Cinnamon is a fantastic aromatic, which makes it great for baking and cooking, but this versatile spice isn’t just for the kitchen! With origins dating back to as early as 2700 B.C., cinnamon is a popular spice all over the world for uses in cooking and medicine.

Once a very valuable trade commodity, you can find ground cinnamon and cinnamon sticks at most grocery stores at a fair price. You might want to stockpile the spice when you see everything it can do in your garden.

Cinnamon saves seedlings.

The term dampening off covers a range of diseases that attack a seed/seedling either before or after germination and cause the seedling to die. They can be caused by several different fungus and soil conditions.

A few years back I read that if you dust the soil of seedlings with cinnamon, it will prevent dampening off. I’ve been doing it since with great results! This makes a lot of sense too, since cinnamon has antifungal properties.

This also gets rid of those little fungus gnats that somehow appear around seedling trays. Cinnamon kills the fungus they feed off of.

Prevent wild mushrooms.

Nothing worse then having to waste a beautiful day pulling mushrooms from the mulch in my flower beds. Mushrooms are fungus and luckily cinnamon has antifungal properties.

By dusting cinnamon all over the garden mulch, it helps to control mushroom growth. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt your plants.

Cinnamon as rooting hormone.

Cinnamon is much cheaper than the chemical rooting hormone they sell in the big box store and just as effective! Just allow the cutting to dry slightly then apply cinnamon powder to the stem before you plant the cutting.

Cinnamon as ant deterrent.

Ants do not like cinnamon! Sprinkle cinnamon in your greenhouse or around your garden beds to deter garden pests. It will not kill the ants, but they will stay away from it.

Sprinkle a line of it in front of your doors if ants are coming into your house. They really hate to cross a line of cinnamon!

Cinnamon heals plant wounds.

Overzealous pruning or a slip of the weed whacker and you’ll have a plant with a wound that needs fixed up. Simply dust cinnamon on the wound to encourage healing and prevent fungal infection at the same time.

Cinnamon for house plants.

Cinnamon gets rid of molds and mildew in house plants too. Simply sprinkle a bit of cinnamon on the soil. Fungus shows up as discolored spots on the soil.

It will also get rid of gnats if you happen to have them buzzing around your house plants. These are the same gnats seedlings get. The cinnamon destroys the fungus they feed on and the gnats will die.