Holy Basil: Goddess from India, Beloved Tulsi // Plants that Heal
Tulsi is a goddess worshipped in India and we treat her with such reverence and love on our land.
She has always been one of my favorite plants. She has also become a mainstay volunteer in the garden.
Ocimum Tenuiflorum
Also know as Tulsi, holy basil holds a sacred and revered space in homes in the Indian subcontinent and it is a very important herb in Ayurveda. It has been used widely as a home remedy and nourishing part of a healthy lifestyle for millennia. Holy basil has a number of functions and actions, due to its thoroughly nourishing nature.
Because of its ability to reduce cortisol levels (stress hormone) and balance bodily functions (including blood sugar regulation), it is often known as an adaptogen. Holy basil is also used in treatment of chest congestion, colds and flus and other minor ailments acting as an immune booster aided by its antibacterial and anti-viral actions. It can also help with digestion and respiratory complaints such as asthma.
This Goddess is available in our shop if you didn't have time to make a tincture last summer.
I have seen some serious big studies on this here in India, the list of benefits keeps growing. You should provide a tea also, get some inspiration from organic India company, it is their main product and they have become very big worldwide although it is all local.
yes that is a great point! oh let me count the ways i love to drink holy basil. where are you based out of @bubke? i'm a little nervous to try to sell teas here b/c of the high humidity! tinctures are so easy because they're incredibly shelf stable and mold resistant ;) haha
i hear you on the humidity aspect but 'where are you based out of' sounds pretty weird to me :-) Where is your base? Do you base? :-) What are you based out of? By elimination i guess it's the first one? I live in the mountains of South India, kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu but we might get a cruise ship now that Steem went x6 :-) Much love.
haha ! or -where's your base camp, you explorer! lol I sensed you are a traveler, which is why i asked. very cool, i'd love to travel there some day <3 maybe on that cruise ship lol! <3
Eco cruise is on the roadmap :-). Cool post you did on the Question Of The Week, i was impressed!
Hello to you both - I'm in AZ where it is DRY. And I love also to drink Tulsi as my preferred method of receiving her benefits. It just agrees with my system. So very calming on a smooth, deep level. I also enjoy tinctures (just visited your Etsy shop for one!) I'm so glad to find your site and good luck exploring the tea possibilities. Thank you both.
<3 thank you so much. what a delight! i also love the tea, but it goes fast around here (as fast as we dry it, we drink it, lol!) .. happy to be connected here as well, i love seeing your warm, uplifting, mind opening posts.
I LOVE Tulsi, what a beauty! Anyone every grow it indoors? I'm curious and would like to try it. Would it get enough light to thrive?
Yay! I love her too! I have grown her indoors and, with enough love, light, and nutrients/water she should definitely grow. It's tradition in India for a tulsi plant to be in the foyer of most homes. As I wrote above, she is worshipped as a goddess there an often kept indoors. <3 I think she'll get enough light if you put her near a window or in good diffused light.
Great, thanks! I'm going to give it a try. I hope it gets enough light, she'll definitely be getting a lot of love!
Wonderful Tulsi... She volunteers in our garden too. I love making the tea with a bit of milk in it too. The leaves are so succulent I can just taste the summer on them now... Great post!
yes! mm i could go for a cup of that right now <3 love to hear she's on your land, too.
Hope you do not mind but I will resteem your post!
oh thank you very much, would love that !
I'm so excited to grow tulsi on my organic flower farm this season! I plan on adding it to arrangements as a cut flower and to dry for teas/other herbal goodies that I'm especially excited to share with friends and family. :)
That's fantastic! Oh i can only imagine the beauty and graciousness she will add to your arrangements and in the homes she'll grace. <3
I can almost taste/smell it in that second photo. So lush. I had no idea it could reduce cortisol, that's very useful to know
Mmmm yes those are some photos from the summer. Looking at them makes me filled with the longing for the greenness (soon enough, soon enough).. It's an incredible plant. You may already be familiar with the adaptogenic qualities (of which the cortisol lowering is just one aspect), which regulate the system in whatever way is needed.
Awesome congrats and Steem on!
Thanks! (changed the duplicate post up a bit ;) )
Wonderful post. I should follow Tulsi in that I love plants of all kinds. I will be looking for a new herb to add to my gardening. Thank you
oh yes! that makes me very happy to hear. tulsi may be one of my favorite plants, and i would love to see her in every garden!! the "rama" variety floating around the US (not sure where you are located) is very easy to grow. strictly medicinal seeds has an easy to grow variety as well. <3
I am in the US. I will start searching as it is time to purchase seed that I do not save from my own plants. I have a small and larger greenhouse and an indoor area where I grow food during the cold weather. I also dry herbs for medicinal uses. Thank you for the post. When I have more time I will look through your other psosts.
not sure how i haven't seen you on here yet (following you now). the seeds are pretty easy to find and if you let them go to seed will proliferate for years to come (truly a blessing to me as i can't get enough of this gorgeous gal and love to give away to friends and family!). that's awesome you have a couple green houses and grow herbs. which herbs do you like to grow and dry? i dried some basic (i say basic, but they're so amazing, really) herbs this year like mugwort, sage, rosemary, oregano and of course holy basil. I'll look through your posts, too. seeing one about elk that catches my eye now! today my partner was just finally butchering the deer he shot and we've had hanging in the freezing temps.. we don't have elk, but plentiful deer.
I had a nice herb garden started but with a couple of years of being very busy with work and it has shrunk down. I still have oregeno, thyme (english), catnip, couple of kinds of mint, lemon balm, chamomile, sage (for smudging and culanary), bee balm, and a few more. Many have gone "native" on me which allows for a lot more. Most of the chamomile i harvesy is growing wild now. Have a hop plant staryed last year. I dry as much as i can and use some for tincture, some for teas. I do buy some dried herbs for medicinal uses.
I started reading your article on grafting...but need to have a fresh mind to respond. My dad taught me to graft and i start some apple trees using seedlings i grew. But ibhave one apple tree that is fair size and whenever i get a scion of a new variety i graft it onto the big tree before i go to rootstock. I must have had 10 - 15 varieties on it.
I have not hunted elk because this herd has moved into the area in the last couple of years. It is growing so who knows. Now venison it is our primary meat source. We have one processed and in freezer. Another is frozen and i need to start processing it soon. I cut up a third for a friend and i get 1/2 the meet.
I "share" my garden with them and not always by choice. I have enough land that i plant extra because i know the garden will be visited daily be the deer.
I am rambling...i look forward to reading more of your posts....
Appreciate your ramble! sounds like you are set for winter.
Love to hear that you learned grafting as a boy! I think that is pretty rare so kudos to your dad. Also AMAZING that you have a tree with 10-15 varieties on it already. When spring hits, I would LOVE to see a post on that. Just wow, very cool. We have only lived on our land for two years and the first year we observed a lot based on the Permaculture Principle of Observation. This last year we planted many trees and tried our hand at grafting some of our wild persimmons with cultivars scions and same with wild plums, but none took. We're trying this year with a little more knowledge and ability to use a friend's fridge to keep them stable til we're ready to graft ( i think the temp fluctuations were the reason we were so unsuccessful last year). but we'll try again!
sounds like you have a good herb garden already. i love it when they naturalize, personally. i make and sell tinctures for a business so i grew some ashwagandha, licorice, astragalus, and goldenseal last year to start the small herb business. it feels VERY good to have those in the ground and to be sharing medicine with people, and making it for myself. Good to hear from you. Take care.
Grafting stone fruit like plums can be tricky if you are using a cleft graft. Usually they bud graft them later into summer. I have yet to try that. I did have luck with a peach using a cleft graft, although I planted rootstock in a pot and had it in my greenhouse. I used black rubber electrician tape (no vinyl) to wrap the graft. The hotter sun in Greenhouse allowed it to absorb more heat and it healed over and grew.
I need to try it again with a plum tree I have. It tolerates our cold nights during flowering...I only know it as a Russian Plum. The tree produces well but I can no longer find the tree so I can have more than the one. I canned them last summer and they are wonderful right now.
I am slowly preparing a post for growing your own sprouts, especially during winter. I am eating them twice a day now. Once I finish that I will be starting up my hydroponic units under lights...I have posted a little about that early on when I started on steemit. This time I want to get pictures of the entire process...
Duly noted on stones and cleft grafting. Our plums will be whip and tongue grated this season, and maybe wait till later to bud graft our wild cherries, good tip!
Love to hear you're into sprouting! Me too, big time! If you're interested you could read one of our previous posts on sprouts here. We did a few in promotion of my book. Would love to read what you come up with.
Yes bro..in tulasi leaves ..there is have a lot of medical and ayurvedic benifits..in india every on pray to tulasi tree and respect a lot ..this tree leaves are used for dip in coffe and also cold and cuff..it mixes in a hot water and take a steem of that to nose...its a very greate leave...@r2cornell
thank you for sharing your experience with her <3
Sounds fascinating. I may have to grow in a container to keep it going long enough to become a good size. Thanks for the additional information.
You are welcome bro...always a pleaure...@r2cornell
One more thing i want to share you is neem tree is also used for the medicals and ayurvedic purpose..this tree leaves are bitter in taste and this tree is also every one pray and treated as a god...for some dieases the leaves is crushed and paste that leaves and apply that paste to the body as a anti -biotic....@r2cornell
Basil is one of the first herbs I started cooking with fresh. To be honest, fresh herbs intimidate me in the kitchen but I am pushing myself to experiment more. Basil is one of my favourite herbs and I had no idea it came along with all these benefits! Thanks for sharing, I definitely learned something new today.
Yay! Happy to hear you learned something new. This is a relative, but is not the basil of most cuisine. This is a basil from india. They are similar in some ways (aid digestion, cool the body, promote healing), but the taste is different and holy basil is a more powerful healing herb for stress. Keep going in the kitchen! Happy to hear you're experiment amidst the intimidation :)
Thanks for the clarification. I will have to keep my eyes open for hily basil as its properties sound pretty incredible. Also, youe article photos are beautiful. -Aimee
thank you! as one of my favorite plants, i often find myself oggling tulsi <3
Tulsi leaf juice is very useful.
This tree is able to cure many diseases.
yes indeed!