Pills in a Jar

There are a number of ways you can store various crops, including the nutritious, mineral-rich weeds that are first to come and last to leave in the yard and garden. But why not go a step beyond putting away food and create your own multi-vitamin and mineral supplements to help keep you healthy and well-nourished through the winter months? After all, nutrition is more than just calories; you have to have the right building blocks in the form of vitamins and minerals, too. That’s one reason why people spend big bucks on multi-vitamins, but if you’ve got weeds in your garden you don’t need to.

Many plants can be frozen or dried and stored for winter use, but you can more fully enjoy the benefits of your weed “vitamins”, as well as know they’re safe from dust, moisture, or power outages, by storing them in tincture form.

Tinctures are basically ready-made tea in concentrated form, but since water-based extracts of herbs (typical tea) won’t keep for more than a few days in the refrigerator you should create your tinctures with a vinegar or alcohol base. I like to seal mine into sterilized glass jars so that I don’t have to worry about whether they’ll keep all winter long or whether a bottle that hasn’t been sealed might get contaminated. The heat that comes from processing them in a hot-water bath also speeds up the solvent process that extracts the vitamins, minerals and phyto-nutrients from the plants into the vinegar. If you didn’t subject them to heat at all you’d need to turn the tincture jars over periodically, letting the ingredients mix, for six weeks or more before they were ready to use. By sealing them in a hot water bath you can get away with just tucking them into the refrigerator or a cupboard and using them as needed.

Dig It Good

The first time I ever dug dandelion roots was in the middle of a huge dandelion fight. What had started as innocent flower flicking turned into a full-on battle with whole dandelion plants, roots and all, being tossed back and forth. I might not have participated if I’d known that I was basically throwing multi-vitamins; lobbing a little vitamin A, B, and C at your buddies doesn’t sound like half as much fun as just throwing flowers.

We were lucky with our dandelion pulling back then, because the soil was very loose and the plants very healthy, their robust roots came out of the dirt with the stems, looking for all the world like upside-down Easter trees. Odds are good that when you head out to dig dandelion roots for a vitamin and mineral tincture you’re going to have to put more work into it.

While some people recommend digging dandelion roots with a full-size shovel, this can leave you with a pot-holed moonscape in no time, where once you had a yard or field, and makes it hard to get a close-up look at how healthy the plant is before you dig it up. I find that digging dandelion roots with a sharp hardened steel hand trowel is much easier and, in the end, gets you more root for less effort.

Healthy Weeds Makes for Healthy Me

This past growing season has been so dark, wet and just generally miserable in some places that many a gardener has been found curled into a fetal position, clutching the wilted remains of their crops and sobbing. Even the weeds, which tend to flourish when cultivated crops do not, have had a hard time of it; when I headed out to gather what used to be a bountiful crop of dandelions and clover in my yard I found that between the resident snowshoe hares, an invasion of slugs and other pests, and a fungus that capitalized on the moist conditions, there wasn’t much left for me.

If, like me this year, you don’t have healthy “weeds” to pick on your own land, or if you’ve spread chemical fertilizers or insecticides over the area you otherwise would have liked to pick in, you can always ask a friend for their weeds. While most people are bemused by requests to harvest their dandelions or chickweed, they’re almost always happy to have you come in and carry away what they’ve been probably been trying desperately to get rid of anyway.

Having found a neighbor willing to share the healthy crop of dandelions, clover and plantain in her chemical-free yard I packed up my trusty trowel, a pair of gloves, and a couple of bags to store my catch in and hurried over. Just like with cultivated plants, picking or digging up a weed is almost like pulling the plug from a sink—the vitality starts draining out of the plants immediately. Knowing this, I made sure that what I needed for storing my harvest (clean glass jars with two-part lids, a pot large enough to seal them in a hot water bath, and a rack for them to sit on in the pot) was ready before heading out and that I had plenty of time to take care of the plants once I got them home.

Once I started digging the dandelion roots I found that when working in firm soil it’s much easier to loosen the dirt around the plant with a trowel than to dig it up directly. When going direct it’s all too easy to chop the top of the plant from the root by mistake, which makes it nearly impossible to get the rest of the root up.

I learned to grip the base of the largest, healthiest looking plant in one hand while I worked the trowel around it in a circle, loosening the dirt; then I worked my hand down the root as far as I could, making sure that I was digging along the root and not across it. Dandelion roots will go straight down into the ground given the opportunity, but obstacles like big rocks or having been cut off by over eager diggers can leave them crooked. Again around the root with the trowel, then again reaching into the hole, and before long I lifted the dandelion, root and all, straight out of the hole.

For clover I snipped healthy-looking leaves, stems and flowers that weren’t showing any signs of dying back or fungus blight. Just like you wouldn’t want to eat meat from a sick animal, it makes sense to choose the healthiest plants for keeping yourself healthy, doesn’t it? I put the clover flowers, stems and leaves into another bag together; while some might find them hard to digest raw, they are edible. A small, sharp pair of scissors came in handy for snipping clover stems since they can be a little tough. I could have differentiated between red clover and white clover by looking for the distinctive “V” on each red clover leaf but didn’t bother since I was picking for nutritional purposes, not medicinal. So long as everything I got was edible I didn’t mind mixing similar plants.

Plantain was the easiest of all to pick—I just pinched the broad, fleshy leaves off at the stem with my fingernails. These are my all-time favorite salad green and, like the other weeds I’ve mentioned here, are useful medicinal plants as well. I’ve heard that plantain doesn’t dry well because of its high moisture content, but it’s a perfect candidate for being stored in tincture form.

My neighbor didn’t have any chickweed—neither, as a matter of fact, do I—but that is another common weed that invades cultivated soil and is easily stored in tincture form for medicinal or nutritional use.

Into the Laboratory

Once I’d secured enough dandelion, clover, and plantain to suit my needs I headed back to “the laboratory” to begin processing my catch. The clover and plantain, because they’d been harvested above ground, went right into a sink full of water and a little food grade hydrogen peroxide to clean them off while I separated the dandelion greens from the roots and set the greens aside to receive the same treatment.

The dandelion roots took a little more work to prepare. I started the cleaning process by dumping them in a bowl of water and agitating them, changing the water as it muddied. After going through a few bowls of water the roots each received a brisk hand-scrubbing on the way into the same diluted hydrogen peroxide bath the greens endured, then the final crevices were scrubbed clean of dirt with a clean toothbrush and the roots laid out on clean paper towels.

The rest of the jarring process was very simple: I sterilized the jars in batches and then filled each about a quarter full of edible weeds and/or dandelion root, chopped into small pieces. I saved a few small jars of individual herbs for medicinal uses, but for the most part I was very free with my mixing since, after all, the point was to create a nutritional tonic to fill in vitamin or mineral gaps in my diet.

Once I’d sorted the herbs into sterilized jars I filled each jar up to the threads (leaving a little head space) with my chosen tincture base. I prefer using apple cider vinegar because it’s a natural product made from fermented apples and is considered by many to be a restorative tonic on its own merits. Apple cider vinegar also has a lot of acetic acid, which acts as a powerful solvent to extract the nutritive qualities of the plants in a tincture. Acetic acid is also a natural preservative. Other possible tincture bases include white vinegar (which in many cases is nothing but a pure chemical-in-water solution) or alcohol, which is the perfect preservative and a good solvent, but not as good as vinegar. Using apple cider vinegar, or any other natural vinegar, has the side effect of creating a new culinary product as well: You can use the herb vinegar you produce anywhere you’d use vinegar in your usual cooking process; how’s that for a novel way of taking your vitamins and minerals?

Once the tincture jars were full all I had to do was screw the two-part lids on and put them in a hot water bath for about five minutes. Once they’d all sealed (as with all jarring listen for the “ping” or look for the raised dimple on the lid to get sucked in), I put them away, clearly marking which herbs each jar contained and when they were harvested. Once you’re ready to use the tincture it’s as simple as breaking the seal on a jar and sipping a few tablespoons each day; exactly how much you take depends on how strong the mixture you made is, how potent the herbs were, and how much body mass you have.

While making my vitamin and mineral tinctures wasn’t very complicated and didn’t take more than an afternoon of gentle effort, I made it a high priority because they help me to stay independent and self-sufficient in the truest sense of the word. Proper nutrition is one of the basic steps toward reducing illness and thus doctor visits and bills along with time, and feeling happy and healthy is the only way to get the most out of homesteading life. [Doctoring on the Homestead: An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure]

Nutritional Information for Weeds

If you know you’re deficient in one or more vitamins and minerals, you can tailor which herbs you put in your tonic/tincture formula to suit your needs. Here’s some information to help you decide what you need. Keep in mind that wild foods, including herbs and edible weeds, are an excellent source of many trace minerals that we don’t get from other processed food sources.

Dandelion is rich in calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium and zinc. It also contains vitamins B-1, B-2, B-3 and C along with beta-carotene, which your body turns into vitamin A.

Red Clover has calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc as well as vitamins B-3, C and E.

Plantain is rich in potassium and vitamin A.

Chickweed has calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, silicon, sulfur and zinc as well as vitamins B-1, B-2, B-3, C, and E. Chickweed is also a rare plant source of essential fatty acids.

Herb Safety

When you’re gathering herbs (because that’s what dandelions, clover and such really are—not weeds) take care to pick only those plants that you know, beyond a doubt, are absolutely safe.

Make sure to stay away from areas that have been treated with chemical pesticides or fertilizers that may have been taken up by the plants, as well as places that are downhill or downstream from contaminated sites (old mine sites, home foundations, near roadsides or where vehicles are parked).

You should also be careful if you have a severe hay fever allergy, as some herbs (like clover) may trigger it.

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Having the right tools on hand is, of course, not enough; you also need to know how to use them.  Most herbs are fairly safe, but misidentification or misuse of herbs can be just as disastrous as similar errors in judgment would be with more conventional medication.  Some conditions, even if there is an herbal or folk remedy for them, may require a doctor or other trained healer’s prompt attention.  So don’t forget the very first essential tool for herbalism: common sense.

The second tool?  Practice.  The more familiar you are with these remedies, the more likely you are to remember them—and know if they’re appropriate—when it matters.

Medicinal Herbs in the Kitchen

Odds are good that you’ve got at least a few staple medicines in your kitchen, cleverly disguised as cooking spices.  While sticking cayenne pepper up your nose might not be the first thing most of us think of when we get a bloody nose, doing exactly that can help to stem the bleeding quickly.  If you’ve been cut, sprinkling cayenne on a cut will quickly stop the bleeding, too.  Once the wound has stopped bleeding, you can use honey, with its natural antibiotic effects, to help keep it closed and clean if necessary.

Cayenne is also reputed to enhance circulation, reduce blood pressure, and to greatly energize anyone but especially those with weak hearts.  Some go so far as to recommend putting cayenne under the tongue if a heart attack or stroke is suspected, although once again, herbal emergency care is no substitute for evaluation and care provided by a trained health professional.

You’ll also find cayenne used to help break loose phlegm; other warming herbs like ginger and cinnamon have similar effects, including the ability to stimulate circulation, making them all useful for treating colds and flu. Ginger makes an excellent foot bath or could even be added, whether powdered or freshly chopped, to a hot bath for a long soak.  Ginger is also excellent for alleviating nausea of almost any cause by drinking a strong tea, eating it in your food, or even as candy made from the roots.

Ginger soaks, hot compresses, or taken as tea or food may also be of big help for sore, injured, or arthritic joints because of how they stimulate circulation.  Cayenne has similar properties when consumed or may be combined with a little oil to make a paste that is then rubbed onto the sore area.

Ginger juice or tea may also be used on mild burns, with garlic and/or onion, mashed or rendered into juice, or on more serious burns then covered with a clean cloth, the entire application being changed two or three times a day.  While most people don’t keep aloe for eating, many people have an aloe plant in the house, and the gel from one of this plant’s cut or broken leaves is unparalleled for healing burns.  As before, don’t neglect the need for urgent expert attention, when appropriate, to severe burns.

Cranberry is reputed to help prevent urinary tract and bladder infections.  A bladder infection, in particular, can be a very serious condition that requires evaluation by a trained professional, but some claim that taking cranberry will aid greatly in eliminating it.  The berries can be eaten or you can drink the juice. 

Garlic is called “the wonder herb” by some and you’ve most likely got it in your kitchen.  Aside from its usefulness in treating burns, it’s also useful for preventing or shortening the symptoms of colds and the flu, and for helping to kill intestinal worms and expel them from your body.  A master herbalist friend likes to recommend wafer-thin slices of raw garlic, placed to melt on the tongue for helping to keep healthy; but those with extremely delicate stomachs may find this to be too irritating to their digestive system.

Curry powder can be mixed into a paste with a little oil and applied to mosquito bites or bee stings to ease the inflammation.  I’ve heard master herbalists recommend putting very thinly sliced potatoes on stings to help draw the venom out and ease inflammation; more intriguingly, applying the cut side of a potato to a poisoned or infected wound is said to draw the toxins out almost immediately.

Alfalfa is praised by herbalists for being one of the most nutritional of herbs.  It’s easy to grow your own alfalfa sprouts in the kitchen, and they can be eaten or mashed to apply directly to an infected wound.

Tea—that is to say the Camellia Sinensis plant that produces green, black, and white teas—is said to help fight infection too, when taken several times daily in a strong drink.  Some people also apply moistened tea bags to itchy skin; I was surprised by how quick and complete the relief from this remedy was when I tried it, although the tea bags needed to be remoistened occasionally.

While flatulence may not seem like a severe emergency, gas pains certainly can feel as if they are.  Peppermint tea and other herbs like anise and caraway are all likely to help expel gas in a hurry, while also freshening your breath at the same time—both of which visitors will thank you for!

Medicinal Herbs in the Field 

You might have the best prepared first aid kit… back at the house.  Or maybe you just went out for a quick stroll and didn’t expect to have any trouble.  Or maybe you forgot to replenish something before you left.  Regardless, here are some quick remedies that may just be gathered ’round your feet next time you go for a walk.

If you’ve cut yourself and are bleeding, yarrow may be one of the easiest fixes. Bruise the feathery leaves by rolling them in your fingers and apply to the wound; this might even mean tucking a leaf or two, rolled, into your nose if it’s the source of the bleeding.  Make sure to take the leaves out after the bleeding has stopped; you don’t want the wound to heal over them.  If there’s no yarrow nearby, you could pound fresh plantain leaves into a paste and apply them, instead, to check the bleeding.  Drinking teas made from hemostatic herbs like stinging nettle, horsetail, and shepherd’s purse may also help.

This is a good time to point out why proper identification of a plant is critical.  I once attended a local plant walk where the leader indicated a plant—club moss—that bears a very faint resemblance to yarrow leaves.  He then told the story of how a woman mistook the club moss for yarrow and applied it to a fresh cut in her son’s arm.  If she’d been familiar with yarrow she might have noticed that instead of being feathery and light, the plant’s tiny leaves were stiff—and instead of growing on a vertical stalk they grew on the ground.  She did, however, recognize her mistake when her son howled—not only does the club moss not have yarrow’s medicinal properties, it hurts!

Once you’ve stopped the bleeding, you might spread spruce gum or pitch onto the wound to help keep it clean, then cover with a clean bandage.  Spruce gum may also be a remedy for blood poisoning when spread onto a cloth and wrapped around the site of the poisoning and the red streak, as far up as it goes; remember that blood poisoning is an extremely serious condition so unless you have sufficient training and knowledge to evaluate the course of it, you should seek help for it as soon as possible, treated or not.  The spruce pitch should be clear and soft; I’ve been told that you can chew it to soften it, or even to freshen your breath—not unlike a piece of gum.

If you’ve been burned, a poultice of comfrey, plantain, chickweed, and/or horsetail may help.  Plantain is also useful, applied as a poultice, to remedy infection or skin irritations.  If you’ve got a mosquito bite or bee sting, mash, or chew up, some plantain or chickweed leaves and apply to the area; that should quickly draw out most of the inflammation, itch, and discomfort. Poultices made of cooling plants like plantain and chickweed should be changed frequently if possible, as often as every hour.  Fresh plantain or mullein leaves, when tucked into your shoes, will also help to prevent blisters or soothe those that may already have popped up.  While I’ve never had a chance to try it myself, mashed chickweed should have a similar effect, though mashing the tiny plants into a paste is nowhere near as convenient as just slipping a few large, fleshy leaves into your footwear.

Broken bones are another example of a serious condition that may threaten your life, depending on how far afield you are.  Don’t attempt to set the bone without the right training; you might cause further damage to muscle, nerves, and connective tissue.  The basic first-aid tenet of immobilizing the break can usually be accomplished, in a pinch, with sticks, zip-ties, pieces of clothing or a pack—anything you might happen to have on you—to rig an impromptu splint.  You could also carefully peel some birch bark off a tree, wet it, and wrap it around the break where it will harden into a solid cast.

Other miscellaneous helpers that can be readily found in the field (and fairly easily identified, too) include dandelion and nettle teas, good for treating anemia and fortifying the blood, in addition to their high nutritional value.  For coughing, some herbalists recommend plantain tea while others would advise you to collect dried mullein leaves, burn them, and inhale the smoke.  Others recommend boiling coltsfoot leaves and inhaling the steam to help clean lung and bronchial congestion.  Branches of juniper can be boiled in water to make a decoction for sore throats, colds, and congestion; you can also burn the needles as incense, said by some to help with a cold.

How to Make Herbal Applications

Here are some basic instructions for how to make the types of herbal application you’re likely to use in an emergency:

Tea/infusion/decoction: The only true tea is that made from the leaves of the Camellia Sinensis plant; what most of us refer to as “herbal tea” is actually an infusion made by steeping herbal material in very hot water.  This is appropriate for more delicate herbs, fresh or dried; sturdier, woodier stems and roots are usefully prepared in a decoction, which is adding them to boiling water and cooking for a time, instead of simply steeping.  Regardless of how you’ve prepared them, make sure to strain off solid herbal matter before using the liquid, which will keep for a maximum of three days if refrigerated.

Poultices and plasters: While the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, a poultice is usually mashed herb (fresh or dried, although dried herbs will need to be moistened) applied directly to the skin and covered with a clean cloth, while a plaster is the same mashed herb sandwiched between two layers of clean cloth, with this “sandwich” then being applied to the skin.  Another way of applying herbs to the skin is with a fomentation or compress, where clean cloth (usually cotton or wool, and unbleached if possible) is dipped into a hot or cold infusion or decoction, then applied to the skin. 

Salves and pastes: If you need the herb you’re applying to stay in place, you can mix it with a little oil or grease to thicken it.

Recommended Reading  

While books are no substitute for learning directly from a skilled herbalist, they make excellent references, and the determined self-taught herbalist can learn quite a lot from them to guide her experiential learning.  I highly recommend Heinerman’s Encyclopedia of Healing Herbs & Spices by John Heinerman, as well as Herbs to the Rescue: Herbal First Aid Handbook by Kurt King, which combines practical first aid advice with herbal first aid advice; and any well-craft guild to local wild herbs in your area. 

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