What to Do with Herbs

Getting from the aromatic plant in the garden to the home made health or beauty product involves a couple of preliminary steps - preserving the herbs for long term storage and transferring their active ingredients into a medium easy to work with, usually oil.

Drying is the most common way to preserve herbs and spices. The easiest method is to gather herbs in bunches and hang them in a warm place with good air movement, like an attic. When dealing with medicinal plants for which only the flowers are used, the blossoms are laid out in a thin layer on clean paper towels over the top of a mesh screen.

Plants should be dried until there is no moisture left, then ground or stored whole in clean cloth or paper bags. These dried plants will be the basic materials for infused oils, salves, decocts and scented sachets. Some herbalists prefer to use fresh plants to preserve their medicinal qualities, but even then the plants need to be wilted to remove as much of the moisture as possible. Some plants' properties get altered too much by drying, and must be used fresh; a couple of examples are lemon balm and Saint John's Wort.

The next step is infusing the oil. This can be done by filling a jar well packed with the dried plant material of choice and adding enough oil to cover it, then placing the jar in a sunny window for a month and mixing it up regularly. Another way to do this is by simmering the oil and plant slurry in a double boiler over very low heat for four to six hours; this is the better method if you want to use fresh plants, since it ensures no moisture will remain to alter the product. The finished oil is then strained through a cheese cloth or a strainer covered with a coffee filter, and becomes the base for all home made health and beauty products.

Dried plant material, finely ground, can be used as is for face masks or as an additive in soaps, scrubs and bath salts.

A delicious way to enjoy the fragrance of edible aromatic herbs is infused honey. The method is similar to the one for oil and works great for lavender, mint, linden flowers, rose petals, acacia flowers, or any flavor of your choosing.