Edible, medicinal, and native plants for the Pacific Northwest
We spent 13 years building an abundant fruit forest, annual veggie beds, perennial medicinal herbs, and a healthy mixed hardwood-coniferous forest and now we’ve sold our property to the next stewards so that we can begin a new homesteading project in Vermont closer to our best friends and their kids.
Don’t worry - we plan to keep this website up and running so that our customers can reference what we’ve written about our plants!
We’ll let you know once we re-start a farm in Vermont!
We grow this tender annual each year at the same timing as tomatoes and basil in our garden. In July and August, it produces striking yellow and red flower heads without any ray flowers, giving the appearance of brightly colored buttons. The first frost kills the plants.
Toothache plant is also known as Szechuan buttons because of the tingling sensation they produce in the mouth when you eat a flower bud or take a dropperful of the tincture. Another well-known name is Spilanthes. A tea, tincture, or just eating the flowers makes your mouth tingle as it activates your salival glands and stimulates your white blood cells to fight infections in the gums, tongue, and mouth. Our family enjoys a mouth wash with a dropperful of tincture in a little water. Read more
This Kenyan species of toothache plant grows as a ground cover or vine. It’s sensitive to frost but makes a great medicinal annual plant for our climate. We occasionally grow the vines in hanging baskets because they spread so wonderfully and make a great medicinal decoration for the porch in summer and as a houseplant in the winter.
Another well-known name is Kenyan Spilanthes. A tea, tincture, or just eating the flowers makes your mouth tingle as it activates your salival glands and stimulates your white blood cells to fight infections in the gums, tongue, and mouth. Our family enjoys a mouth wash with a dropperful of tincture in a little water. Read more
