An Herbalist's Education

A Tour Of My Workshop: seeding and growing area; followed by prep and storage

seedingpic1 — I am going to plant these Spilanthes seeds.

seedingpic2 — Spilanthes is like many herb seeds, tiny and needing light to germinate. So I just sprinkle a few on the surface of my nicely damp seeding medium..

seedingpic3 — I don't want the seeds to get covered accidentally with soil, and so I am tamping the whole top surface down to make it smooth. This also helps to press the seeds in a little bit. I plant more than one for each pot, because sometimes the seed doesn't come up. .

seedingpic4 — This tray is sitting on a heating mat. Most seeds germinate best if the soil is heated at least to 75 degrees F. Spilanthes will likely germinate in less than ten days, but there are herbs that take several months..

seedingpic5 — Finally, I put a clear plastic dome over top of my newly planted pots. I've planted more than just the Spilanthes today.

seedingpc6 — My workshop is divided into two parts. In this part I plant and grow the herbs that will go into my garden. This year (spring, 2025) most of the herbs I plant will be annuals (they need to be planted every year). This includes Spilanthes, Calendula, Chamomile, and many more. The majority of my perennial herbs have already been planted outside for a number of years, but I am starting some for the first time, such as Schisandra and Codonopsis. I grow almost all the year's plants indoors from seeds to get a good start on the summer harvest. But there are some, like California Poppy and Dill, that should be direct sown outside. California Poppy seeds need to be sown on still frozen ground. .

seedingpic7 — Most of these seedlings have only recently germinated (since the last week of February).

seedingpic8 — The seedlings on the right sprouted about three weeks ago (Feb 14, 2025). The ones on the left came up two weeks before that. They are big enough that I had to transplant them to bigger pots. I am very careful to plant only the number I need, because I don't have enough room under lights for more than that. For Spilanthes, which is a very useful herb but provides a lot of leaves and flowers per plant, I usually plant six or seven.

seedingpic9 — Here you can see some very special herbs that I've grown from seed and are perennials, but that I can't grow in the garden because they can't be left in the ground over the winter (they live in the Tropics, usually.) On the left are two varieties of perennial Ocimum. The small one in the foreground is *Ocimum basilicum Ajaka*, a spicy variety of garden basil. The other, in the two large white pots, is *Ocimum tenuiflorum Krishna*, or Holy Basil, also called Tulsi. Tulsi is too important an herb for me not to have a fresh source all year long. It is one of the handful of herbs in the world known to help human bodies adapt to high stress. On the right, also in a white pot, is a single Cat's Whiskers (*Orthosiphon aristatus*plant , also called Java Tea. I've been growing it in this pot for four years now. It is a plant with some very exciting and rare healing abilities. I have more plants like this, including *Centella asiatica* (Gotu Kola)and *Bacopa monnieri*, both of which are used to help reverse some of the cognitive losses of aging and dementia. This is terribly important, but they both have more healing properties than just this. I love Gotu Kola in particular because of its amazing abilities to heal wounds of all kinds (internal and external), and the way it increases collagen production in joints and skin.

tourpic1 — In the other part of my workshop, I store, make, and decide on which herbal preparations will actually help my clients. This shelving unit holds almost all of my previous year's harvests of the therapeutic parts of my garden herbs. Most herbs have parts that aren't helpful for healing, so when we harvest the herb we have to separate out the parts that are useful, then clean them (and in the case of roots, chop them into tiny pieces -- which can be an arduous job.) After that, we either make the harvest into herbal medicines right away (tinctures, syrups, oils/salves, and so on) or dry them for future use. It depends on how busy I am whether I make them into medicine right away. I really prefer to do this, because medicines made from herbs processed "fresh" are better (quality and strength) than dry. However, many herbs in my garden have to be harvested at the same time, and there are only so many hours in a day. And so I dry what I can't process right away, and I don't worry about the quality because home-grown herbs are imcomparably better dried than dry herbs I have to purchase. I dry herbs in any one of three ways: by hanging the herb from my workshop's rafters, by laying out small bits of herbs (such as blossoms) on netting shelves that are hung in our cosy furnace room, and by using a dehydrator (though it actually takes longer, and is very noisy.) In the summer months the half of my workshop devoted to planting seeds in the winter is so full of hanging herbs that it is almost impossible to get around in it! After they are dry, I store them in PET-plastic (food-safe) jars. With no light or air able to get to them, the dry herbs are exceptionally fine until the next summer's harvest.

tourpic2 — This set of shelves shows some of the herbs (in bins) that I am unable to grow in my garden and so have to buy. I buy the herbs I can't grow from two Canadian suppliers. I do pass along my cost for these to the clients who need them, as well as any other costs that I incur in making their medicines. The green binders contain my Materia Medica, which is my personal collection of everything I know about every herb I use.

tourpicfinal — This shelving unit holds about half of the tinctures that I have made from herbs. Tinctures are stored in amber bottles to keep the light from diminishing their quality. I have tinctures readily available for about 125 herbs at any given time. In many situations this enables me to spend only a few days after meeting a client to decide on their remedies and combine them for the client. In those few days, I check that I'm up on current research regarding the client's problem, and think about what combination of herbs is best to help them with that problem. I usually make a formula that has five to seven different tinctures in the formula. Herbs work better together than they do all by themselves, which is why herbalists need a number of different herbs that work on the clients' problems. For example, they might have arthritis, and so they need herbs that reduce inflammation, help the body to eliminate the byproducts of inflammation and arthritis, reduce pain, and rebuild joints. And because people are all different, and usually have more than one problem, it's important to choose herbs to address all these unique aspects, as well as the general arthritis needs. For example, if the client feels hot when as a rule other people don't, I would not include in that client's medication the herb *Uncaria tomentosa*, Cat's Claw, even though it is great for dealing with a number of the aspects of arthritis. Cat's Claw would make them feel even hotter than they already do, and so I would likely choose *Boswellia serrata* instead, because it doesn't seem to cause problems like that, and is also really good as an anti-arthritis herb.

AN HERBALIST'S EDUCATION: How an Herbalist Learns

1. We learn with the help of other herbalists, who might be qualified colleagues or elders, often from our own childhood.

2.We learn from being an apprentice under the training of a recognized herbalist, either one-on-one, or in small groups. An apprentice might study with a qualified herbalist for a summer or a few years.

Field Work

Can You Feel How It Affects the Hands?

How to Recognize this Herb in the Wild

3. We learn from taking courses in herbalism. They might be given over as short a time as a weekend, or as long as five years.

Cedar Mountain — At an Accredited Herbal Institution

4. We learn from attending herbal conferences.

5. We learn from reading serious books and scientific journals on herbs.

Phytotherapy — A few thousand pages on chemistry and herbs

6. We learn from keeping up with scientific studies on herbs, which are now nearly always published online in exclusively academic parts of the internet. (three examples)

1: Neuroprotective Herbs for the Management of Alzheimer’s Disease Julie Gregory, Yasaswi V. Vengalasetti, Dale E. Bredesen, Rammohan V. Rao Biomolecules. 2021 Apr; 11(4): 543. Published online 2021 Apr 8.
doi: 10.3390/biom11040543
PMCID:
PMC8068256
2: Herbs as a Source for the Treatment of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome: A Systematic Review Jada Naga Lakshmi, Ankem Narendra Babu, S. S. Mani Kiran, Lakshmi Prasanthi Nori, Nageeb Hassan, Akram Ashames, Richie R. Bhandare, Afzal B. Shaik BioTech (Basel) 2023 Mar; 12(1): 4. Published online 2023 Jan 3.
doi: 10.3390/biotech12010004
PMCID:
PMC9844343
3:Recent Advances in Glycyrrhiza glabra (Licorice)-Containing Herbs Alleviating Radiotherapy- and Chemotherapy-Induced Adverse Reactions in Cancer Treatment Kai-Lee Wang, Ying-Chun Yu, Hsin-Yuan Chen, Yi-Fen Chiang, Mohamed Ali, Tzong-Ming Shieh, Shih-Min Hsia Metabolites. 2022 Jun; 12(6): 535. Published online 2022 Jun 9.
doi: 10.3390/metabo12060535
PMCID:
PMC9227067

7. And we cannot forget, we learn because we want to learn.

Being an herbalist isn’t very lucrative for any herbalist. It is also hard work, especially if you do it on your own. Just keeping an herb garden takes many hours a week, as does harvesting, and preparing treatments, and meeting clients, and doing extra research on their behalf. Any herbalist you will ever meet does this hard work for little money out of a deep love for herbs and a genuine compassion for people. And they will always try to take more courses, go to more conferences, and buy more books. They never want to stop learning about how herbs can help people.

What sort of things do herbalists learn in their education? Among many other things,

1. We learn to identify herbs in the field.

2. We learn to grow our own herbs, to have fresh herbs for our own clinical practices.

3. We learn the cell structures and purposes of those structures in both plants and human beings.

4. We learn the anatomy and systems of the human body.

5. We learn how the major chemical reactions work in the human body.

6. We learn what systems of the human body are likely in trouble if certain symptoms are present

7. We learn the parts of plants, what kinds of chemicals are common in plants, where in the plant those chemicals are found and at what time of year those parts are best harvested in order to make useful human treatments.

8. We learn how to hand-make many kinds of treatments using the herbs we harvest. These include capsules containing dry herbs, and infusions and decoctions (different kinds of teas). We also infuse herbs into honey or syrups or vinegars or oxymels. When something stronger is needed we need to make tinctures from maceration, percolation and other techniques, using alcohol or glycerol. From the method of tincturing we need to know how to work out the doses for every kind of person this treatment might be used on. We also learn all kinds of techniques for applying herbs to the outside of the body, using oils and salves.

9. We learn which plants are unsafe for all people. We also learn which are unsafe for our most vulnerable.

Additionally, we learn interactions and contras. This is necessary, because if a client comes to us for help with an ailment, the other ailments they have (including sensitivities and allergies), and the prescription medications they are on, will determine which herbs (if any) are safe to offer them. (The herbs are safe, but certain prescription medications can be made unsafe in the presence of certain herbs.) We also learn which symptoms of the human body must be referred to doctors or the emergency department.

10. We learn the plants that can help with human ailments.

...and

And on, and on. And so you might now see the point of this final cartoon:

GAEA'S HEART