Daughter

I'm having a quiet day at home with my daughter Moira today Celebrating Earth Day. I do whatever I can to encourage her in the way of organic gardening, so that she can learn to grow food thereby cutting down on our carbon foot print from importing foods. We just made a stepping stone for our garden project today. Large stones are great in the garden. They are fun to move every once in a while in the company of our resident chickens, who love to feast on the insects hiding beneath them. Part of our organic gardening learning process has been through our volunteer work at the Fair Share Garden in Daytona, where Joel Tippens has started an urban garden to grow food for low income families in need and teaching people how to grow food for themselves. At five years old Moira now knows that peanut shells and banana peels don't go in the trash, she will take them and put them in the compost pile. She is already a teacher, explaining to neighbors that the raised bed we built is for growing plants. When it comes to foraging, although she herself prefers the taste of the omega rich weed Purslane for a garden snack, she is still able to direct her best friend, a 6 year old girl, to a fresh leafy snack from the protein, vitamin and mineral rich Moringa trees that are just coming back from the winter freeze.

This weekend Moira received two new baby hens for her birthday, so we are also spending time with these little peeps today. These two hens will be added to our small flock of 3 hens. Our chickens are an important part of our garden, providing a rich source of nutrients for our compost pile. I'm so happy that Moira has learned the process of raising chickens; she received our first baby chicks last year for her fourth birthday and even as a very active energetic child she was able to care for them successfully. For me as an adult it took a few years of dreaming and building up the courage to give chicken raising a try. I trust for Moira it will be very simple for her as an adult to raise hens if she wishes and teach others to do so. She is a great helper for collecting eggs. The new little peeps are a really neat new hybrid breed called Black Stars. They are progeny from crosses of Rhode Island or New Hampshire Red Roosters with Barred Rock hens. This specific cross generates chicks that are easily identifiable by their foliage, so there is no danger of ending up with a rooster instead of a hen. This is a really important trait when choosing chickens for children if roosters are not desired. These hens are also good layers of dark brown eggs.

Moira and I also pulled out one of our cooperative educational games today too. The name of the game is "A Beautiful Place" and it teaches children 4 years old and up important concepts about taking care of the earth and good deeds, for example turning off lights and water, throwing away trash, planting a garden, and recycling. We got this game from ProgressiveKid.com, where it is actually on sale right now for 50% off. Progressive Kid has a number of games for teaching Earth friendly concepts.

If you are in the Volusia County area, why not join us at our Earth Day Celebration at the Fair Share Garden on Saturday April 25th from 9-1:30. We will have a number of free gardening workshops for adults, and I will be teaching an introduction to gardening class for children. For more information and to register fro the class visit my etsy shop.

Fair Share Urban Garden & Artisan Market: Earth Day Celebration

The Fair Share Urban Garden will be hosting an Earth Day fund raiser the morning of Saturday, April 25th. The event will feature workshops for all ages and an artisan market with fair trade crafts, natural herbal balms, soaps, functional pottery, fused glass and found jewelry, native plant seed sales, and more.

Workshop schedule:

9:30 AM Container Gardening with Master Gardener Myrna Moore. FREE

10:30 AM Children's Introductory Garden workshop. Children under 12 should arrive in play clothes and bring vegetable food scraps that they have collected for composting. They will paint a clay pot with a baby tomato plant during the class. Parents are encouraged to pre-register their children online at AquarianBath.com, $10 per child to benefit the garden.



11:30 AM Celebrating the “Green” Way by Ciana Maglio of Green Halloween® FREE

12:30 PM Presentation: "Sundials in the Garden" Why isn't the Sun due south at noon? Is the Sun ever straight overhead in Daytona Beach? Come learn about the Sun's motion through the sky and how to tell time with sundials. Paper sundials will constructed and demonstrated. This workshop will be led by Jason Aufdenberg who is an assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach and a Fair Share Urban Garden Project volunteer.



The Fair Share Urban Garden & Artisan Market is located at 345 White Street in Daytona Beach behind the Daytona Beach Lion's Club at the corner of White Street and Willis.

The Fair Share Urban Garden Project is a sustainable urban agriculture program of Salt of the Earth, Inc., a local 501 (c ) 3, nonprofit organization. For more information visit or contact Joel Tippens at fairsharegarden@gmail.com or 386-451-9003.

Sundial photo by SEWilco with permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this photo under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".