How we recreated a commercial herbal tea at home (Kubja naistetee)

In Estonia one can find a bag of Kubja naistetee at any local pharmacy. The name Naistetee means Women's tea but all ingredients in this tea are indeed beneficial for people regardless sex.

We tried replicating this Kubja naistetee recipe at home.

>>> INVESTIGATE THE LABEL:

It is worth noting that the tea is NOT explicitly marketed to pregnant women and women during breast-feeding.

The blend has 5 ingredients in the following ratio by weight:

Shepherd's Purse - White Clover - Catnip - St. John's Wort - Lady's Mantle = 1 : 3 : 5 : 5 : 6

(Hiirekõrv : Valge Ristik : Naistenõges : Naistepuna : Kortsleht = 1g : 3g : 5g : 5g : 6g for every 20g of the blend)

The main ingredient is Lady's Mantle (6g in 20g). This may be the reason for the company to brand this blend "Naistetee/ Women's tea". Lady's Mantle herb is very commonly used as a pain reliever in folk medicine. Particularly for women during menstruation, it helps relieve mild aches and pains as well as lessening excessive bleeding (Soule & Szwed, 1998).

The flowering note of this tea is White Clover (3g for 20g).

>>> FORAGE THE INGREDIENTS:

Kortsleht / Alchemilla / Lady's Mantle / Daggkåpesläktet / Poimulehdet / - - Collect the aerial part Our neighborhood in Helsinki is full of this lovely herb yet we have not seen it in LabLand so far. This bunch was foraged around Tartu Observatory.

Valge Ristik / Trifolium Repens / White Clover / Vitklöver / Valkoapila / Cỏ Ba Lá Hoa Trắng - Collect the flowers[1] Like those of many other Clover species, White Clover flowers smell sweet and taste sour. Red Clover (Trifolium Ratense) and White Clover tend to grow together on country meadows and lawns. If you find them and are curious, why not try the former instead for a new blend flavour exploration? [1]For this tea blend we use the aerial parts of all the ingredients except White Clover. With White Clover, only the flowers are used.

St. John's-Wort and Catnip each makes up 5g in 20g of the blend.

Naistepuna / Hypericum / St. John's-Wort / Johannesörtssläktet / Kuismat / - - Collect the aerial part St. John's-Wort is well-known for its antiseptic, anti-inflammatory and biliary enhancing properties. B caught this lone plant next to a shortcut in LabLand. We are lucky to have many of them. One should harvest the herb when it blooms. The vividly yellow flowers are very outstanding even in between grass higher than one's head.

Naistenõges / Nepeta Cataria / Catnip / Kattmynta / Aitokissanminttu / B?c Hà Mèo - Collect the aerial part Last week Sister P paid an unexpected visit and gave us this pot of young Catnip! I personally struggled to find this herb in the wild at first. I only got to know Catnip with my bare eyes and nose for the first time this June in Tartu Botanical Garden, and searched extensively since but could not find it either in Labland or around Tartu Observatory. Not until asking Sister P did I know that Catnip is indeed a garden herb - only grown in gardens.

If you do not have Catnip available and do not want to buy it from an herb store, you can improvise: either omit this component from your blend, or substitute it with some herb(s) of similar flavour or similar health benefits, or experiment with mixing & matching from what you have on hand.

Catnip's smell reminds us of Peppermint (Mentha × Piperita) and Stinging Nettle (Urtica Dioica) so flavourwise we would swap Catnip with Mint, Nettle, or both of them.

In fact, Catnip literally means "women's nettle" in Estonian (though Nettle and Catnip belong to 2 different families) and "cat's mint" in Swedish and Finnish. (Catnip and Mint are in the same family Lamiaceae.)

Kõrvenõges / Urtica Dioica / Stinging Nettle / Brännässla / Nokkonen / Tầm Ma -Collect the aerial part For our Vietnamese friends who only heard about cây tầm ma from Andersen's The Wild Swans where Princess Elisa has to collect cây tầm ma in graveyards to knit into 11 shirts for her brothers, now you know cây tầm ma is not just a fairy tale plant. Cây tầm ma stings (or burns) you when you touch it - even very slightly at a leaf - so one has better to wear gloves when harvesting cây tầm ma. Remember the detail that Princess Elisa endures great pain and her hands are blistered because of nettle stings?:) Cây tầm ma however only stings when it is fresh.

Piparmünt / Mentha × Piperita / Peppermint / Pepparmynta / Piparminttu / Bạc Hà Âu - Collect the aerial part Peppermint is a cultivated plant but once it is grown, it spreads very quickly and sometimes can be spotted in nature. We do not have Peppermint in LabLand but we have a kind scientist who "feeds" the whole Observatory with his Peppermint, all year round.

The remained 1g of 20g of the blend is composed of Shepherd's Purse.

Hiirekõrv / Capsella Bursa-Pastoris / Shepherd's Purse / Lomme / Lutukka / -
- Collect the aerial part

Shepherd's Purse is abundant around the Observatory and along the pedestrian paths in Tartu city. We plucked a bunch on the way home and brought to LabLand to cultivate.

Once the ingredients are gathered and well air-dried, simply mix them in the proportion indicated on label. Home-blended herbal tea easily stays for 1 year in an airtight container.

A general rule in herbal tea consumption: although the commonly-used herbs usually have a mild nature, a medicinal tea is still a medicine so if you get any side effects, talk to your doctor or pharmacist.

>>> BREW A CUP OF TEA:
1 - 2 teaspoons | 100^oC | 10 - 15 minutes. Drop in a dollop of honey.

>>> DOSES:
1 - 2 glasses a day.

^[2]Soule, D., & Szwed, S. (1998). A woman's book of herbs. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub. Group.

Pumpkins growing on a compost heap

We have a lot of plant matter (e.g. weed stalks, stems and roots) from soil improving activities, kitchen waste and a kilogram of coffee grounds at our disposal every day. To immediately use this biowaste with the least planning effort we tried making a simple compost heap and growing pumpkins and zucchinis on it.

Varieties of pumpkins, gourds and squash are famous for their sprouting in the compost pile in spite of your intention as you happily toss their flesh (along with seeds) on the pile, so we were very hopeful that our intended pumpkins and zucchinis would thrive.

The pile has not released any bad smell as it was anticipated, and watching the fruits growing bigger by the hour is more than satisfying.

Pumpkin and zucchini vines rambled all over the heap and ground. Rather than trim away unwanted vines to stimulate the faster growth of fruits, we decided to let free and see how far these plants can develop in one Estonian summer and in such a nutritional condition we provide.

Dozens of blossoms appeared underneath the huge leaves. A few had become pollinated and started to grow.

We gathered the waste (most of which was grass stem, leaves and roots) into a pile, dampened and capped it with a thin layer of soil. After that the young plants were located at 4 corners. We left spacious spaces between them for they would soon grow very big. Then we finished it off by covering the top of the heap with a black plastic sheet (this prevents the weeds from growing and speeds the rotting time).

From time to time we kept adding new layers as we plucked the weeds. That's it!

In the second "fieldwork party", we were preparing the soil for potatoes. A lot of weeds were removed.

P was separating soil from plucked weed roots.

At the end of the "fieldwork" day we gathered the weed stalks and roots into a heap. It turn out already a huge heap from Day 1. B was dampening it thoroughly.

Then we capped the heap with a thin layer of soil for it to supply the necessary microbes and later to hold the plants in place.

Distributing the plants :D . We started kind of late in the season for growing pumpkins and zucchinis from seeds (i.e. at the end of May) so we took the baby plants from Tartu open farmers' market. Day 1: June-02

After securing the plants to the heap, we covered the rest of surface with black plastic. Most of the roots and stems we collected that day were still "alive" and could send up new growth. Black plastic would kill the grass off effectively by blocking the sunlight so that it could not charge its photosynthesis.

Zucchinis after 8 days Day 9: June-10

A strong wind blew away part of the cover the other day and broke a zucchini plant. We had to adjust the heap slope to ensure that the other plants were better supported. June-23

More weeds were uprooted from the ground. June-12

As we got rid of the weeds, we kept adding new layers to the heap. There is now a new heap just next to that existing one :D

Zucchini leaves after 3 weeks

...and pumpkin. June-23

In the shadow already appeared many many baby zucchinis.

They grew fast. We were especially happy since we did not expect any fruit this year at all, due to our agricultural ignorance. It is even amazing considering the "diet" we offered - a very humble layer of soil on top of weed roots, everyday water and Estonian summer sunshine. July-01

Proud to present the first achievement of our labour ^^ Day 39: July-10

See how intensively they continued growing within the next 3 days. The bigger one actually suppressed its sibling and thus deserved being harvested immediately. But we let them be for 2 more weeks waiting until B's Mother's birthday party. An impression is guaranteed! :D Day 42: July-13: Ready to harvest.

P.S.: Waiting. There is a small chance that these zucchinis will explode and next year we will have a hectare of zucchinis.