Working with leaf buds. In a welcome bout of sunshine this week I have been picking the emerging buds of hawthorn leaves and submersing them in alcohol. The photo shows just 10g that I had picked so far; I am aiming for 50g – it is time consuming… I will also collect birch buds soon, but they are not quite ready yet. In a […]
Category Archives: Gardening
17
Oct
Oct
Neither should you…. There is a chilly nip in the air. I can see a definite change in the character of my garden, now the busy harvesting of spring and summer is over. Stems dry, seeds harden, berries ripen, and roots draw their strength back underground. Nonetheless, I head outside with a basket, to see what remains to make myself an […]
10
Oct
Oct
Dandelions… Every spring someone complains about the dandelions. They pop up between paving slabs, in carefully mulched borders, even in the middle of a perfect lawn. Then, out come the weedkillers and trowels, and out go the dandelions. Over and over again, year after year. But what if we stopped waging war on them? What if, instead […]
25
Jul
Jul
Doing the fun stuff… I don’t just teach, see patients and write stuff. I get to have fun… Spring and summer may be busy gathering leaves and flowers, dodging the showers or melting in the heat, but making useful stuff from stuff I have gathered from my garden or elsewhere satisfies the alchemist in me. […]
04
Jul
Jul
The Flavour Connection… In traditional herbalism, taste has been a diagnostic tool, a therapeutic guide, and a window into a plant’s healing potential. Among all the flavours that our tongues recognise, bitterness stands out as perhaps the most medicinally significant. Ironically, it’s the most avoided in our modern starch-based, sweet-obsessed culture. What our ancestors understood […]
21
Jun
Jun
It’s hard to stop. We all have our favourite topic. I usually get to talk about mine to students confined to a classroom, where they are captive. It has been a long time since I went ‘out’ and talked to strangers, I have just been too busy. But when a Gardening Group asked for me […]
07
Jun
Jun
Try this first… One of the reasons I became a medical herbalist was because of gardening. I didn’t do much of it, but most of what I did do was weeding. Each time I scrabbled about and dug up a dandelion or thistle I would fling it in the wheelbarrow ready to be tipped onto […]
12
Apr
Apr
There are more, but… I know you don’t want them in your garden [but seriously, you should], and I know you avoid them because they sting – but there are five good reasons you really could need nettles. Nutrient denseI am not aware of anything you could get for nothing that is quite so packed […]
And what to do when you get there… Last post I extolled the virtues of stinging nettle, now I will tell you what to do with them after you have harvested, dried and stored them. Here I just chat through how I use mine… Harvesting Your Nettles First thing to mention, which may be superfluous, […]
27
Mar
Mar
Where it all started… I have just accepted a speaking engagement for June. For many entrepreneurs ‘speaking engagement’ might conjure up images of conference halls filled with hundreds of eager high-ticket participants waiting to hear a rousing delivery, and a call to action, and a definite ‘kerching’, etc., etc.. But for me, this speaking engagement […]
- 1
- 2