Fall-blooming goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) is a common cause of seasonal allergies.

It’s that season again, when a young plant’s thoughts turn to pollen — making an estimated 60 million people in the United States miserable.

While farmers and gardeners have greater exposure to seasonal allergens, they also have great tools to prevent and treat its symptoms: fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants.

If you know of seasonal trigger for your allergies, approach that season like an athlete preparing for a big sporting event by getting into shape. Starting four to six weeks ahead of the season with your garden’s tools can make a big difference when the pollen strikes. 

1. Eat simply.

Your body is on high alert during allergy season, so everything you do to minimize physical stressors can help. For example, many very common foods are also common allergens — things like wheat, dairy, soy and corn. Sugar and caffeine also work your body harder. And saturated fats, especially from meats, can be tough on the liver.

While you may not notice symptoms when consuming these, they can lead to a higher baseline level of inflammation. That means you’ll be more reactive to pollens you encounter.

For the weeks before and during your difficult season, focus your diet instead on cleansing spring foods like steamed leafy greens with whole grains. It’s the perfect time for kale, chard and dandelion greens. These are also rich in allergy-busting antioxidants like Vitamin C.

Emphasize soups and herbal teas. If you’re clearing weeds in preparation for planting, remember that many are medicinal. Simple infusions of chickweed or cleavers support the liver and lymphatic circulation, helping reduce allergy symptoms. Or try some bitter dandelion root. It’s extra tasty when toasted.

And make sure you drink plenty of water to keep your body’s eliminatory systems working well.

2. Nettles

The spring weed, growing in luxurious and prickly stands along streambeds or other low, wet places, is one of the region’s top tools for fighting allergies. The fresh plant’s sting comes from hairs shaped like hypodermic needles filled with a substance similar to histamine, which may be one way it helps folks with hayfever.

Like the other spring greens, nettles (Urtica dioica) are high in anti-inflammatory Vitamin C as well as protein, B vitamins and many minerals. These support both the immune system and the adrenals, reducing your body’s reactivity. Nettles also are mildly drying — great news generally in the Northwest and even better when the waterworks won’t stop. Nettles make a great addition to soups and stews, and after light steaming make a fabulous pesto.

Medicinally, it’s best to start taking nettles well in advance of your hayfever season, usually four to six weeks before you typically experience symptoms.

To make a tea, put one ounce of fresh or dried nettles in the bottom of a quart jar, cover with boiling water and let it steep for four hours or longer. Drink throughout the day.

Some practitioners prefer the freeze-dried capsules, which preserve some of the constituents believed to be mosteffective for allergies. Two to four caps three times daily helps many people.

A tincture of nettles and dandelion root taken thrice daily is another good way to prepare for allergy season. Add eyebright (Euphrasia officinalis) if problems arise when the pollen comes out.

3. Quercetin

Onion skins, especially red ones, are good sources of allergy-busting quercetin.

One of the most potent anti-allergy prescriptions is quercetin, a constituent found in foods including onions (especially red ones), leafy greens, citrus, apples, broccoli, and many berries (including the nitrogen-fixing sea buckthorn, Hippophae rhamnoides). And here’s a case where organic is definitely better: A 2007 study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that organic tomatoes had 79 percent more quercetin than conventionally grown ones.

Quercetin works by reducing inflammation. People take up to 1,800 mg of the purified product daily in capsules to relieve acute symptoms.

4. The dope on honey

Many people tout raw honey or bee pollen as a cure for seasonal allergies. Some researchers have found certain varieties to be high in quercetin, which may account for some of the effect.

But I’m not a big fan of honey for this purpose, and in fact have seen it actually worsen symptoms — sometimes dramatically. This observation is supported both by scientific research and experienced practitioners, including renowned herbalist Michael Moore.

The idea is that taking honey is like getting a vaccination to local pollen species. But if you are very reactive, physiologically the exposure just gets more immune cells primed to release histamines and leukotrienes (the chemicals that make you feel lousy) when the pollen exposure occurs.

The bees often feed from flowers other than the ones that cause allergies, or conversely may expose you to new allergens, giving your body one more thing to react to.

The most important things, of course, are always eating a rainbow of vegetables, drinking plenty of water, getting sunshine and regular exercise. Add a few spring powerhouses from your garden and flowers can be your friends again.

A version of this story originally appeared in In Good Tilth.

My favorite seed catalog came in today’s mail.

What’s new for 2010: organic Floriani red flint corn, green meat radish, Bolivian rainbow pepper, purple pac choy, ruby streaks mustard.

This is why I started gardening – I was awed by the incredible diversity of life I could sustain on my little corner of earth.

There were other reasons too. After my urban upbringing, I longed for the pastoral and bucolic ideal of self sufficiency and thriftiness. And certainly there were the political reasons: getting off the corporate food trough while promoting biological diversity and personal health.

But what really pushed me past reading and into action was a full-color catalog that arrived one Winter’s day. I saw purple carrots, speckled lettuces, striped snappy string beans, and a bright orange tomato that turned out to be an eggplant! If your vegetable education came largely from mainstream supermarkets as mine once did, you’ll understand my shock. Who knew there were purple potatoes, or that we could grow Thomas Jefferson’s beans or the Anasazi’s corn?

These days I’m a passionate gardener and my garden supports over 100 species. Here’s why you should tend a garden, even if it’s just a couple of plants:

1. Get outdoors. Being outside can help many health conditions. The sunshine lightens most folks’ moods and helps produce immune-building vitamin D. Researchers find that people living near green spaces have much lower rates of diseases including asthma, depression, heart disease, migraines, and even urinary-tract infections.

2. Eat better. As a naturopath I always recommend that people eat the rainbow — and gardening is one great way to do it. Vegetables begin losing nutritional value as soon as the plant is plucked and produce from your own garden travels the shortest distance between place and plate. Also, many soils around the country have some well known nutrient deficiency—in western Oregon it’s selenium—which you can address easily in your home garden. Feed your soil, feed your plants, feed yourself.

3. Love those vegetables. Gardening is a great way to convert knowledge about the health benefits of veggies into the action of eating them. Researchers consistently find that garden-based education in schools makes children more willing to try, like and eat a diversity of vegetables. The same trick works with picky adults, too…

4. Grow your own medicine. That lovely lavender you’re already growing can improve digestion and fight depression. Thyme makes a great ground cover and fights off lung infections. Garlic, onions and their relatives support the immune system and the heart. Even weedy dandelion is medicine, helping the liver and the kidneys. And so much of this is so easy to grow!

5. Be more community-oriented. Scientists have found that spending time outdoors changes people for the better. Read here about how gardening transformed the English town of Todmorden and its inhabitants, building food security, ecological sustainability and community spirit.

6. Pure joy. Part of a healthy life is making sure there’s joy in your life, every day. And that is one of the best reasons out there for gardening. For me, that’s about the wonder of nature’s colors and textures, and the sheer awe of actively and literally keeping history alive. And it’s a wonderful gift to share with your partner or kids.

So as the year’s darkest days settle in, take time by the real or virtual fire to go through the words and pictures of the seed catalogs and feed your dreams of summer. Here is a short list to get you started.

• Fedco Seeds, a Maine cooperative, offers great starter packets at fantastic prices.
• Horizon Herbs offers one of the largest selections of medicinal plant seeds.
• Native Seeds/SEARCH has a focus on traditional Southwestern crops including a huge variety of beans, corn and hot peppers.
• Seeds of Change was one of the first glossy proponents of growing heirloom seeds.
• Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Mansfield, Mo., boasts a catalog of 1400 varieties of vegetable and flower seeds.
• Heirloom Seeds in Pennsylvania.
• Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

Happy garden planning!

NB: A version of this story originally appeared at WellWire.com.