Insects, keep away!

Do you like gardening or at least growing herbs in your kitchen window? Nothing beats listening to birds chirping in the trees and taking a deep breath of the fragrant air on the first real spring mornings, when the warm sunshine streams through my garden. Even if you only have room for a few pots, you should still think about getting a few plants and not only because you can use fresh herbs for cooking, making salads, lemonade or sandwiches.

In fact, you can use them for more than cooking: quite a few of them can help you repel the flies, wasps and mosquitoes which happen to fly through your window. I quickly collected all the (herbs) plants you can use apart from petunias and nasturtium for this purpose.

Lemongrass and citronella: they both have a similar citrusy scent, yet the leaves of the first are more similar to mint, whilst the other is reminiscent of a type of grass: it is a long-leaved plant of Asian origin. You can use it to fend off pests or possibly use its essential oil in a vaporizer when sitting outside on a summer evening. We often don't distinguish between the two of them: they're used in one of my favourite Manna soaps, the Aloe Vera-Lemongrass soap and the Lemongrass and Ylang-ylang scented whipped body butter.

Rosemary: an indispensible spice of Italian cuisine with a spicy fragrance noticeable even in the summer heat which isn't popular with flies and mosquitoes. Its spicy aroma is found in both our Manna shower gel with Rosemary and Peppermint and the Sigh of Relief foreahead balm.

Basil: another Mediterranean star with leaves which come in a range of different shapes, yet with the same unmistakable scent exuding cheerfulness. Keep in mind that its essential oil evaporates at high temperatures, so you can't really use it for cooking, only for garnishing or decorating the final dish. Basil also repels most common insects.

Mint: a star of the lemonade season - its pure, refreshing aroma is instantly recognized by children when rub its leaves with their fingers, which helps them distinguish it from the similarly tart lemon-balm. You can find it on our Coco chocolate mint soap.

Lavender: growing into huge, bushy shrubs, the summer is simply unimaginable without its amazingly tender fragrance. Bees and wasps love its tiny flowers, but in dried form, it's a great way of repelling moths and ants. If you don't have a garden and don't want to grow lavender indoors, the pure, undiluted Manna Lavender Essential Oil is always at hand and you can add a few drops to a little bowl of water or use it as potpourri to chase away any undesirable pests. We used it in our COCO lavender soap, the COCO lavender liquid soap, the Organic shea butter with lavender and tea tree oil and the Orange and the Sweet Orange Lavender whipped body butter and forehead balms.

+1 TIP: If you're a mother or like playing with kids, it's fun teaching the little ones about the various plants, how we use them and what kind of dishes they're included in.