Lemon Balm
This is the perfect herb to be thinking about after the recent celebrations – it is said to relieve headaches, restore memory and ease digestion! We use it to create delicately flavoured lemon rice by suspending a bunch in the pan whilst cooking and also for lemon tea. Lining the bottom of a cake tin with leaves will impart a lemon flavour to sponges (I peel the leaves away after cooking as I don’t like eating them). I like to use lemon balm when cooking chicken – and adding leaves to stuffing. Don’t forget to try them in fish dishes. You can also eat young leaves in salads In the garden, during summer, small white flowers appear. They seem insignificant to us humans but they are full of nectar and bees absolutely love them. Indeed the genus name for lemon balm is Melissa , Greek for 'honey bee'. It was once believed that a bunch of Lemon Balm placed in an empty hive would attract a swarm to make a new home there. Our plants have never attracted a swarm but we do grow them near our fruit trees to help encourage pollinating bees to visit. If you grow some in a pot you can then move it about your garden to where ever you have plants that need pollinating. We sell 50 seeds for 50p