🌿How To Harvest Medicinal Herbs For The Most Potent Remedies

Today, we're diving into one of the most gratifying aspects of herbal medicine: harvesting medicinal herbs at their peak potency. I'll share essential tips and guidelines to ensure you're gathering the best possible remedies while being sustainable and ethical. We'll cover plant identification, the importance of United Plant Savers, and avoiding overharvesting. Plus, I'll give practical advice on how and when to harvest roots, leaves, and flowers. 

00:00 Introduction to Herbal Medicine
03:34 Ethical Wildcrafting and Plant Conservation
06:19 Plant Identification and Safety Tips
14:18 Harvesting Techniques and Timing
19:32 Herbal Medicine Planning Party

Be  sure to join us for the Herbal Medicine Planning Party happening May 28th- May 31at, and map out the remedies you need to keep your family well for the next 1-2 years!

Click here to get your free ticket to the party!

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Transcript

Mel: 0:54

Hello and welcome to the Herbalist Path, a podcast where you'll discover how to make your own herbal remedies at home so that you can take better care of yourself, better care of your family and better care of our planet. I'm Mel. I'm a clinical herbalist, environmental educator and mountain-l living mama with this crazy passion for teaching more mamas and their little loves how to use plants as medicine in a safe, effective and tasty way, so that there can be an herbalist in every home. Again, it's an absolute honor to have you on the journey down the herbalist path with me so that together we can make herbalism Hashtag spread like wildflowers. Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode on the herbalist path.

Mel: 1:52

I am so excited that you are here because the topic we're talking about today is one of my absolute favorite things about herbal medicine and using these beautiful plants in this world. So I wanted to talk today about how to harvest medicinal herbs and making sure that you're doing this at the peak of their medicinal potency, so that the medicine you're gathering is really going to do the trick for you in the best ways possible, and I felt like the need to bring this up. Number one, I did put out a story asking podcast episodes that you all would want to hear, and this is one of my listeners that requested this topic and I just thought it was so perfect because I have been going out and gathering some of my favorite spring medicinal plants and it's been so much fun, such a joy to hang out with these plants and to reconnect. And I'll be honest with you, I haven't been out making great medicine and harvesting much for the past two years or so, and the reason being is because, well, I had tons of medicine when I closed Mountain Mel's, my herbal product line and my apothecary back in May of 2022, I had so many different herbal preparations on hand that I was like somebody please take all of these. And now that we are two years later, a lot of that stuff is past its prime. So it is time for me to make loads and loads of medicine, which is, it's really exciting.

Mel: 3:31

Like for a while after I closed that, I was kind of like, well, I'm tired of it. Honestly, I love to teach it. It's really, really fun. But I mean, that was my profession and my job for a good 15 years and after that much time, it kind of became more of a stressful thing and less of a creative, enjoyable process, which is part of why I shut that down and because I love to teach others how to make great medicine right. So I'm super excited and there's a few things, quite a few things to think about.

Mel: 4:05

If you are out there gathering different medicines whether you're growing them yourself or you are out in the wild growing them and I'll cover a bit of all of the things you're going to want to think about just to make sure that you are indeed making the best of the best remedies out there, and I really hope that this episode helps you and inspires you to get out there and really start making all of this good medicine, really helping you get to that point where you don't have to run to the drugstore or things like that so often, because that's what it's all about right, like that level of empowerment where you're like, oh my gosh, I have everything that I need right on hand and I made it. I know what's inside this stuff, I know the quality of it. I made it special for me, I made it special for my child, I made it special for whoever needed this particular remedy. That is an art and a skill and a craft that will pay off in dividends for the rest of your life. It's pretty fun and it's pretty exciting, so let's start talking about it, and I figure I want to start talking first about the whole process of like wildcrafting. Right, I know that this is a very, very popular topic these days. It is a wonderful skill to be able to have, and there's a lot that goes into making sure you're doing it in a sustainable and ethical way that is going to ensure that these remedies and these plants are still here for future generations, like your children and your grandchildren and your great-great-grandchildren. And you catch my drift. Let's make this medicine stick around for a while, and one place that I think is really important for you to tune into is United Plant Savers. Now this organization has come together to basically educate you and help everybody understand what plants are at risk or have been overharvested and are no longer available for us, which is so sad to think about.

Mel: 6:19

Echinacea is a prime example here. Echinacea used to grow in great abundance across the plains throughout the United States, like Indiana and Nebraska and Oklahoma and places like that. It was so incredibly abundant, and once people started recognizing what a powerhouse this herb was for immune health, the greedier folks of the world decided to go out and just basically over-harvest all of those fields, with no attention to the fact like the medicinal roots of the plant are best after three years of growth, and so on and so forth, and then it's now an at-risk species. So if you are using echinacea, please make sure that you're gathering it or using it from a sustainable source Somebody who has cultivated the land, grown this plant with love and intention on their farm or on their land or what have you. So definitely stick to the organic, not wildcrafted echinacea. The other thing that was happening there is like there's so many different species of echinacea and they would just call it all echinacea angustifolia, but in reality some of it was echinacea purpurea and all of the other many, many echinaceas there are. So definitely check in with United Plant Savers if there's a particular plant that you're curious about gathering. That is a really important spot to start, just to make sure that it is ethical and it is a plant that's going to come back for generations to come.

Mel: 7:53

So there's also some other foundational rules that I want to talk about, and they're for the safety of you, they're for the safety of your kiddos, your family and again the plants. I love the plants. So number one is just making sure that you have 110,000% positive plant ID. This is so incredibly important and I know everybody wants the latest and greatest plant ID app out there, which those are super cool. They're a fantastic start, but they are not 100% correct, and this is where it's important to like develop some plant identification skills on your own. This could be the difference between a plant that is really really going to help you and a plant that could actually harm people and potentially unalive people. There's a lot of plants out there that look really, really similar to other plants you may want to harvest as medicine and that's scary. So making sure you have that is really important.

Mel: 8:55

We cover some basics of botany and plant identification in the Kids Safe Herb Club and then I think I'm going to put that out as its own entity Herbal Safety Foundations and Botany Basics as a course for you guys if you want a nice low-cost course, so this kind of information is easily accessible for everybody because it is so important. That's a really, really big deal, so you can do things like that. You can find books that are specific to your region that have great identification things to look at. Sorry, I couldn't think of the word right there, so definitely do that. I will link to Bookshop where I have quite a few amazing recommendations on books that may be specific for your region to tell you what plants are growing around you. Ideally, those books are also going to tell you the best times to harvest them and those kinds of things. So please, please, please, know that you have 100% positive plant identification.

Mel: 10:00

Another thing to recognize is don't harvest more than a quarter of a stand, and a quarter of a stand this day and age, with the popularity of wildcrafting, might even be a bit too much, and the reason I say this is because so many people are really getting out there and harvesting plants and most people doing it in a caring and kind way, but unfortunately others are not. Now, let's say, you walk upon this amazing stand of nettles. We're just going to go with nettles right now, even though they grow quite readily. It's going to be sometimes hard to overharvest, but it could definitely happen anyways. You walk upon this stand and it's beautiful and you look and you're like it's abundant, and you've been here many times. You know this stand of plants, you know there's no pollutants and things like that around you and you're like great, I'm going to take the time and give some gratitude to this beautiful nettles patch and I am going to go ahead and harvest, but I won't harvest more than a quarter of a stand. Great, you gather your quarter, you've got all this abundant, luscious, lovely green nettles and you take it home and you make a pesto or you soak it in vinegar so you get all those minerals and nutrients later on, or whatever you're going to do with your nettles. Now your friend Jane, the next day is walking along the same path, sees the same stand of nettles and is like oh, there's the nettles, I'm going to go ahead and gather a quarter of a stand. And they take about a quarter of what's there, and so on and so forth. Then Joe comes by and does the same thing. You catch my drift Before you know it, and that is why it's really important to really just pay attention to your surroundings, not be greedy. Gather only what you need and, honestly, more often than not you do not need a lot. So be aware of that.

Mel: 14:32

A lot of our medicinal plants that we're harvesting in the wild really soak up various like. They soak up minerals and nutrients from the earth, which means they're also soaking up the pollutants that may be put out into the earth. Thinking about excuse me, if we are thinking about like near a farm, is it a farm that's using pesticides or insecticides or anything I'm sorry, herbicides or anything along those lines? Probably not. Where you want to harvest, is there some big manufacturing facility whose waste runoff is going into the ground or the water nearby? So really pay attention to that kind of stuff. And then we also need to think about legal regulations. Some places we are not supposed to be. So check in with that, check in with your ranger station. Is this a safe space for you to harvest? Is this okay? Do you need a permit? Do you need something along those lines? And if so, please check it out and go by that. There might be valid reasons that there's rules for not harvesting in a particular location. And then let's please respect our wildlife and the other plants around. These animals live off the plants as well, and we really need to be attentive to their home and make sure that we are showing respect and paying attention to surroundings and leaving things still for them, for their homes, their habitat and all of that stuff.

Mel: 16:13

Another really, really, really important one here is to know your poisonous plants. So, as important as it is to have that 100% positive plant ID this goes hand in hand I think it's really really important that you take the time to study and seriously get to know the poisonous plants that are in your area. Know them so well because, again, some of them are so easy to get confused. One that I see happen a lot is comfrey leaves in the spring look similar to foxglove leaves to those that don't have a fairly well-trained eye, and comfrey is a really cool medicinal plant and foxglove is also medicinal, but foxglove can quickly unalive a person. So just making sure that you have those things straight is pretty darn important, and teaching your children about those poisonous plants so so, so incredibly important. So they know forever and ever and ever hey, this is not a safe plant, let's not harvest that.

Mel: 17:25

Always let somebody know where you're going. If you're going out wild harvesting, you never know when an accident is going to happen. So just be mindful of that. Be mindful of private property. Some people have tons of medicinal plants on their private property, but that doesn't mean they want you on their private land harvesting. Make sure you have proper tools. There's certain tools that really make your harvesting adventures even better, and just make sure that happens. Handle your plants well, avoid the rare plants, remember, check into United Plant Savers and just don't take more than you need. So those are just some really, really important things, I think, that are worthy of you checking out.

Mel: 18:10

When I post that bookshop link also, be sure to check out Botany in a Day by Thomas Elpel. He's got a great book that I've had since the beginnings of my herbal learnings and it's a really, really fantastic one. To keep you really keen on your plant identification skills is basically what I'm trying to say. So that is just some like brief overview of things to think about if you are out harvesting in the wild, to keep you safe and respectful and things along those lines. Now, how do we think about different plants at the peak of their medicinal potency? So I'm going to speak broad spectrum, because obviously there are going to be plants and situations that go against the general rule. So I will just be speaking like broad right.

Mel: 19:06

More often than not, when it comes to our leaves and our flowers and the plants that we're harvesting for medicine, you want to gather leaves as like early in the spring, as all of that energy from the plants is going up, reaching for the sun for their next season. That means all of those great medicinal properties are also going up and out into those leaves so that plant can do all of its beautiful, beautiful life cycle. So that is the ideal time to gather your leaves. When it comes to the flowers, more often than not you want them just as like maybe one or two flowers have popped open or the buds are starting to form and maybe just about to open, because again it's all that incredible energy going right into that flower and that's where you're going to get the most potent. And and then when it comes to things like roots roots in general we want to gather in the fall, after all of the plant has died back to the ground. So all those flowers and the leaves and things like that are going back into the earth, and so is all that energy and all of that good medicine. That is fantastic. So if you're going for roots that are rich in things like inulin, you might want to wait until the first cold snap and then harvest, because it's going to be the most inulin rich then, and inulin is a prebiotic fiber. That's really fantastic for your good gut bugs. For those of you wondering what the heck inulin is, so that's a good tip there.

Mel: 20:46

You can also harvest roots in the spring, before all the leaves and flowers are coming up. This can be challenging, though, like if you don't remember where a particular plant was. Like are you just going to dig all over the whole ground and hope that you found the right roots, unless you've intentionally planted that or, you know, put a stake somewhere near it saying, hey, the roots are right here, so you can remember if you live in a snow-filled area after that snow is gone, or anything along those lines. So think about those things when it comes to gathering the roots of certain plants and making sure that you're getting them at the peak of their medicinal potency, so that you are really, really, really making great medicine. Let's see the other things to think about, like, sometimes, with flowers, a good thing to think about things like calendula. I like to gather in the early morning, and not early morning, mid to late morning, because by then the dew that has happened overnight has already steamed off and that plant is still reaching up for the sun, saying hello, beautiful day, I want to soak you in sunshine and just a really vibrant and amazing time to gather flowers like calendula as medicine can be really, really, really, really nice.

Mel: 22:14

You can also think about harvesting your plants in cycle with the moon. So lunar-based medicine making. There's certain times of the month that's said to affect the potency of things like tinctures and stuff like that. So traditionally, many people love to prepare their tinctures when the moon is dark or on the new moon. So this is the beginning of the lunar cycle that happens every 14 to 15 days and this can be a really, really great time to prepare your medicine. You might hear some older herbalists and grandparents who talk about that a lot, doing their gardening and their planting and their harvesting along with the moon and using it as a guide. So consider those kinds of things. It was always said that that new moon was just a sign of new beginnings, and it is also a time when the gravitational pull of the moon helps to draw out the natural healing properties in plants, making it one of the most powerful times to make your different medicinal preparations. So think about that.

Mel: 23:38

As you're harvesting, think about what kind of medicinal preparation you are going to make with it. Are you going to dry it? Are you going to tincture it? Are you going to prepare it as food? Are you going to juice it? Are you going to make a glycerite? There's so many options. Are you going to infuse an oil? What do you need? This is a really big one, and this is something that I've heard a few of my students just be like. Well, what do I need? I don't even know. So I'm actually going to be hosting an herbal medicine planning party, which I will link to in the show notes here.

Mel: 24:14

And this is for you. If you have ever been like, if you've been like me and you just have like so many jars that you've collected and then you look at some of those jars, three, four, five years down the line and you're like I've never used this at all, I don't even know what this does. Well, what a waste of time, money and plant. That was right. Or if you've just been like that mom where you're like you're starting to make remedies and it's really, really fun and you love it, but then you get into the fall and everybody's sick and you didn't make medicine with the plants while they're at the peak of their medicinal potency, right, they're no longer available. So you're stuck either running back to the drugstore or you're going out and buying herbs from some hopefully really high quality, reputable herb company like Oregon's Wild Harvest or, let's see, wish Garden herbs, eclectic herbs All of these are really fantastic herbal companies and there's no shame in like buying the already prepared stuff. But, that being said, you can certainly save a lot of money when you're making your own medicine, and I mean a lot.

Mel: 25:21

But sometimes we don't have the time to, sometimes we miss out on that plant preparation for the year or we didn't know about that plant and what it could do for our family. So that's why I'm doing the herbal medicine planning party. We're going to talk about what remedies you need to have on hand for the next one to two years, because you make these remedies and you've got medicine for about two years, sometimes more, depending on the preparation you've chosen. We're going to talk about what medicine you might already have on hand that you don't even think about as medicine. We're going to talk about the best applications for you to make, like, is it better to have tinctures or glycerides or oils, or what is best for you, what is really going to work out well for you and your family, yeah, and then we're just going to talk about how to make sure that your remedies are actually going to work, and even how to make them yummy so your kiddos will want them and put them in their tummy. So I'm really excited for this medicine planning party. I've never done anything like it and I hope that you'll join me Again. I'll put the link to it in the show notes.

Mel: 26:30

It is happening May 28 through May 31. And it's just a four day event. So each day we'll hop on, live together and kind of do the party together. That was a double together. So we're really really together. Sorry about that. That was a double together. So we're really really together. Sorry about that. So, yeah, each day it'll be about 20 to 30 minutes of live time together, and then I'm going to send you away with a homework assignment. Don't worry, the homework assignment is going to be like two minutes, maybe up to 10, depending on you. Know you and what you have to work with.

Mel: 27:05

So the intention is to make it super simple and easy and to help you map out an entire one to two year span of what remedies you need on hand for you and your family. It's gonna be fun. I'm gonna have prizes for you, for those that do like homework and hang out in the party pad and do all of the good stuff that's coming ahead, and I really, really hope that you will join me again. It's linked in the show notes of this episode and I really hope that you took away some valuable information from this episode. Like, it is so fun, it is so empowering to harvest your own medicine, but it is also really it is so empowering to harvest your own medicine, but it is also really important to think about ethics and sustainability and safety and plant identification and just really making sure that you are indeed doing the best for you and your family, but also doing the best for the plants and for our planet and for the future generations. And once you start doing this, it becomes really easy, it becomes second nature and you start spreading this kind of wisdom and knowledge to other people. And that's how we can really make a huge impact on everybody throughout this world, which is what we are here to do. At least, I'm here to do that. I hope that you are as well, because it's such a beautiful, beautiful thing to watch so many people starting to come back to the earth.

Mel: 28:34

Come back to these amazing plants as medicine and starting to use them significantly less than using the drugs made by man and big pharma that are often even more harmful than they can be helpful. And there is obviously a time and a place. I am I am not anti big pharma. Big pharma can save lives. I am anti the corruption, the abuse and the misuse that happens within this industry People just being thrown on medications when they're not even considering the various ways that the body can heal itself, different plants that may be less harmful and cause less side effects, and things along those lines.

Mel: 29:19

So I don't want to go on that soapbox, because I want to leave you with feeling confident and excited to go out and gather your medicine at the peak of its medicinal potency, while considering the safety, the ethics, the sustainability of wildcrafting. Of course, the best way to gather your medicine is to grow your own, because then you don't have to worry about any of those other rules like are you harming anybody's land? Is this legal or not? Grow your own medicine. You get to put all of that beautiful love and intention into your own medicine and it is so, so, so wonderful.

Mel: 29:56

So I hope you learned something from today's podcast episode. If it was helpful for you, I would be so grateful if you left me a review on your favorite podcast listening place. It'll take one, maybe two minutes if you do, and maybe even share this episode with somebody who is really excited about gathering plant medicine and starting to use more of it in their lives. So thank you so much for that. I really appreciate that you are still here 25 minutes into this episode listening to me talk. I appreciate you in all of the ways and I hope to see you at the herbal medicine planning party happening May 28 through May 31.

Mel: 30:42

All right, have a beautiful day. Bye. All right, have a beautiful day. Bye your review on your favorite podcast player and share it with your friends so that together we can make herbalism hashtag spread like wildflowers. On another note, I must mention that, while I know you're getting some good info here, it's important to remember that this podcast is purely for entertainment and educational purposes and is not intended to be a substitute for medical treatment. While the information in this podcast is absolutely relevant, herbs work differently for each person and each condition. That's why I recommend you work with a qualified practitioner, whether that be another herbalist, a naturopath or your doctor. So thank you again. I am truly honored that you're tuning into these episodes and on the path with me to make sure that there's an herbalist in every home. Again, don't forget to share this episode with your friends so that we can make herbalism Hashtag spread like wildflowers.