If you’re a gardener, the back yard in
summertime is your supermarket and your playground. It also can be
your pharmacy. Why stop at clipping flowers and picking tomatoes
when you can make teas, bath products, poultices, oils and
medicinal foods from the fresh herbs growing right outside your
door?
Summer is the peak season for fresh, seasonal remedies to treat
all the dings and scratches you and your family are likely to get
from working in the garden, climbing trees, building forts and
mixing it up with nature. It’s also the perfect time to take
advantage of the garden’s abundance by filling up your medicine
cabinet with remedies for the coming months. Imagine having a ready
answer when someone in your family comes down with the flu, has an
ear infection or just wants to pamper herself with an herbal
bath.
If you keep in mind some general rules about how to process
different plant parts, when to harvest the part of the plant you’re
interested in, and the difference between using fresh and dried
herbs, the rest is up to your creativity. Use the tried-and-true
recipes featured in this article, then go into the garden and
create your own based solely on which plants speak to you the
loudest.
Harvesting Secrets
The most important thing to remember is: you want to harvest a
plant when most of its energy is in the part from which you are
going to make medicine. For example, if you want to pick burdock
roots to add to soup, you wouldn’t want to take the root when the
leaves are just beginning to sprout, because the leaves are where
the plant is concentrating its energy. The best time to take roots
is early spring before the above-ground parts have begun to show,
or late fall after the plant has gone to seed and its energy has
traveled back underground.
A Fresh Cup of Tea
Nothing could be simpler or provide you with more instant
gratification than tea made with fresh herbs from the garden.
There’s something tremendously satisfying about going into the
garden and tearing off a few leaves here, a few flowers there,
pouring some boiling water over them, and sitting down for a cup of
freshly harvested tea in the middle of the afternoon.
According to Richo Cech, author of Making Plant Medicine
(Horizon Herbs, 2000), the plants most appropriate for fresh
infusions are angelica, calendula, catnip, dandelion, gentian,
horehound, lemon balm, lovage, plantain, self-heal and thyme. This
is not to say you can’t experiment with making fresh infusions of
other herbs, though. Along the way, you’ll find that fresh herbs
impart a far more glorious color to water than their dried
counterparts.
As a general rule, the medicinal properties in dried herbs are
more accessible for extraction than in fresh herbs because the
process of dehydration causes the cell walls to become more fragile
and to give up their contents more readily. For this reason, it
will be necessary to use a larger quantity of the fresh plant when
making tea than you would of the same plant in dried form. So for
fresh herb tea, it’s best to finely chop or tear the plant (some
people prefer the mortar and pestle route) and loosely pack it in a
glass jar. Cover with boiling water and a lid (to prevent volatile
oils from escaping) and steep until it has cooled enough to drink,
about 20 minutes. Strain the infusion into a glass or drink it
straight from the jar. You might try this method with a mixture of
mint, lemon balm and catnip for a refreshing, calming tea.
Drying Herbs for Later Use
If you prefer working with dried plants, there are many ways to
dehydrate the herbs you’ve picked. You’ll see fairly consistent
results if you lay your herbs flat on a framed screen in a warm,
dry place, ensuring that air will circulate to all sides of the
plant. Some people swear by using a food dehydrator on a very low
setting (while this is certainly the quickest method, it’s not
exactly the most natural or energy efficient). Others rely on
nothing fancier than some twine and a well-placed nail from which
to hang the bundled herb – a technique closest to the historical
method of hanging bundles from the rafters. Heartier plants, such
as rosemary, thyme and sage, will dry just fine with this
low-maintenance approach. More delicate herbs, or herbs with a
higher moisture content, such as basil, mints and lemon balm, will
be better off lying flat in a well-ventilated area. The drying time
depends on the moisture content of the plant and can take anywhere
from a couple of days to two weeks. Avoid drying herbs in the oven
or in direct sun, as this will affect the color and flavor of the
plant and your finished product.
Sickness Fighters
In the middle of summer, colds and flu are generally far from
our minds, but this is a great time to stock up on bug fighters of
all kinds.
If you are fortunate enough to have an elder tree (Sambucus
nigra) growing in your garden or your neighborhood, you have access
to one of the most powerful antiviral medicines in the world. Dried
elderberries are made commercially into teas and tinctures. The
best and easiest way to harness their flu-fighting power is to
juice them (then cook the juice before consuming).
To make tasty elderberry pops, pick the elderberries at their
ripest and rinse them in a colander. Put the clean berries in your
blender, adding a bit of water, if needed, to get things going.
Once you have the elderberry juice, put the juice in a nonreactive
pot and cook it until it boils, then simmer for 15 minutes. Let the
mixture cool, then fill ice cube trays about 3/4 full and freeze
for an hour until firm enough to insert Popsicle sticks. Then let
freeze until solid. If someone comes down with a summertime virus,
have them suck on the deep red-purple pops and pretend they got
them from the Good Humor man. The chill will feel good on scratchy
throats, and the elderberry will go to work fighting the flu
bugs.
You can experiment with adding your children’s favorite juices
to the elderberry juice before freezing. If a virus hits during the
colder months, dissolve a couple of elderberry cubes in a cup of
warm or hot water, and sip the elixir to banish the bugs from your
immune system. Keep in mind that elderberries are antiviral and not
antibacterial, which means they work great for flus and anything
else caused by a virus but are ineffective at combating ailments
caused by bacteria.
Prepare a Poultice
If you find yourself needing some herbal first aid, be it from
wandering through your nettle patch, tripping on an errant stick in
the back yard or having an accidental encounter with a kitchen
knife, herbs will always come to your rescue. Poultices are a fast
and easy first-aid option and have been around as long as humans
could chew and spit. As with most herbal remedies, poultices can be
as rudimentary or as fancy as time and your imagination allow.
The old-fashioned method involves picking some leaves, chewing
them up, slapping the gob on the affected skin and covering it with
whatever cloth is handy. As an alternative to gnashing the leaves
with your pearly whites, you can easily bruise them with a mortar
and pestle (be sure to add some water). If your need isn’t an
emergency, you can harvest the root, grind it into a fine powder,
add warm water to make a paste, apply it to the skin and cover it
with a warm hand towel and tie it with a cotton cloth to keep it
all in place. This works especially great with comfrey (Symphytum
officinale).
The beauty of a poultice is that it can be made in the field on
the fly. Almost any broad, green leaf will work to some extent in
soothing the skin and drawing out undesirable elements from the
wound. Traditionally, comfrey poultices are used to heal bones,
wounds and traumas to muscles and other tissues. Because it causes
such rapid cell proliferation and healing, though, a comfrey
poultice should never be applied to deep wounds or puncture wounds,
as there is a possibility of the skin healing over an infection and
sealing it in.
Plantain (Plantago spp.) also is a favorite poultice ingredient,
both for its ubiquity and for its ability to soothe infections,
eczema, rashes and even acne. Another wonderful ally is yarrow
(Achillea millefolium), the leaves of which can be used on deeper
wounds. Ideally, a poultice should be kept on overnight and
reapplied as often as necessary.
Remember to Pamper Yourself
Some of the most enjoyable herbal remedies are for less-serious
ailments. Use what you have in your garden to give yourself a
much-needed dose of relaxation and decadence.
Bath salts. Pick any herbs with a high concentration of volatile
oils to make medicinal bath salts. A mixture of rosemary and
lavender will work well. After drying the herbs, add a few sprigs
of each to a covered glass jar (approximately 40 ounces) filled
with sea salt or Epsom salt. Store in a cool, dry place for about
two weeks — longer if you wish — agitating them every once in a
while. After the herbs have imparted their smell and oils to the
salt, you can remove the sprigs. Pour 1 to 2 cups of the salt into
a running bath, or use it as a body scrub.
Facial steam. Pick fresh flowers of calendula, lavender and
stalks of rosemary and put them in a large glass bowl. Fill the
bowl with boiling water and cover quickly with a towel. Set the
bowl on a table or the floor and pull the towel over your head,
making sure the towel is still covering three sides of the bowl.
Lower your head until you are close enough to feel the herbal steam
penetrating your skin, but not so close that it is uncomfortably
hot. Breathe deeply and relax for 10 to 20 minutes. The steam will
not only help to open the upper respiratory tract but it also will
impart the medicinal qualities of the herbs to the skin on your
face and neck, increasing circulation and enhancing your
complexion. Enjoy.
Jennifer Rabin is an herbalist and freelance writer living in
Portland, Oregon.