Herb preparation

I've been looking into herb preparations lately. I love to garden, and I have been slowly but surely adding plants that have magical meanings for me to my yard. I even have a 'witches' garden laid out, but it's in pots and in the far reaches of my yard (read: hard to keep watered appropriately). By next year that should all be rectified... but I want to be able to preserve some of my plants for use during the rest of the year. (For information on what you can do with mullein see the Grove of the Ancients blog.)

(NOTE: it is very important that you look up the plant you're working with, several common plants are poisonous and should be handled with extreme care (or if you work on my principles... it's not worth the risk, something else can do the job... so don't work with these plants at all).

So, here are some things to do with the herbs in that garden that you can use in ritual, as remedies, or in less formal 'appreciations':

Flower Essences: I mentioned how I do this in a previous post.


Drying herbs: You can harvest whole stems (as long as you don't take more than about 25% of the plant so that it can regenerate), tie them loosely and hang them in a sunny window or other warm dry place. You could also put them in a food dehydrator if you have one, or put them in the oven on its lowest temperature for about 10 minutes. Store in a jar with a loose lid, or cheesecloth/muslin bag, to keep air circulating and the dust off. It's often wise to remove the dried leafy material or flowers from the stem, as the stem of some plants is difficult to dry and can set mold growing in your herb collection.


Once you have fresh or dried herbs you can make one of the following:

Oils: You can make infused oils by mashing an herb (or in some cases, the flowers) with a mortar and pestle and pouring a carrier oil, such as almond, olive, or jojoba oil, over it. Leave the mixture in the sun for three days, or heat VERY gently over a fire (maybe even just a candle). Strain through cheesecloth and bottle. This should probably be stored in the refrigerator or a cool place.


Teas/infusions: Pour boiling water over the herb (either fresh, in which case you'll need a little more, or dried, which takes about a spoonful or 1 oz.). Let it sit until the liquid cools. Strain through cheesecloth (or you can put it in a teabag to start with... I just bought a bag of empty teabags from my local craft store for 50 cents). These should also be stored in the refrigerator, and they'll only last about a month, but I think it might depend on the herbs.

Alcohol based tinctures: I don't have experience with these, but I hear they work well. According to Cunningham's Incense, Oils, and Brews, you need to use ethyl alcohol to make a tincture (rubbing alcohol is a petroleum product) and it can be hard to find. It's also known as wood alcohol, and I do know that it turns to formaldehyde in the human body (it was widely ingested during prohibition, and it killed and maimed a lot of people). I choose not to use this.

I have a personal list of about twelve plants that I work with regularly and having growing in my garden, plus a few that I buy dried, and I often use cinnamon and lemon. This is really my entire repertoire, and I find that I can do most stuff with these plants.

Blackberry
Dandelion
Fern
Jasmine
Lavender
Mint
Poppy
Rose
Rosemary
Sage
Thyme
Yarrow

Trees:
Birch
Juniper
Oak
Pine

What are your favorite herbs?

Flower essences

I made flower essences this spring, and it was very gratifying. I really like to make my own "stuff" for health, ease, and ritual. Flower essences turned out to be REALLY easy... just harvest the flower (preferably JUST the flower, no stem or bugs), I tried to choose especially healthy and unblemished ones.


These were some of the first ones, when I was putting them in bowls full of shallow water and covering them with plastic to keep debris out. I didn't love using plastic, even though it never touched the flowers or water... I'm sure ya'll understand... anyway, later I started using glass jars with lids.

It's good to harvest the flowers early in the day, put them in a small amount of water (ultimately, given that I was doing this for personal use, I didn't need much, less than a cup of water), and set them out in the sun to soak. The idea is that the essence of the flower will mix with the water, then they can be strained and bottled, and the energy of the plant is still there.


After everything sat in the sun for at least four hours, preferably longer, I filtered the water through a coffee filter, into dark glass dropper bottles that were half full of glycerine (food grade, available at health food stores).


These are the "mother essences" from which I can make smaller bottles of a single essence, or I can mix essences. For example, I made a sleep mixture for the kids of miner's lettuce, lavender, and borage. I should mention here that I did not follow published associations of the flowers. After I bottled them I sat and meditated with each one, and noting what came to me as the essence of that particular flower.

If you're interested in flower essences I got most of my information from the Bach Flower website (the makers of the infamous Rescue Remedy... love that stuff!, but these essences primarily come from flowers commonly found in Europe), and from the Flower Essence Society website (primarily United States flowers).