One more use for, or from, plantain

As I believe I've said before, plantain is one of my favorite plants! It's usually considered a weed and is very fond of lawns and any other place it can get enough water. It has medicinal uses. One more thing I like to use it for, it's seeds. There's no sense in wasting a resource and it's easy pickins.

Now, the seeds are small and it would take quite a bit to get a large store of them, but in many places there are large patches of the plant so that would be easy to do. Of course, this doesn't work quite as well in lawns since they are generally mowed and so the plants don't get to make seeds.

The seeds are produced all along a large stem. To harvest, I just pinch the stem in between my thumb and forefinger, with my hand cupped to catch the seeds, and run up the stem to strip the seeds. The narrow leaf variety has less seeds per stem, but the same basic idea. I throw the whole thing my harvest container, usually a jar or large plastic tub from some sort of food. It takes no time at all. When I get back to the house I run the contents of my container through a sieve to help winnow out the hulls. Easy peasy!

The seeds can be used in any way you'd use any other small seed. I usually just use them in soups and breakfast porridges but you could put them in/on bread or anything else. They are super tiny, although they do swell a bit in cooking, at least when cooked in liquids, not sure what they'd do in bread. The hulls can also be used like psyllium husks if desired. I sometimes throw them in soup as well. If I've been very lazy and haven't separated the hulls at all, I've been known to toss the whole mix into soup.

I don't know the exact benefits as far as what vitamins and such are in plantain seeds, but most seeds are quite nutritious so I'm sure these are as well. At the very least, we haven't died yet. :)

Elderberries, yum!

Well, we just got back from a vacation to the Oregon/Northern California coast. Despite the smoke, it was awesome! I've forgotten how green and wet it is there! I really miss the nice swimming holes with clean water. Best of all, though, I found some elderberries! I haven't really had any since we moved away from that part of the country. I'm growing some, but they're young and have only just started production.

These ones are sambucus cerulea,

An attemp at Elderberry cuttings

So it snowed here again the other day. Another cold spell after some rather nice weather. Anyway, it reminded me that I wanted to try starting some cuttings from my elderberry and I had better get to it before the thing started leafing out. So, I ran out and

Dandelion Salve

I love dandelions!

They have got to be one of the most useful plants around, in spite of their reputation. You can eat the whole plant and use it medicinally. This post is about a salve made from the flowers. Yes, the flowers.

Distilling Hydrosols

This has been sooo much fun! I love putting together new projects and all the new stuff I learn whilst doing so! This time, I made a still to distill herbs/plants into hydrosols and/or essential oils. I probably could have bought something off ebay cheaper than this, but wouldn't have had near as much fun. :D

I started with two stainless steel stockpots. These aren't the good ones, just thin, pressed sheet metal.

 The bottom pot is where the water to be boiled is to go. I cut a hole in the lid a bit smaller than the bottom of the smaller pot. That black thing is a gasket to help with steam escaping.

 Next I drilled holes in the bottom of the smaller pot (forgot to get a pic) this is the chamber where the plant material will go. That will allow the steam to come up through the plant material instead of being boiled. Different plants seem to have different outcomes on being boiled vs steamed with some doing better with one method and some better by the other. I figured this would allow me to do both as needed. I can put plant material in the bottom pot with the water when needed, no problem.

I used those rubber rings that are in a lot of 5 gal bucket lids for my gaskets. Cut them to length, the ones on the edge of the pot itself area also split down the middle.

Then I added a copper funnel I acquired on ebay and attached a copper fitting to the top. Then another fitting that necks down to 1/2", that's what size the copper tubing for the condenser is.

The condenser coil sits in an old 20 gal plastic tub that I used to use for rabbit water, it already had the hose inlet and outlet doohickies (yes, that's a technical term). And, yes, it's a redneck operation. :)

The bottom pot with water.

The top pot full of catnip.

This lid ended up being cut out, too, since the funnel was exactly the same size as the pot and I couldn't get it to sit right. Using the lid, flipped upside down, allows a platform for the funnel to sit on.

The finished product.

Yes, it is held together with rubber bands. Hey, it works. There's also a couple of those big, black paperclip thingies on there as well. The steam goes up through the plant material and out the top of the funnel into the condenser coil and the condensed fluid comes out into the gallon jar.

It worked very well for a trial run. I do think I should get another 10 feet of copper tubing so I can have more distance between the distiller and the condenser. I didn't even fill the blue tub halfway since I don't have that much confidence in the hoosier standing up to that much weight. I'd like to be able to lower the tub a bit onto something more substantial and fill it all the way. Even better would be to fix up the 2 burner propane stove and do it outside. That would avoid heating the house and allow easier filling and draining of the blue tub. I could hook a hose to the inlet and refill as needed with no trouble.

I also need to do something better for gasket material. My husband says I should try some sort of silicone engine gasket stuff/thing that he uses at work a lot (I forget exactly what it was). Says it'll stand up the heat better.

But still, not too bad! So far today I've made some catnip distillation and am working on some fringed sagebrush (artemisia frigida). It smells very nice in here! I'm hoping the catnip distillate will work just as well as the catnip tincture as a mosquito spray. We'll see.


.Fringed sagebrush ready to go.

A bit of the finished catnip distillate.

I can see that this is going to be way too much fun and I will end up with way too many jars of various distillates laying around the house!


ETA: Here's the sagebrush distillate. You can kinda see the essential oil floating on the top of the water. Not much, but you can see it.

 You can barely see it in the pic, but there is oil floating on the top. You could really see it quite well when looking down in real life.

Starry False Solomon's Seal

So, since I have a hard time growing the more standard medicinal herbs, I've decided to really start trying to learn how to use the native plants and non native weeds such as dandelion. Well, actually, I already use my weeds, dandelion, shepherds purse, plantain, lamb's quarters, etc., so I'm going to focus on learning a few of the native plants that grow on my place this year.  One of them is Starry False Solomon's Seal. This plant has been through several latin names but the current one (I think) is maianthemum stellata. There's a huge patch of this in the largest gully we have.

So I did some research and then went harvesting. The leaves are supposed to be useful as a tea for coughs and colds. The rhizomes are supposed to be good for certain lung and heart issues. I think they help improve circulation and remove excess water. It's also supposed to help with sore joints and arthritis. The powdered rhizomes are a nutritive that's supposed to help tone the stomach among other things. I didn't dig enough to be worth drying and grinding. Instead I'm tincturing most of the rhizomes and infusing a small amount of them in honey. Hubby has sore joints sometimes, so I may try that out on him. I'm also drying the leaves to try when someone gets a cold. I'll just have to play with this one a bit throughout the year and take lots of notes.




Here's my harvest.

The rhizomes separated from the upper parts.

The washed rhizomes.

 

The leaves hanging to dry. There's a dandelion flower oil and a cottonwood bud infusing in oil in the background.

The big jar will be filled with alcohol to make the tincture and the little one is getting filled with some of my honey from my bees to make an infused honey.

Here's the little jar full of honey and chopped rhizome.

Mullein

Today I got a small harvest of mullein root to experiment with. I've used tincture and teas of the leaf for respiratory issues before, but that's all so far. I've made oil from the flowers as it is supposed to be unexcelled as treatment for ear infections, but have never had an infection in the house to try it with. That's ok. :)

I have read that tincture of the root is supposed to be helpful in treating back pain, especially if it's because your back is out of alignment or have disc issues. My husband has some of these issues and an old dog as well, so I'd like to experiment with this aspect of mullein. We tend to be annoyingly healthy overall (knock on wood!) which makes getting firsthand experience with some of these herbs kinda hard! We just tend to bumps and bruises for the most part, with a couple of fairly spectacular lacerations a couple of times. So, I'll make a batch of this stuff and play a bit.


My mullein fresh from the field

Washing the roots.

 A nice pile of leaves for drying as I already have a fair bit of leaf tincture this year.

 Leaves drying and tincture 'tincturing'.

Shepherd's Purse

Another one of those useful weeds, although I had to help this one along here. Our first summer I broadcast a packet of seed all over. It apparently was happy with the accommodations and decided to stay and multiply. Which is good!


Shepherd's Purse, botanical name Capsella bursa-pastoris. The seedpods make identification fairly easy.

I use the whole, fresh plant and make an alcohol tincture from it. Some sources say it can be dried and some say it loses it's oomph quickly when dried. Even the tincture has a pretty short shelf life, a year or less, so I make fresh every year. It's main use seems to be hemorrhage, specifically for the uterus. That's how I generally use it. I used it on myself after my stillbirth as I was bleeding more than I was comfortable with. It worked very well there. I have also used it if I have too much bleeding when castrating, as can sometimes happen with older animals. It also works well in that application. It's one of those plants that doesn't seem to have a wide range of uses and doesn't get used a lot, but comes in very handy when needed.

The basal leaves of Shepherd's Purse

Some Shepherd's Purse in with a mess of other weeds.

Catnip

Catnip is a very sensual plant. It's soft in a velvety sort of way, has an intriguing, pungent scent, is mildly narcotic for many cats, has many uses and grows like a weed. And it's just pretty to look at. The bees also like it when it flowers.

Not everyone likes the scent, but I do. It's just.................herbal. When I see products that are scented 'herbal scent', catnip is the plant that springs to mind. Although I don't think many of those products actually use catnip. Anyway.............

Catnip is mildly sedative and mildy diaphoretic, making it especially useful for children. I use it as a sedative every so often, but I find it especially useful when I have a sick kiddo. It helps them sleep and sweat through a fever. If drunk cold, the tea acts more as a diuretic, not so useful in the sleeping department. :) Being a mint, catnip is also useful for indigestion. Combined with the sedative effect, again, it's very useful for children. Oldest child likes to just chew on a leaf every now and then, I don't know why.

Cats, many of them, find it mildly narcotic. I've had enough  cats to have seen quite a variety of reactions. One cat I had would get high as a kite on it, but the low afterwards must have been pretty bad because after a hit, he wouldn't get near the stuff for months. Eventually he'd forget about it and do it again. Another cat just seems to find it mildly pleasing. She just rolls in it for a bit and the curls up somewhere and goes to sleep. Some cats don't seem to get anything from it at all.

Catnip, for me, is extremely easy to grow. In fact I can't not grow it. That stuff reseeds itself like nobody's business. I not only have seedlings coming up in the herb bed, I have them coming up in the garden aisles, several beds surrounding the herb bed and in the grassy area 50 yards off. I have to say, looking at where the seedlings appear, you can definitely tell the direction of the prevailing winds around here. It does seem to like a fairly fertile soil that is well drained. I didn't have much luck with it in poor clay soil and when I lived on an alkali flat. Here, though, well.............


And my very favorite reason to love catnip................mosquito repellant!! I make a normal alcohol tincture and dilute it 50/50 with water, then put in a spray bottle. Works very, very well for mosquitos!!. The main disadvantage, to me, is that it doesn't last very long. I just carry a spray bottle with me and reapply as necessary, but I do want to experiment a bit with it. My husband says the main disadvantage is the smell. What does he know? :D Anyway, I've though of maybe mixing a light oil in with the tincture and seeing if that helps with longevity. I also want to try catnip essential oil and see how that works. It would probably last longer. Anybody else tried anything along those lines or have any ideas?

Garlic!

If I could only have one herb, it would be garlic! It's one of the most versatile herbs I can think of. It's great for cooking and has many medicinal uses. Reading about it, you find out that it's good for infections of all sorts, can help with cholesterol, good for the immune system, good for yeast infections, is antifungal and can help with fleas if you're a dog.

I don't have personal experience with all that, but we do use it quite a lot around here. We take it raw at the very first sign of a cold or flu and, 9 times out of 10, it knocks it flat. If we wait a day or two, it doesn't knock it down, but it does drastically shorten the duration of the illness. I generally take 2-3 cloves throughout the day, chopped fine and taken with water. I do have to take it with food or it can make my stomach upset. For the little ones, I chop it very fine and mix it with a spoonful of peanut butter. My husband likes to take it that way as well. I can't stand chewing raw garlic, though, so I just swallow mine. Garlic is one of the immune stimulants that won't incite a cytokine storm, those are what killed most people in the Flu of 1918-1919. Many popular immune stimulants/flu remedies will/can incite a cytokine storm. Plus garlic is easy to grow here and stores well.

I have also used it successfully for fungal infections. A little garlic oil on athlete's foot usually clears it right up. From personal experience it's also very helpful in yeast infections and is supposedly helpful in several other vaginal infections. I also put it into my general purpose 'wound/cut/scrape' ointment, along with several other herbs.

Garlic can also benefit the animals. I have used it successfully on turkeys, goats and dogs. I've had a couple of turkeys come down with some sort of disease that, for one reason or another, I wanted to save. Usually I just put them down, survival of the fittest kind of thing. Anyway, I have had very good luck with catching a turkey and shoving a clove of garlic down it's throat 2-3 times a day for as long as needed. They really don't like it, though. I assume the same thing would work with chickens, but you'd have to have smaller pieces. It has also been a lifesaver with the goats a time or two when I was out of antibiotics and couldn't get anymore. Depending how sick they are, I'll give them up to 5 cloves a day. I think they could maybe handle more, but I'm not sure. Some goats really like it and will eat it out of your hand. Some goats really DON'T like it and then it gets interesting! Same sort of uses for dogs, but you have to be careful with the dose and length of time given as they can develop Heinz body anemia from it. That's why you're not supposed to give dogs garlic and onions. I've only done it twice and was very careful with it.

I'm sure garlic can be used in many other ways as well and I'm always open to experimentation. Anybody else have any favorite garlic uses?

Plantain

Herbal medicine is a big interest of mine and we use quite a lot of it. Today I wanted to do a little blip on plantain. It's a very common 'lawn weed' and a very useful one, although we don't exploit it to it's full potential. We use it the most for small wounds and punctures. You know the ones that get sore, red and inflamed? We've also had good results using it for stings and stinging bug bites. Doesn't seem to help much with itchy bites, though. For bites, we usually just chew or mash up a bit and tape it on for a bit. For inflammations, you can do the same, but we prefer to dip a leaf briefly in hot water, then apply to the area with a bit of gauze and tape or a band aid, depending how big the area is. The heat is soothing and seems to speed up the anti inflammatory action a bit. I wouldn't hesitate to use on larger wounds but, fortunately, haven't had the need as yet.

I used this almost constantly when oldest child was a toddler. At that time, we lived in a place with lots of Russian Olive trees (Elaeagnus angustifolia) in the yard, and everywhere else. Those things have some nasty thorns on them! She was always getting pieces stuck in her feet since we went barefoot everywhere. Still do actually. Anyway, I wouldn't always find out til the area where the thorn was happened to be all swollen and inflamed. A couple applications of this herb over the course of 4-5 hours would almost completely do away with the swelling so I could actually find the thorn to remove it. After the removal I'd put another leaf poultice on the puncture for a few hours and never had an infection problem. 

I've used it for animal bites as well. So far only on other animals, but it's one of the first I'd think of for bites on people also. Unfortunately, my experience has been that only the fresh really works well for this application. I've read that dried works, but it hasn't for me. This year I finally got around to tincturing some, so we'll see if that works, although it's bound to be a bit more painful with the alcohol content. I also put in some of my salves, but since it's in with other herbs, I can't say for sure how well it works.

Plantain is also supposed to be useful for lung issues and other mucous membrane issues, but I have never tried any of those applications, so really can't say anything about them as yet. If anybody else can, please chime in!

You can also eat it. It just tastes mild and green to me, but the stringy fibers are a bit off putting for common consumption. I'd mostly eat it in a survival situation, personally.

Here you can see the fibers in the leaf of a broadleaf plantain. Narrowleaf also has these fibers.

The two most common varieties are broadleaf, or common, plantain and narrowleaf or English plantain. I happen to have both on the place at the moment.

Narrowleaf plantain - Plantago lanceolata

Broadleaf plantain - Plantago major