herbal resources

Hello all!

I would love to hear your go to resources for all things related to growing herbs. Best time to harvest, processing, drying, storing, etc. I would prefer books but online resources would also be great.

Thanks!

Are you talking about culinary herbs you'd like to grow, process and store for cooking, like basil, thyme, rosemary - or medicinal herbs (not that culinary herbs aren't medicinal) you want to process for tea, tincture, salve etc?

Taylor, I learned a lot about herbs right here on the forums.

A search of the specific herb that I was wanting to use brought up a wealth of information.

For an all-around book on herbs you might find these interesting:

https://permies.com/wiki/116397/Pleasure-Herbs-Phyllis-Shaudys

https://permies.com/t/124629/kitchen/Forgotten-Art-Growing-Gardening-Cooking

https://permies.com/wiki/46384/Complete-Herbal-Handbook-Farm-Stable

Thank you! Anne I will definitely be looking into the resources you suggested. Marisa, I suppose it is tricky to pin down. I would like to grow culinary herbs as well as more intentionally medicinal herbs. Right now, at the top of my list is, Yarrow, stinging nettle, tulsi, chamomile, lemon balm. As I learn more I'd love to grow more.

You might check out The Medicinal Herb Grower by Richo Cech. It's an excellent book that I believe covers all the areas you mentioned and more.

Here's a great article about gathering, processing and storing herbs from Jim Mcdonald, who is probably one of my favorite herbalists, definitely a great person to learn from. https://www.herbcraft.org/gathering.html

Got it - I didn't want to recommend something irrelevant (for instance if you only meant culinary herbs, than an herbalism resource wouldn't make sense). My favorite reliably-good resource for basic herbalism skills (growing, harvesting, processing, etc) is Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. Now, this is a website I access, however they have a great free guide you can download (and print out if you prefer), and the school's founder has a book coming out next year. It is called The Healing Garden: Cultivating & Handcrafting Herbal Remedies.

Here's a link to the free guide:
https://chestnutherbs.com/budding-herbalist-guide/
yes, they do want your email address, but I don't think I get many emails from them or maybe I unsubscribed. It isn't a practical how-to but more of an introduction to many facets of working with plants.

And here is a link to the blog, which has detailed information on (a limited number of) plants:
https://chestnutherbs.com/blog/

I also really enjoy plant monographs posted here by Judson Carroll as well as his podcast. I purchased his book, Herbal Medicine for Preppers, Homesteaders, and Permaculture Folks, but I have not spent much time with it yet. It's a pdf and I need to print and it put it in a binder or something, because I want to be able to flip through a tangible copy, not scroll down my laptop screen  

Thanks everyone, can't wait to sift through all the resources people sent. I tried to find that book by richo cecho. That must be an extremely popular book because it is sold out in every online source I looked. In fact it is selling on ebay for upwards of 100 bucks. Out of curiosity, what are some of ya'lls favorite herbs to grow?

I like growing mint-family plants because they're so easy - mint, catnip, anise hyssop, wild bergamot, and the less-obviously-minty thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary and lavender. Many of these survive winter in my garden, but the last few cannot and must either be brought inside in a pot or I just buy another plant.

In keeping with my low-effort lifestyle, I "grow" yarrow, self-heal/heal-all (another mint fam plant), mullein, St. John's wort, fleabane, milkweed, wood sorrel, wintergreen, pipsissewa, evening primrose, fireweed, plantain. Those are all things that appeared at my place without me doing anything. They are wild here. I have added (or have collected seeds for) several lobelias, boneset, prairie sage, pearly everlasting, other milkweeds, mountain mint, culver's root, things like that. I mostly gather herbs from wild populations but want to establish the same here in my garden, to help them proliferate and give myself a more ready supply that I can harvest from less cautiously.