Getting There

Healing Salve.

I finally got around to making up my healing salve. I had already made plantain salve a few months ago, for itchy bug bites. Although I was pleased with the results of my first salve, this time I did things a bit differently--I used olive oil instead of coconut oil, so that instead of "cooking" the herbs in oil on top of the stove, I could infuse the oil gradually, in a jar in a warm sunny window. (I suppose I still could have used coconut, but it is solid at room temperature so I wasn't sure if it would have worked as well.)

So I took a mason jar filled with chamomile (for soothing), calendula (for healing), and plantain (for healing, and to stop itch and pain), filled it up with olive oil, and let it sit for about a month, shaking it up every few days. Probably it isn't needed to let it sit so long, but I was in no hurry!

Also different this time was that I used dried herbs. When I made my plantain salve I used fresh herbs, but I have since learned that this isn't really a good idea because the moisture from the herbs can spoil the salve.

Today I took the oil and strained the solid material out. A cheesecloth lined strainer would be perfect for this, but as I was out of cheesecloth, I used a (clean) old scrap of flannel. This didn't work very well and I don't recommend it! The oil went throught the cloth very slowly, and it was difficult to squeeze the remaining dregs through the cloth.

I cut up some beeswax into small chunks--instructions always say to grate it but that's really hard work and I don't find it to be necessary!--and added it to the measuring cup of oil until it looked like I had added the right amount. Usually, it's good to use about 1 part beeswax to 4 parts oil.

Then I took the oil and placed it in a small saucepan. A double boiler is recommended, but I didn't bother this time. I heated the mixture over low heat, stirring often, until the beeswax was all melted. This took less than 10 minutes. I removed it from the heat, and added a healthy squirt of Vitamin E oil, since it is not only a preservative, but healing to skin.

Then I poured it into some little tins--which I ordered from Mountain Rose Herbs, and let it cool. It hardened within only a few minutes since my house is rather chilly today.

I have yet to try it out, but it looks lovely. My only complaint is that the scent of this salve is rather overpoweringly olive-y. Next time I make a salve, I will not use extra virgin olive oil, but will probably go back to coconut oil. I did like infusing the oil in a jar, instead of over heat, because I didn't have to worry about frying the herbs (not that I've ever done that, of course). 

I enjoyed experimenting a bit with salves and tinctures this year. Do any of my readers make their own herbal creations? If you've blogged about it, please do comment with a link. I'd love to see what others have done this year with the herbs from their garden. :)

This year's "harvest."

I couldn't help but put quotation marks on the word "harvest" in the title of this post. Last year my efforts at being an urban homesteader were very disappointing--I couldn't even manage to grow a few potatoes. So naturally I figured this year would be better...but I'm not so sure it was!

We did grow some string beans along the fence that did pretty well--we got enough beans for about 3 of our family meals. That's good, since I used leftover seeds from several years ago. And I have left many pods behind to dry out so we can have seeds for next year (although as I'm not sure what kind of seeds they were to begin with, I don't know if they're really sprout. I figured it was worth a try since it would cost nothing.)

And I did get a good amount of calendula for my healing salve. I filled a jar of extra virgin olive oil with dried calendula blossoms. It's been sitting in my back window for a couple of weeks now, and I think it looks so pretty and golden! I have some plantain leaves drying too, and once they are dry I'm going to top up the oil and add them, too.

I planted a number of chamomile plants but the harvest here was pathetic to say the least. I was hoping I would get enough to make tea for the winter...not quite! I think the chamomile must have loathed the damp and shady conditions in my back yard, because I only picked about a hundred tiny tiny straggly little blossoms...so after I dried them I added them to the oil for my healing salve, since the plant is known to be soothing to the skin.

I did make one single cup of weak tea, using a handful of chamomile and some lemon balm leaves...I found it funny. Some day I will do better than this! Some day I will have a lovely sprawling herb garden bursting with bountiful tea-making ingredients...just not right now.

My yarrow plant didn't get big enough to blossom, and my lavender died outright while it was still tiny. We only got 2 miniscule and sickly looking sunflower blossoms from the seeds we planted--so much for the cheerful bouquets the seed packet promised me! My stevia plant grew in leaps and bounds, but now I am not sure what to do with it because the word on the street is that the dried leaves taste terrible...

I am now working on drying some sage, basil, rosemary, and oregano for winter. I would have loved some thyme (which is delicious in my favourite winter meal, beef stew and dumplings) but couldn't find any plants this year. Maybe next year I'll order some seeds.

I planted four parsely seedlings, and they stayed ridiculously tiny! So much for that...

And then, for the pièce de résistance...behold our 2011 tomato harvest in its entirety:

Since the weather has gotten colder and frost has become a possibility, I picked these green, and tossed the plants (with disgust) into the dumpster.

Needless to say, seeing pictures of other people's enormous harvest of juicy red tomatoes has got me feeling a little jealous!

But I know it will not always be this way. Some day I will have a "real" garden...I just have to acquire a much bigger one so there are bound to be at least some accidental successes. We are hoping that maybe we will not be here in this virtually yard-less house by next year's growing season...So I will just keep hoping and praying, that this will be the last year I will have to try to grow things in a shady patch the size of a postage stamp.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation.

August has been a pretty laid back month for us, for the most part. The weather was lovely (not as hot as July) and we had some really nice times.

One fun thing we did was go blueberry picking with Grandma and Grandpa. The pickings were rather poor, it being near the end of the season, but I did get a good enough amount to freeze for snacking and smoothies. No blueberry jam or pies this year, though.

And after picking, Grandpa took us out for lunch and then for a romp at the lovely park at the Leamington marina.

I did buy a bucket of cherries at the grocery store and made jam, so my shelf of jam jars is looking respectable again. Too bad I didn't have the time or energy to give pickles a try this year. Next year, maybe.

I sighed every time I looked at the two tiny green tomatoes that will apparently be the sum total of our tomato harvest this year. (The other plant, although it is quite large, has zero tomatoes.) Then, a few days ago, one of my children broke off the upper tomato. (And then Owen exclaimed, "Now we won't be able to make spaghetti sauce!") So now, our 2011 tomato harvest = 1 very small, very green tomato. *sigh*

I picked the single zucchini that we got from the garden, and made a big chocolate zucchini cake--which I neglected to cook all the way through (oh well).

We planted sunflower seeds this year--and we got only one flower. It was tiny, to say the least. Yes, it was a dwarf variety, but the seed packet said the plants would reach 20 inches tall, and our plant couldn't be more than 6 inches. Not very impressive.

The garden wasn't all bad though. I've gotten a nice harvest of calendula for my healing salve--it's impressive how long the plants seem to be flowering!--and the pole beans we're growing against the fence are producing lots of tasty beans.

I actually have a surplus of calendula now, and I wish I could bring them into the house as cut flowers--but the stems seem to be covered with aphids as well as various other tiny bugs. I wonder if this is a common thing with this plant? I thought plants in the marigold family were supposed to repel bugs!
But enough about the garden. The past few weeks, I spent a lot of time smiling at the sight of my youngest, who has discovered how to bounce in her jolly jumper...

And bounce, and bounce, and bounce...

My parents gave us a highchair for her, and I can't believe how big she looks, sitting in it! So much for that newborn thing...it apparently lasts only about 5 minutes.

Well, that's about all that we've been up to. Nothing really much, which is just fine for this sleep deprived mommy.

Please dear readers of mine, tell me what you did on your summer vacations!

My sad excuse for a garden.

I had high hopes for my little back yard garden this year, but alas, I think I mostly just screwed up.

I got my seeds started way too late, and everything got off to a late start. I think I will be lucky at this rate to have a few tomatoes and a handful of parsley by September.

I also didn't do anything to amend the soil we put in the raised beds, and I think that was a mistake. The soil the condo provided was obviously not very good. Everything except for the pole beans (which will grow like wild fire in any circumstance, as far as I can tell), and the weeds of course, is growing painfully slowly this year.

Here you see the pole beans (which must be 12 feet tall by now, literally), with some stevia and calendula in the corner of the bed and the rest...weeds! It's starting to look like a jungle out there. The condo has a landscaping company cut the grass (including in everyone's back yard) on Tuesdays, but I keep forgetting to unlock the gate. (We can't leave the gate unlocked anymore, because last year when we did that every single toy our children left in the yard or sandbox was stolen.)

Also in that bed is some very pathetic, straggly looking chamomile (next to it is a sunflower Owen planted that seems to have been eaten by something, what I don't know.)

And some pathetic, straggly looking yarrow.

There used to be lavender in this bed as well, but it withered away.

On the other side of the yard are some culinary herbs which were bought as plants. I should be able to dry a bit of sage, basil, oregano, and rosemary. The parsley, which I grew from seed, definitely not! It's still tiny. Also over there are some more tiny sunflower plants which I think are about to die, and a single zucchini plant--I planted many seeds but only one came up. This plant has many flowers, but they seem to be being removed--by a child or by a squirrel, I'm not sure!

Add to all this less than stellar growth, that we have had a few very heavy thunderstorms recently that have damaged a lot of the plants.

Okay, so it isn't my fault when it rains hard, nor can I help it that our yard gets little sun because of the high fences. And it is difficult to find time for gardening with a newborn around. But still...surely I could have done better than this! Sometimes I think I am quite crazy for wanting to move somewhere where I can have a huge garden, when I can't even seem to decently manage this tiny one!

At least I am learning as I go, making mistakes on a small scale instead of a large one. My puttering around the past two years has taught me that I shouldn't be too laid back about things like amending the soil and getting seeds started at the right time. Gardens don't grow very well if you just do everything haphazardly--only weeds like that kind of treatment. :)

Plantain Salve.

Common Plantain is indeed a very common weed just about everywhere. I've seen it all my life and never even knew what it was until recently, when I started reading about herbal medicine.

According to this page, Plantain has been used medicinally since ancient times. It was listed as one of the nine sacred herbs in Anglo-Saxon medicine because of its healing properties, and both Chaucer and Shakespeare make mention of its healing abilities in their writings.

The property of plantain which most interests me is its supposed ability to take the itch and pain out of insect bites. Every book or webpage I read mentions this about the plant, so I thought it was time to try it out for myself.

Even our tiny backyard yielded a good sized handful of plantain leaves when I went looking. I washed off the leaves, then let them dry in the hot sun until they were wilted (I figured it would be a bad thing to have too much moisture in a salve). I chopped the leaves fine, then I "cooked" them very gently in a half cup of coconut oil, being careful not to let it boil. Basically, I just kept the oil good and warm. (A double boiler would be good for this but I didn't bother to get mine out from the back of the cupboard.)

I have to say, while the chopped leaves were warming they actually smelled very appetizing!

After several hours, the oil turned a nice green colour. I filtered out the plantain, added 1/2 an ounce of grated beeswax, and returned it to the heat just to melt the beeswax. I poured the salve into small tins (which I bought from here) and let it harden.

Kira and I both tried the salve (which smells exactly like spinach) on mildly itchy mosquito bites last night, and found it took the itch completely away. So, so far so good. When I make a general healing salve later in the year, I will definitely be adding plantain for its anti-itch properties.

Everyone reading this probably has plantain in their own backyard. If you have some beeswax and coconut or olive oil handy, I recommend giving this a try.

Lemon Balm Tincture.

I've started a dandelion tincture, and in my online reading about tinctures I discovered that a tincture made from Lemon Balm is an excellent remedy for nervous tension. It works better to make a tincture, apparently, then to brew a tea. (This page has some interesting information about this herb.)

So I decided to do up some Lemon Balm tincture as well. This plant has been growing in my back yard ever since we lived in this house--since before that, actually--and although I think I've pulled it all out every year in the fall, every spring it sprouts up everywhere. In fact, it is only the beginning of June and I need to do a clean up in the yard already...so why not make some medicine while I'm at it?

I'm hoping that this home remedy will be helpful in times of anxiety. It's sort of funny to me that people I meet, and often people who read my blog, tell me that they think I am very calm and laid back. I can be calm, and I am laid back about lots of things, but--those who know me well know I suffer a great deal from stress and anxiety--like we all do in this fast-paced modern age. I believe that today, most of us could use a little help calming down once in a while when life seems just a bit too crazy.

This page includes information about making double and triple herbal tinctures:

An herbalist in Austin Texas shared her special way of preparing a tincture that helps her keep her cool in stressful situations. She tinctures fresh lemon balm, gathered before it flowers, for six weeks, in 100 proof vodka. She pours that tincture over a new jar of fresh lemon balm leaves.

 After that sits for six more weeks, it's a double tincture. She then pours the double tincture over another new jarful of fresh lemon balm and lets that sit for six weeks.

 After which she has a triple tincture. She uses: "A dropperful sublingually works absolute wonders for me when I'm stressed out and ready to scream."

If I decide to make a double or triple tincture, it will take quite a while, but if I do I will be sure to let you know how it works! 

Making a Dandelion Tincture.

One of my goals for this year was to become greater acquainted with the use of herbs in general. I plan to grow and dry a large amount of culinary herbs, but I also am determined this year to learn how to make some herbal medicines.

One book on my shelf which covers this topic is The Herbal Medicine Maker's Handbook, by James Green (link for this book is at the left of the blog). I really like this book--the author has a great writing style, and the book is just packed with detailed and practical information. In the first chapter, Mr. Green suggests that a beginning herbalist should start by creating a dandelion tincture. Tinctures are easy to do. And not only are dandelions easily available to just about everyone, but they are a very healthy plant. Dandelion is an excellent overall tonic which detoxifies the blood and liver. All of us living in the modern world could use some detoxification. The tincture can also be used to relieve gas and indigestion. Dandelion is a gentle laxative and safe, highly effective diuretic.

Sounds great, right? So after studying Mr. Green's instructions,  I went into our tiny yard this afternoon, armed with my trowel, and dug up all the dandelions I could find.

I didn't want to take any dandelions from the common areas of our neighbourhood (we live in a townhouse condo) because I couldn't be sure they hadn't been sprayed with pesticides, or by a dog for that matter.

I took the bunch of plants and washed them very well in cold water, being careful to remove all the little bits of sticks, yellowed leaves, and bugs.

Then I chopped them into little bits on a cutting board. I discarded the stems and flowers, because although I could have used them, the roots and leaves contain the most medicinal substances. I stuffed the chopped parts into a mason jar, and covered with vodka. I used the strongest kind I could find at the liquor store--45% alcohol. You want to have a strong alcohol base because it's the alcohol that acts as a solvent to draw the compounds out of the plant material. Also, the stronger alcohol, the less chance of spoilage. A tincture made with 50% alcohol will supposedly keep for years.  Never use rubbing alcohol to make a tincture, as it is toxic when ingested.

All the instructions I've seen say to cover the plant material completely with the alcohol. I had a problem with this, because the bits seemed to sort of float. I'm going to assume it's not a big deal though. After pouring in the alcohol, I put the mixture into the blender for a few seconds to get the dandelion into really small bits, to maximize the surface area. I poured it back into the jar then and screwed on a lid.

After labeling it with the contents and date, I'm going to store it in a cupboard and shake it up every day. I noticed some little scraps of leaf sticking to the inside of the jar--I suppose this is okay since they have been coated with alcohol. If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know. :)

Apparently a tincture can be strained and used after a minimum of 2 weeks, but it's better to wait for 6 weeks or even longer. When my tincture is done, I'll write another post about it.

Tinctures can be made from dried herbs, too. Here is a nice video that shows you how to make a tincture from dried herbs.