Medicinal Plants

I've always been a big fan of learning how to do things from scratch, so the idea of using herbs to treat common illnesses has always had appeal for me. However, I've never liked the idea of taking someone's anecdotal evidence that something will cure such and such a disease. The other day however I stumbled across this site:
http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/default.aspx
You can search for a plant, take rhubarb for example, and it will tell you what studies have been done on it's effectiveness against certain problems. Turns out rhubarb root is good for cold sores. It even has the dosing to use:

For treatment of cold sores: a cream containing 23 mg/gram each of rhubarb extract and sage extract applied every 2 to 4 hours while awake, with treatment starting within one day of symptom appearance and continuing for 10 to 14 days.

The site will also list off all the things rhubarb is supposed to be good for and let you know if studies have been done backing up that information or not. I love studies. Needless to say, I'm impressed. And it turns out that a lot of the things that have proven to be helpful are things I am already growing. I have garlic, lavender, rhubarb, willow, and thyme in my yard right now and these have all been proven to be helpful for various things. I'm going to have to do some more reading, but I think it would be neat to have all the plants I would need to treat common illness around just in case the zombie apocalypse becomes a thing, or if I have a cough and want to have some thyme tea.

Vegetable Garden Plan for 2015

My garden plan is finally set in stone. I got some interesting pepper seeds from a co-worker that I wanted to incorporate and ended up having some extra room when I realized I was out of Bulgarian Carrot pepper seeds, but that is the final change I am making. (I say this every year and it's never true.)

The software I used to make this is the Garden Planner from growveg.com. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to laying out my garden and planning everything ahead of time, and I've found this is the best tool for it. You can see the garden details and plant list here.