I’m prone to seasickness. I’ve always sworn by the effectiveness of sucking crystalised ginger as a remedy, and there’s good evidence that I’m not imagining it. Crystalised ginger is easy to make, and if you don’t need it for seasickness (or even if you do?) covering it in chocolate and gift wrapping is an option.
Ginger tea is also a well known remedy for morning sickness, and there’s pretty solid evidence base for that too – large randomised control trials showing ginger is as effective as commonly prescribed anti-nausea medications. Even better, there have been large, good quality studies showing no adverse effects on the baby. The evidence is more mixed for post operative nausea or nausea due to chemotherapy but some studies show it as effective.
The other main “garden pharmacy” takeaway I found is the evidence for ginger’s effectivenss as a remedy for period pain and heavy bleeding, again as effective or better than commonly prescribed pharmaceuticals including ibuprofen. There’s decent evidence that it is useful for osteoarthritis pain relief too, and at least one strong study showing a significant effect on migraine pain.
Ginger is one of the most studied herbal remedies with quite a volume of high quality evidence to draw from.
Zingiber officinale, family Zingiberaceae, Ginger
Ginger is a tropical plant and it needs tropical rainforest-like conditions – warm, moist, well drained, filtered sun, lots of compost. In my subtropical climate, it dies right back over winter – so much so that I have to remember where it is. Anything lower than about 15°C overnight will send it dormant. It resprouts when it gets warm and wet enough in spring, but warm enough is not until it is real, consistent T-shirt weather, which doesn’t happen here until late October. In temperate climates, or anywhere that frosts, you will need to grow it in a pot that you can bring indoors for the winter. It won’t tolerate frost at all.
You also need to keep it well watered but not waterlogged. It will cope with dry but it doesn’t grow new rhizomes, and the older ones get tough and fibrous. Waterlogging will rot the rhizomes.
It all sounds a bit tricky but it’s not. Give ginger the right conditions and it thrives so well that it’s not hard to keep a year round supply sufficient for making curries from scratch, adding to stir fries or tea, making pickled ginger for rice paper rolls and sushi, taking in a care package for pregnant friends or migraine sufferers or period pain, and crystallising for seasickness lollies or treats. In my subtropical climate, I don’t have a real harvest season for ginger. I just dig around a plant and chop off a knob when I need some.
Most of the references I found by following references from this link: Ginger on Human Health: A Comprehensive Systematic Review of 109 Randomized Controlled Trials https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7019938/
You will find the rest of this series by clicking the tag Medicinals.
