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Calendula In Folk Medicine And In Garden Landscape
Calendula In Folk Medicine And In Garden Landscape

Video: Calendula In Folk Medicine And In Garden Landscape

Video: Calendula In Folk Medicine And In Garden Landscape
Video: Calendula & Mullein, Medicine From Your Garden The Dirt Journal # 88 By : Quest For Details 2024, March
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Calendula
Calendula

There is a legend among the people that the sun, tired of shining, for a moment sat down on the hill to rest. At that moment, one of the gold coins rolled out of his pocket, rolled down the hill on the coming night, and quietly fell onto the soft ground. And in the morning a wonderful bright orange flower, like the face of the sun, grew on this place.

Calendula. We pronounce the name of this flower, and a picture of a front garden near an old house with geraniums on the window and porcelain elephants on the chest of drawers or the figure of Dr. Aibolit with a medicine for throat treatment pops up in our memory … Indeed, this favorite flower of our grandmothers has a very long history.

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The homeland of calendula or marigold, as the plant is popularly called for the similarity of its seeds to animal claws, is the Mediterranean and Central Europe. The wild predecessor is now found only in the countries of the Middle East, and in the cultivated form, calendula is distributed throughout the globe, with the exception of permafrost, deserts and semi-deserts. Information about the cultivated plant Calendula officinalis (calendula officinalis) has come down to us since the 12th century.

People recognized the unique medicinal properties of the plant in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome and began to use them. Later, the fame of the healing flower spread throughout Europe, where it was overgrown with legends and traditions. Once upon a time, calendula was one of the most popular flowers in France and the favorite flower of the Queen of Navarre, Marguerite of Valois. And now the statue of Queen Marguerite with a calendula flower in her hands stands in Paris in the Luxembourg Gardens.

Calendula - healer

Calendula
Calendula

Calendula officinalis is an unpretentious, cold-resistant annual: it can be content with modest conditions. But for a long time it will retain its decorative effect only in sunny areas, with regular watering and on drained loams. Blooms from late June until frost. To lengthen the flowering period, it is recommended to pick off faded flowers - baskets weekly. It is grown both through seedlings and by sowing in open ground.

Easily tolerates a pick and change. At a germination temperature of 15 ° C, the seeds germinate on the seventh day, and the calendula begins to bloom after 40-45 days. There is an opinion that when sowing calendula in the early stages or in the fall, the first flowers will be especially large, which is stimulated by the moderate temperature of flower bud development.

One of the first Russian scientists, calendula was officially recognized as a medicinal plant by the outstanding Russian physician - pharmacologist A. P. Nelyubin: he described its properties and used it in the clinic. Modern research by biochemists and pharmacologists has supplemented this knowledge and made it possible to formulate areas of therapeutic and cosmetological application. Flower baskets contain about a dozen valuable chemicals, the most important of which for medical use are carotenoids, flavonoids and glycosides.

Calendula preparations have anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, antiviral effects (herpes virus and a number of types of influenza type A). In case of damage to the skin and mucous membranes due to trauma or peptic ulcer disease, they accelerate tissue repair. An antispasmodic effect on the stomach, intestines, biliary tract was also revealed. All of the above allowed the plant to be used in dentistry, gastroenterology, dermatology, gynecology and even in oncology.

For the treatment of tumor diseases, a unique combination of various medicinal properties of calendula is used as an enhancement of the action of specific anticancer drugs. On the basis of the plant, such pharmacological preparations as kaleflon, kaferid, rotocan are produced.

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Calendula - soil and plant protector

Calendula
Calendula

But this plant, which seems to be very familiar to us, has a property that few are familiar with. This is the ability to inhibit the vital activity of soil pathogenic microorganisms, harmful insects and helminths, as well as the ability to get along with a large number of different representatives of the flora. These data have been accumulated in the process of long-term spontaneous activity of man - the farmer and so far do not have any convincing theoretical basis. Although the explanation for this phenomenon may well lie in the field of a young science - allelopathy.

Allelopathic interactions in nature are diverse and are reduced to the release by plants and microorganisms into the environment of a number of substances that affect the change in the range of plants in the process of competition. Everyone has heard of phytoncides - volatile substances, thanks to which we get the whole range of olfactory sensations, being near plants. Antibiotics secreted by soil microorganisms are also not new.

But scientific information about substances such as marasmins secreted by microorganisms of the forest litter, and colins secreted by plant roots into the soil are extremely scarce. But it is the latter, apparently, that provide the strongest competition between groups of plants competing "for a place in the sun".

At this moment, you need to remember the good old calendula. According to a large number of practitioners, gardeners and gardeners, the plant is not only combined with any crop, but, moreover, has a significant resistance to pathogenic microorganisms that parasitize garden crops, insects and soil helminths. For example, the disinfecting effect of marigolds in relation to soil nematodes is noted, in particular, when growing grapes.

There is evidence that the plant, planted in a certain way in the garden, protects berry bushes from ticks (for example, from strawberry), aphids, raspberry flies and other leaf-gnawing insects, and potatoes from the Colorado potato beetle. Calendula, planted among roses, well disinfects the soil from fungal diseases. Sowing a plant among cabbage and asters reduces their defeat by fusarium.

Calendula in a garden landscape

Calendula
Calendula

Recently, landscape designers have forgotten about calendula. It is believed that the plant in flower mixborders and flower beds is inferior in decorativeness to other, more modern cultures.

And, despite the large number of new and very beautiful varieties of this plant, marigolds are rarely mentioned in books on landscape design. However, the fashion for a vegetable mixborder now coming to us from Europe shows that it is the marigolds, often in combination with marigolds and nasturtium, that most harmoniously fit into the group of plants for "internal use".

After all, it is these plants that, being near food crops, perform three functions at once: they detoxify the soil, create a compatible aura of smells and can themselves be used for culinary dishes.

To achieve a disinfecting effect from calendula, a specific planting technique is important. It is not enough just to sow calendula. The correct placement of crops and the number of planted plants is very important. Practitioners note the protective effect of the crop if the number of planted plants is 10-20% of those planted in the garden. Therefore, when planning joint plantings with vegetable crops, the area is accordingly increased.

You can place the plant both among the main crop, and you can sow it with two or three rows of beds with vegetables. To improve the areas already infected with nematodes or fusarium, calendula must be grown on them for at least two to three years in continuous sowing, avoiding the presence of other plants, both weeds and cultivated. In the fall, the plant needs to be crushed right on the garden bed and buried in the ground during the autumn digging.

When compaction planting, one should remember about the optimal combination of crops, as well as about the increased need for fertilizers when forming a vegetable mixborder by about 1.5 times compared to the amount that would be spent on each crop separately, focusing on the prevailing crop. Calendula is combined with almost all garden and garden plants.

In the flower mixborder, bright shades of yellow-orange gamut make it possible to successfully combine marigolds with plants of blue-blue, lilac and lilac tones: verbena, alissum, delphinium, ageratum, lobelia, nemophila, nirembergia, bindweed, brachycoma.

Calendula
Calendula

Recently, a lot and rightly they talk about mulching as a means of protecting the soil from drying out and weeds. Here they call, as a rule, compost, peat, bark, sawdust, grass, etc. used only during the season. More long-term used stone chips, shells are also mentioned. The use of cover crops (green manure) for the same purpose is often forgotten. But calendula can be put alone in a row with such siderates as oats, mustard, phacelia.

And if you sow calendula in the tree trunks, as well as in areas that are not filled for various reasons between other perennial plants (of course, taking into account the compatibility of colors, height and other design nuances), then you can simultaneously get the effect of both mulching and green manure loosening the soil. If we mow the green mass before flowering, and the mowed material is embedded in the soil near the plants, we will get the effect of enriching the soil with "green" fertilizer.

This versatility of calendula allows for a wider use of the culture than is currently being done. And I am sure that in the process of deepening our knowledge in agrobiology and agrochemistry, the plant will not only not be forgotten, but, on the contrary, will become the object of even closer attention of researchers and gardeners.

Medicinal recipes from calendula

Pour 10 g of calendula flowers with a glass of boiling water, leave in a warm place for 4-6 hours, strain, squeeze. Apply as a gargle for tonsillitis and pharyngitis

Pour 2 tablespoons of flowers with 1 cup of boiling water, heat in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes, stirring often. Cool at room temperature, strain, squeeze. Bring the volume of the broth with boiled water to the original. Take warm 2 tablespoons 3-4 times a day for diseases of the gastrointestinal tract

Wrap the flowers steamed from the previously prepared broth in a layer of gauze, cool to body temperature and put on the skin of the face. They refresh and nourish the skin, giving it a matte finish

Calendula flowers, pre-dried in the shade for 12 hours to reduce moisture, put in a dry and clean glass jar. Pour olive oil so that the flowers are completely covered, but have room for expansion. Stir and close the jar tightly. Place the jar in a warm place and shake once a day. After 4-6 weeks, strain through calico or cheesecloth. Pour into a glass bottle and store in a cool, dark place. Rub oil into the skin with seborrheic dermatitis, skin cracks, bruises

Cut a couple of fresh cucumbers, add green onions and 10-20 chopped flower baskets to them, add salt and sour cream. Serve for dinner

Rinse calendula petals, grind, mix with butter. Add sugar to taste. Spread on bread. Serve ginger sandwiches for breakfast

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