A great joy of gardening is utilizing your bounty for meals and garnishes at home. Many fruits and vegetables are seasonal, which is great for fresh and weather appropriate for dining, but you may wish to enjoy the nourishment of your green thumb year round. One wonderful way to utilize your garden and have natural alternatives to grocery store aisles comes in the form of gardening herbs. Aside from jazzing up your perfected marinara sauce, selections of fresh herbs brew so well into herbal teas. Even beyond warming up and soothing tension with a fragrant and flowery tea, you can enlist your planters in the battle for garden mosquito control- which is much more cost efficient and healthful than pesticides.

Four popular tea herbs are particularly successful in keeping mosquitoes from your backyard and nipping at your skin. Peppermint, Lemon Balm, Lavender, and Rosemary are classic examples of natural mosquito repellants, and each offer a different comfort to the herbal tea enthusiast. These three herbs all prefer relatively dry and well-drained soil, which is needed for the warding off of still water for mosquitoes to breed in. Mint is a classic pest repellant, and assists in keeping a list of pests away, like mice. Catnip, a member of the mint family and lovely tea addition, is proven to be ten times more potent in mosquito control than the common pesticide, DEET. In the realm of sipping, mint is invigorating and aids in relief of headaches, indigestion, and gingivitis. Lemon Balm, lover of dry soil, keeps the nuisance of mosquitoes away. Saving you from West Nile Virus aside, lemon balm is also very high in antioxidants and wonderful for rescue of cold and flu symptoms and helps lower blood pressure. The happy little lavender buds bring you directly to the hills of Provence and deliver a lovely scent to you garden, a scent which mosquitoes cannot tolerate. When you place the buds in your boiling water, especially if you are suffering from a migraine, all tension will pass with the uplifting floral steeping. The final herb which I wish to highlight is one that goes so well into so many dishes, from new potatoes to pork loins. Rosemary is hearty and with a quite potent smell, one which dissuades so many pests from your yard. Mosquito control aside, rosemary is known for its capacity to soothe tension, while stimulating blood circulation and digestion.

There are a long list of herbs and vegetables which keep your garden with the benefit of mosquito control, such as eucalyptus and clove, which offer such brilliant smells and useful purposes to your home. Making multipurpose use of your garden aside from the pride of a season with your hands in the dirt, and nothing would end a long summer night better than sipping on your fresh herbal tea, sitting amongst your plants, and enjoying a calming, mosquito free evening.