Monthly Archives October 2008

How Can You Make Herbal Tinctures or Essence


 


Herbal tinctures are also essences, that are made of grain or fruit „palinka” or some kind of spirit with alcohol content of 38-40 percent. A bottle or another locker vessel can be poured, until it is almost full, with the herbal plants. Then water it with the grain or fruit „palinka”. As it is well locked, we leave the herbal tinctures alone in a warm place (about 20 Celsius) for 14 days or more.

Sometimes, we stir the herbal tinctures up, then the herbal essence should be stirred up and strained. Finally, we strain it and the fruit pieces and grain seeds remained in the strainer are squeezed.

Herbal tinctures can be used for oral use- drop some dips of herbal tinctures into the tea. Hence, for external use, it is used as compresses or friction.

The Way of Processing, Making Herbal Tea


 


Infusion or tisane: Fresh herbs are to be chopped up and to be put into a bottle or into another vessel that isn’t made of metal. Boil the water, get it off fire and pour it on the pre-prepared drying herbs. Soak the fresh herb for a while- half a minute is more than enough. The tea should be pale-yellow or light green. Herbal green tea need a bit more time to soak (1-2 minutes). The tea that is made this way is much nicer and more pleasurable.

Roots are to be put up in the given amount in cold water. Boil them just for a while, than leave them alone for further 3 minutes.

Pour the daily portion of herbal tea into a bowl, and drink by little gulps during all day, according to the directions.

Usually, we can get a complete spoon of herbal plant for a mug (or quarter of a litre) of water, unless there is another direction of the given herb.

Cold soak: Some drying herbs (eg. mauve, mistletoe or sweet flag) mustn’t be scalded over, as it can loose its herbal curative power. We make some cold tea from them. Soak the appropriate amount of herbal plants into cold water for approximately 2 hours (durig the night). Then, herbal green tea should only be warmed for immediate use. The daily portion should be kept in thermos bottle, that had been rinsed with hot water previously. However, herbal plants and herbal seeds can be utilized the most effective way by making a mixture of the soaked essence and the boiled herbal green tea.
Herbal cures should be soaked cold into the half amount of the water for the night, and they should be strained off next morning.

Herbs that remained in the strainer are to be boiled with the other half amount of the water, then they should be sieved repeatedly. Pour the essence and the tisane together.
Herbal green tea that is made in this way will have the natural herbal remedies that resolve only in cold or warm water.

How Can You Drying Herbs


 


Do not wash the herbs before drying, indeed, we have to chop them. Spread out the substrate on a tucker or on a clean piece of paper, this way herbal plants can dry easily into the shadow or at a breezy, warm place (eg. on the attic).

Roots are adviced to be chopped up after cleaning properly, and before drying- so as mistletoes and willow-herbs.

Conserve only herbal plants for winter that are completely dry. The best thing for storing herbal cures are jars or cardboard boxes. Avoid plastic vessels.

Protect drying herbs from the direct light, (green, coloured bottles are the best for that).
Think only for one winter, herbal plants can lose their curative power after a while.

Professional Collecting of Herbs


 


The requirement of collecting is the knowledge of medicinal herbs. If we are in possession of these herbal plants all we have to do is to collect the blessed herbs in the right time, at the right place, and besides, according to the appropriate method.

Watching the experiences, we can get the best herbal curative power by collecting the newly-picked herb seeds and leaves as freshness is extremely important to reach the right effect in connection with heavy diseases. We can start collecting fresh herbal plants by ourselves early in the springtime, perhaps from the end of February till mid November. Moreover, some types of herbs can be found even under the shroud of snow, if we watched the ground earlier at that place (Chelidolonum majus).

Store some-but not too much-drying herbals, for wintertime. Collect them at the right moment to reach the best agents.

Flowers should be collected at the beginning of flowering, leaves can be picked up before and during blooming, and ripening period is the best for collectig harvests.

Keep in mind the followig advice: hoard only the healthy, clean, wormless herbs. The best time for collecting is a sunny day, after dew absorbing, when herbs are in dry state. You mustn’t get your herbs on a field or a meadow that are fertilised, neither you can get the herbal plants from the bank of contaminated rivers, from railway embankments, close to motorways or roads with heavy traffic, nor by industrial settlements.

Save the nature. (Do not deracinate plants, you are not to do mischief.) Some of the plants are protected, but there are others that can be as effective as them (cheliodolinum majus)
Do not push the leaves and flowers while collecting, don’t use plastic pouches or sacs- these can cause the sweating of herbal plants and later on, while drying herbs can turn into black.