White Sage: A Fragrant Incense For Air Purification

Until I started reading about Sweet Annie, the fragrant Artemisia annua, I did not know that one of my favorite scents came from a related plant.

White Sage, Artemisia ludoviciana, also known as Western Mugwort, is native to the western U.S.

Native Americans have used white sage for many, many moons in dances and rituals, and it’s still used today for “smudging”. Smudging is the practice of burning white sage or other botanicals to release smoke which is used to purify places and people.

If you’d like to try white sage as an incense, you can buy sage smudge sticks or loose white sage from Wandering Bull or Crazy Crow.

White sage burning.

We burn white sage to purify the air and to enjoy its aroma as an incense.

Light a small handful of sage on a heat-resistant dish and walk around the house to purge the atmosphere of any lingering stale air. We find the scent very pleasing and not at all like the incense sticks available in retail shops.

Sage that you might put in your turkey dressing or poultry stuffing is not the same thing as White Sage. Even though culinary sage, Salvia officinalis, has a pleasing scent when crushed or used in cooking, it only seems to go with turkey or poultry. Does anyone use sage in the kitchen for anything else?

Sage is a lovely, perennial plant of the herb garden and there’s more to harvest each year than we would ever use. Too bad it doesn’t give off the pleasing aroma that White Sage does when it’s burned.

Garden sage.

Sage in the herb garden grows 2-3 feet tall. Here, sage is next to a red impatiens.

Oval-shaped leaves of sage are heavily textured and appear “crinkley”. A white bloom is typically present and the opposite leaf pairs have long stems.

Textured sage leaf.

Textured leaf of culinary sage.

Sage would make a beautiful addition to an herb garden, along walkways, or used in place of other shrubbery. Ornamental varieties are available with variegated leaves and some beautifully colorful flowers. Check out the red-flowered sage Salvia greggii ‘Wild Thing’ from Spring Hill.

As you know Fall is a great time for planting perennials. See what you can find at this sale: Spring Hill Perennials – $25 Off $50. While you’re there search for “Wild Thing” to see the red-flowered sage.

Sweet Annie Smells Like the Old General Store

We harvest plants for many reasons. The plants in the vegetable garden and other edibles, like blackberries, elderberries and blueberries, provide for our sustenance and good health. The herb garden plants also find their way into the kitchen where they’re hung to dry for the cook. Other plants are harvested for their beautiful flowers and still others are gathered and dried for their medicinal content or used in crafts and decorations.

I’m sure it doesn’t surprise anyone that some herbs are appreciated for their scent alone. Who wouldn’t like to lay their head on a lavender pillow?

Another example of an herb that is appreciated for its scent is called Sweet Annie, Artemisia annua. Sweet Annie is also known as Annual Wormwood, but I like the more descriptive Sweet Annie.

Sweet Annie has been used for a long time as a natural room air freshener. Folks in the old general store would hang a bunch of Sweet Annie from the corner of a room to cover up musty odors. In the olden days, and most likely in many Amish and Mennonite homes yet today, Sweet Annie would be hung in the pantry to give a pleasing scent, but also to act as a pest deterrent. We have a small bunch hanging from a towel rack in the bathroom.

Sweet Annie is grown in herb gardens for its aromatic foliage, but it has escaped cultivation to become established in the U.S. Even though it can be classified as an alien weed, Sweet Annie is here to stay.

In the following picture you can see the numerous small, hanging flower heads. As a member of the composite family Sweet Annie will produce many small seeds from each little flower. Its flowers are tiny, yellow-green and ray-less.

Small yellow flowers of Sweet Annie.

Holding up the Sweet Annie stem, you can see the spikes of yellow flowers rise up from the leaf axils.

Many blooms of Sweet Annie.

Ok, do you think Sweet Annie has a chance of re-seeding itself?

Remember, it’s a composite family member so each little yellow bloom will produce several smaller-than-poppy-seed small seeds!

Foliage of Sweet Annie is deeply and finely cut, fern-like, and stands up to 3-4 feet tall. You’ll find it in waste places and along roads.

Leaves of Sweet Annie.

The finely-cut leaves of Sweet Annie.

Related plants in the genus Artemisia are typically very fragrant and include the mugworts and wormwoods.

Leaves and seeds are used medicinally, so Sweet Annie is appreciated for more than just her scent. Leaf tea can be used to treat colds, fevers, and diarrhea, while poultices can be used externally to treat abscesses and boils. Compounds that can be derived from Artemisia annua have been researched for their antimalarial and herbicidal properties.

Red Wiggler Worms Live in a Worm Bin

In nature Red Wiggler worms, Eisenia fetida, can be found among and underneath the leaves and throughout the top layer of soil where materials are available to the worms as a food source. Leaves, decaying plant matter, just about anywhere in this zone that you find decaying organic matter, you’ll find some kind of worm and red wigglers are typically found in the leaf litter.

Homemade worm bins come in all sizes and shapes, but most are variations on a simple plastic box. The requirements for a mini-worm farm are to provide them food and shelter. We’ve already touched on the food part and using a crock to hold kitchen scraps until they can be fed to the worms.

Shelter for the worms means you need to provide a place for the colony to survive, thus the box. Worms in nature are mostly underground or otherwise out-of-sight, so a lid for the box is needed to duplicate a dark, natural place for the worms to live.

As time goes on liquid accumulates in the worm bin due to the natural cycles of material breakdown, so we must provide a way for excess liquid to be removed from the worms’ living quarters. This is where the variation comes in the design of home made worm bins. If liquid is allowed to accumulate in the box your worms will try to find a way out. When this happens the worms usually don’t get too far away before they encounter difficulties and dry up.

Some folks drill or cut holes in the bottom of the plastic box that houses the worms. Liquid is then collected on a tray or in another plastic box. Others invent some sort of tap for collecting the liquid.

Worm juice can be diluted by about 1/10 with water and used as a dilute fertilizer for plants.

Using shredded paper for bedding in a worm bin gives another benefit to the earth in that we can recycle some paper instead of dumping it in a land fill. Also, if the worms run out of food scraps, they will eat the paper!