Making an herbal heal-all salve

Years ago, I used to buy a locally made product called 'strong salve'. It was very pricey, but amazingly effective.

It was a salve made with herb-infused oil and beeswax and was miraculous for how it treated acne, burns, small cuts, eczema, etc.  Even slow healing cold stores. If I had a cut or skin blemish  that wouldn't heal, I turned to this salve.

I recall it included lots of calendula (and left a yellow tinge on the skin), and possibly lavender, but there was a long list of herbs included.  I think tea tree oil was part of it. It had a strong, complex smell and taste but if I recall, was pretty much infused herbs only, no essential oils other than the tea tree oil.

If you were to make a 'strong salve', what herbs would you include?  

I have a salve I make that is far simpler, but works quite well according to all those I have given it to . . . 1/3 plantain - 1/3 yarrow - 1/3 jewelweed. Like pretty much everything I make, they come off my own property here in the foothills of Appalachia and are free for the asking.

Sharol Tilgnor has moved to calendula only salve.

My favorite salve is plain Calendula. It does everything I want a  healing salve to do and it is easy to extract into oil. I use to make more complicated salves when younger, but I have simplified things in my old age. It was really fun experimenting when younger and I use to like to make complicated mixtures. Now I am more practical.

from here

Maybe that is all you need too? I  am still making my plantain dock and mullien salve. And still trying to get calendula to grow!

Hi Jim,


Welcome to Permies!

I've played with kitchen sink type salve formulas with crazy "strong" herbs and they can be cool. But I also tend to prefer simpler salves. Plantain is my go to salve for skin irritation and injury. Calendula and plantain is lovely too. I just made a new blend of plantain, goldenrod and mullein and am quite pleased with that. I've been trying to rethink the way I talk about the strength of herbs. I always like to use the most gentle herbs first. Just because something is more gentle in it's action, like plantain or calendula, doesn't make it less strong, I've come to realize. I've certainly seen powerful results from plantain alone.

Mullein is great too. I've been working with it recently to help a friend's baby cow who has a gnarly injured knee. It pulled a huge gob of ick out and created so much relief and increased mobility. I'm still surprised. I think I'll be using mullein a lot more, since joint and muscle issues are something I'm frequently trying to address with salves and mullein works quite well for that.

jim walters wrote:I have a salve I make that is far simpler, but works quite well according to all those I have given it to . . . 1/3 plantain - 1/3 yarrow - 1/3 jewelweed. Like pretty much everything I make, they come off my own property here in the foothills of Appalachia and are free for the asking.

Heather Sharpe wrote:I've played with kitchen sink type salve formulas with crazy "strong" herbs and they can be cool. But I also tend to prefer simpler salves. Plantain is my go to salve for skin irritation and injury. Calendula and plantain is lovely too. I just made a new blend of plantain, goldenrod and mullein and am quite pleased with that. I've been trying to rethink the way I talk about the strength of herbs. I always like to use the most gentle herbs first. Just because something is more gentle in it's action, like plantain or calendula, doesn't make it less strong, I've come to realize. I've certainly seen powerful results from plantain alone.

Mullein is great too. I've been working with it recently to help a friend's baby cow who has a gnarly injured knee. It pulled a huge gob of ick out and created so much relief and increased mobility. I'm still surprised. I think I'll be using mullein a lot more, since joint and muscle issues are something I'm frequently trying to address with salves and mullein works quite well for that.

Would either of you care to make a post on how you make it?  This is new to me, and I'm kind of step by step guy

Trace Oswald wrote: Would either of you care to make a post on how you make it? This is new to me, and I'm kind of step by step guy

Of course, Trace! First, you make an infused oil. There are several ways to do this. I like to use long, slow heat, between 110-120 Fahrenheit, ideally for a week, but at least several hours. This works for fresh or dried herbs. You can use a double boiler for this. I used the yogurt setting on my instant pot. If you're handy, you can rig a dimmer switch on a crock pot to maintain that temp, but I had a hard time getting it to stay consistent enough.

I use a 1:5 ratio of herbs to oil for dried herbs. 1:3 for fresh. So for example, this last batch, I added my 100 g (by weight) of dried herbs to a jar along with 500 ml of olive oil. I put enough water to go halfway up the jar in the instant pot, set the jar with a lid on in there and left it for several days. If I'd been using a double boiler, I'd have just put the herbs and oil in the top pot, water in the bottom. When I was happy with the color, I strained out the herbs through a clean piece of cotton fabric and wrung out as much oil as I could. Then I let the strained oil sit in a jar for a day or so, that way any plant matter that might still be in there settles out and the oil can be poured off, leaving the sludge at the bottom and excluding it from the finished oil. Without this step, the oil can spoil faster. This is more essential when working with fresh plants. After that, I take the infused oil and heat it back up until I can melt in my beeswax, being careful not to heat it up too much. You can play with ratios depending on how firm you want the salve. I usually go for 100 ml oil to 17 g beeswax. Then I pour the mix into clean jars and let it set up.

If I was using fresh herbs, I wouldn't use a closed jar. I would probably opt for a double boiler or other more open situation so the water can evaporate out. I've also used a technique where you put fresh herbs along with the oil through a blender for several minutes. If you've got a good blender, this will add some heat. The settling step and straining are really important with this method so you don't end up with water and/or plant material in your finished oil, since those are bacteria food. The color and power of the oils I've made with this method are always quite impressive. I've also done dry herb infused oils just putting the herbs and oil in a mason jar and letting them set for a month. I don't feel this gets as much of the plants into the oil compared to using heat, as the color would always be about the same as the olive oil I started with.

Hope all that makes sense!

Heather Sharpe wrote:...

Hope all that makes sense!

Heather, thank you so much!  That was an excellent description, and very helpful for my "please don't leave out any steps" type of learning.

Trace,

I've never made what I'm asking about, but I do make salves.

Heather has better instructions than me about infusing herbs, as I usually just make plain salves and am only now experimenting with herbs, but I thought I'd share my method for the actual salve making.
Plain salves are awesome for dry skin, lips, and dog paws.

My basic salve recipe is 350mL oil to 75 g beeswax. You may want to adjust the beeswax for a softer or harder salve. If not using coconut oil, probably increase the beeswax a bit.  I use beeswax blocks so measure by weight.  For oils -i'd avoid cheap vegetable oils. I use coconut oil, almond kernel oil, grapeseed oil, avocado oil, olive oil, etc, and find I prefer salves with a mixture of 2-3 oils. I suspect good quality lard or tallow would work very well, but have never tried it as I don't have a good source.

I make an improvised double boiler for making my salves as I don't trust myself to slowly heat oil and wax on a stove top.
I set a large pot of water to boiling, and put my ingredients in a pyrex glass measuring cup with a handle.
I suspend the measuring cup by the handle on the side of the pot, adding water to get it to be about 1/3 of the way up the side of the cup. I simmer the water until the beeswax melts, and give a quick stir once melted, then pour into glass jars.

Cleanup is a pain - I wipe with paper towels to get rid of the worst of it, and use hot or boiling water to get rid of the wax residue.

Jim - interesting! I've never seen jewelweed growing  here, but yarrow and plantain definitely do. Do you use yarrow leaves or flowers?

Joylynn - I'm surprised that you can't grow calendula, I think of it as an easy grower! Truly shows that gardening is regional. Good point about simple sometimes being best. I suppose I should try a few different combinations to see if complicated actually is worthwhile.

So that's 3 votes for plantain. I just weeded out a bunch of that yesterday. Oh well, there are always more weeds! And two votes for mullein which I haven't seen yet this year, but definitely can find.

What do people tend to use for infection? I'm immunocompromised, and get a fair number of opportunistic weird rashes, infections, fungal things, cold sores, etc.  What I liked about the salve I used before is that it seemed to kick minor skin infections. And also that, being infused, it didn't seem to be as overwhelming as some of the essential oil based things I've tried.

In my garden I have echinacea, rudbeckia, basil, Tulsi, marjoram, thyme, sage, lavender, mint, bee balm, lemon balm, chamomile, calendula, roses. Probably more that I don't know have medical uses. And plenty of weeds!

I dry yarrow flowers . . . dry plantain . . . dry jewelweed. on an old screen in my greenhouse. . . all picked fresh and dried right away. . . . then I  stuff a canning jar with 1/3 of each (guessed) leave a few empty inches at the top and fill the jar with olive oil. Then I set it aside for at least six weeks. I then strain the liquid and add warmed beeswax to my desired solidity. then I pour the finished product into small tins and store them in a cool dry root cellar. I use jewelweed because it has a reputation for healing poison ivy around here.  

My weeds, plants, and mushrooms are all wild grown . . .  I 'think' that makes a great difference in their strength. I'll be making a batch of dandelion flower salve in a couple of days.

There's something sold here called Gardener's Dream Cream that is the only thing that's ever totally worked for my eczema. It's a bit of a kitchen sink concoction.

I made a salve with olive oil infused with mostly plantain and a bit of comfrey, shea butter, and rosemary and lavender EO. It's not bad, but not as good as the Dream Cream.

These are the ingredients for the Dream Cream:

Aqua (Deionized Water), Butyrospermum parkii (Shea) Butter, Helianthus annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Cetearyl alcohol (coconut), Vitis vinifera (Grape) Seed Oil, Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride (Coconut derived), Cera alba (Beeswax), Arnica montana (Arnica) Flower Extract, Lavandula angustifolia (Lavender) Oil, Isostearic Acid, Tocopherol Acetate (Vitamin E), Citrus grandis (Grapefruit) Seed Extract, Mentha piperita (Peppermint) Oil, Rosmarinus officinalis (Rosemary) Leaf Oil, Eucalyptus globulus (Eucalyptus) Leaf Oil, Cinnamomum zeylanicum (Cinnamon) Leaf Oil, Retinyl palmitate (Vitamin A), Origanum vulgare (Wild Marjoram) Flower Extract, Thymus vulgaris (Thyme) Flower/Leaf Extract, Cinnamomum zeylanicum (Cinnamon) Bark Extract, Hydrastis canadensis (Goldenseal) Extract.

The most basic AND effective formula i've made is a salve with comfrey infused oil and calendula infused oil.

Lavender flowers, whole calendula flowers, chamomile flowers, comfrey leaf and root, orris root, in a 50:50 or 75:25 of virgin olive and safflower oil to get the infusion. (Different oils have different properties. ) I used to do this part like sun tea, several weeks in the hot Southern California summer, strain and repeat for a double strength  brew. But I add essential oils as well to further boost the effectiveness. Lavender,  tea tree, cedarwood essential oils.  Sweet almond oil and a high count vitamin E. Then the beeswax and into jars. I don't use metal when making this or storing it.  Glass and wood (wooden spoon to stir a bit).///Amendment;  no metal touches this brew. Don't know that it makes a difference,  but I don't allow contact with metal.///
I now do a double boiler sort of method. And I make it by the gallon, which can be done in a weekend. The essential oils and orris root help preserve the ointment for a couple years.

This thread is awesomesauce!!  I'm still in learning mode as a new permie (I've gardened old school 14 years before turning permie, and this is my second season).  I've made it my full intent to interplant herbs in all areas of our gardens, front and back of the house and within our fruit guilds.  I  guess at this point, I just want to make sure I have plenty growing out there before I start applying herbal skills but with all the mosquito bites I got this week (I know, I'm too sweet. Aw.) I might just buckle down and take these recipes into consideration or consult my books: Herbal Remedy Gardens by Byers; The Herb Bible by McHoy and Westland; The New Guide to Herbs by Clevely, and my favorite (and newest): The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies by Apellan and Davis.

Besides, watching all the bees visit my many comfrey, yarrow, lavender, enchinacea, chamomile, mint (including agastache), sage, thyme, hyssop and evening primrose patches is my favorite thing in the world!!  I'm hardly halfway through getting my perennial herbs planted, though.

Great discussion! I’ve been using a simple comfrey leaf steeped and left in boiling vinegar to put on cuts lately and seeing excellent results.

I have one I buy from a local producer that is Calendula, Arnica, and Eucalyptus I don't use it on cuts and wounds--but it's amazing on sore muscles. As I mostly do heavy working only on Sundays--I pretty much need it every Monday!

Be careful using comfrey if it is a deep puncture type wound.  It knits so  fast, it can close the outside skin before the deeper healing occurs and if any bacteria is present, can cause a nasty infection.  

Heather Sharpe wrote:Mullein is great too. I've been working with it recently to help a friend's baby cow who has a gnarly injured knee. It pulled a huge gob of ick out and created so much relief and increased mobility. I'm still surprised. I think I'll be using mullein a lot more, since joint and muscle issues are something I'm frequently trying to address with salves and mullein works quite well for that.

I'm convinced that mullein saved my life last September.  I was in the hospital for a week with Pneumonia and the Flu.  I came within a hair of death.  I'm 70, so... I got home from the hospital, and still barely able to walk and lungs still having fluid, and had not eaten for 3 weeks (I blame that solely on Metformin!).  So I'm sitting in my recliner and I turn on YouTube.  On my recommendations bar are FIVE videos for mullein, and previously there had been none and I had not searched for anything on the subject.  I took that as a sign from God, so I watched one.  Then I went straight to my computer and ordered a lb of it off Amazon.  I made tea with it, and it helped, but it was a little slow kicking in and I was really having a hard time breathing, so I smoked some and within a minute my lungs were way better.  I had to do that several times; it was fairly harsh but the taste was not bad.  The main thing is that it helped me to breath so much better that I felt like I would not have made it without the mullein.  I stopped on the roadside and pulled about a dozen stalks late last fall.  The leaves were all dead but I just wanted the seeds.

Faye Streiff wrote:Be careful using comfrey if it is a deep puncture type wound.  It knits so  fast, it can close the outside skin before the deeper healing occurs and if any bacteria is present, can cause a nasty infection.

Yes, I've heard the same warning about comfrey use on deep punctures forming an abscess.  Great for surface wounds and abrasions, great for broken bones, but dangerous when applied to punctures.

Last year I remember running around identifying everything in my new yard after we moved and got settled in.
I set eyes on a familiar one I hadn’t known the name for: Plantain. Coincidentally I had just gotten stung by a mosquito and read it could be used for insect bites. Tried it out and worked so well I read up more on it and have made a olive oil, plantain, beeswax salve for over a year that we use on everything.

Wow, so many great combos to try here!
I'm in eastern Canada, but I took my herbal training in New Mexico. We made an all purpose wound salve there and I was introduced to Chaparral or creosote bush. We also used yarrow, walnut hulls, elderflower, wild bergamot and usnea (old man's beard). But I'm convinced that the salve's ability to fight infection has a lot to do with the Chaparral. It takes over large areas because nothing eats it and nothing infects it. It's anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral.... pretty much anti-everything! Coincidentally, I found myself standing in front of an enormous creosote bush at the Desert Botanical Gardens on the day I flew home from Phoenix and the smell of it can knock you over, but it's one of my all time favourites.

Matthew Nistico wrote:

Faye Streiff wrote:Be careful using comfrey if it is a deep puncture type wound.  It knits so  fast, it can close the outside skin before the deeper healing occurs and if any bacteria is present, can cause a nasty infection.

Yes, I've heard the same warning about comfrey use on deep punctures forming an abscess.  Great for surface wounds and abrasions, great for broken bones, but dangerous when applied to punctures.

Comfrey and yarrow both can have this action - I've experienced it with yarrow, a couple times, and no longer add either to my primary first aid salves. My goals being to first clean the wound well, then ensure there is no underlying infection, and last, to heal it up. An encapsulated infection is an itchy, often painful, thing, with possible fatal side effect, depending on the nature of the infection, whether (&where) the capsule ruptures, etc.

My go-to first aid salve is a double infusion each, of calendula and plantain, with the addition of St John's Wort oil, for pain, lavender essential oil for calming, and all its healing properties, and Frankincense for its antiseptic, antibiotic, antimicrobial, antifungal and increased (roughly double the normal rate) cell regeneration properties. I like a softer salve, for this use, so I do 1pt beeswax to 5pts infused oil.

I also use this salve with more beeswax, for things like lip balm, lotion bars, moisturizer, and even deoderant.

Hi!  This is a really interesting post, and I'd love to have a go, but I don't use beeswax.  Is there an alternative that would work please?

Very interesting thread. Thank you!

We have a lot of plantain in the yard. To infuse the oils do I use the leaves, the flower stalks, flowers? Do I have to dry them first or use fresh herbs?

Has anyone used Moringa oil in the place of other oils?

Helen Siddall-Butchers wrote:Hi!  This is a really interesting post, and I'd love to have a go, but I don't use beeswax.  Is there an alternative that would work please?

If I were making a salve and did not want to use an ingredient I would just make it without that ingredient to see how it would turn out.

If you do not want to use beeswax, use olive oil or coconut oil, or both, and see how it turns out.

Rachel Royce wrote:Very interesting thread. Thank you!

We have a lot of plantain in the yard. To infuse the oils do I use the leaves, the flower stalks, flowers? Do I have to dry them first or use fresh herbs?

My preference is to use the plantain leaves fresh, though I have not made a salve.

It will be interesting to see how others use the plantain leaves whether fresh or dry or the seed head.

Helen Siddall-Butchers wrote:Hi!  This is a really interesting post, and I'd love to have a go, but I don't use beeswax.  Is there an alternative that would work please?

Shea butter

Helen Siddall-Butchers wrote:Hi!  This is a really interesting post, and I'd love to have a go, but I don't use beeswax.  Is there an alternative that would work please?

Shea butter, mango butter, carnauba... Shea & mango are a bit softer, so you may need to use a bit more, for a firmer salve, and carnauba is harder, so you'll use a bit less.

Dr. Nicole Apelian uses: cottonwood buds, yarrow, plantain, calendula flower, arnica flower, and lavender essential oil. The base oil is organic olive oil. She uses a slow heat infusion method.  beeswax is added on a 1 part beeswax, 4 parts oil extract recipe when the infusing is over.

I've made some at home which I added chickweed to, and I rather like it. Everything from bee stings, scrapes, to bruised ribs and belly cream (I'm pregnant, haha!) I feel it's really spot-on for a recipe!

Rick Rogoski wrote:Has anyone used Moringa oil in the place of other oils?

Any carrier oil can be used. I prefer hazelnut, because it is incredibly close to the oils or bodies produce, so I find it more soothing, and minus the wax, it soaks into my skin better than the other oils I've tried, and it is a pretty stable oil, with a long shelf life.

One other note - in making infused oils, as mentioned above (I think by Heather Sharpe), dried herbs increase the shelf life of the oil. This is good information, and the reason I use dried, almost exclusively, with the exception of St John's Wort. That herb, dried is wasted, in an oil infusion. For the maximum potency, St John's Wort is best infused at its peak of freshness. You'll know a good St John's Wort oil by its deep red color. I currently have no access to fresh SJW, so I buy it, and mix it with my home infused oils before determining my wax amount.

So, my folk method steps: using dried calendula, fill a jar (big enough to hold the amount I want to make) halfway with dried calendula, just so I know how much to use. Then, I dump it into the blender, and powder it, then back to the jar, where I'll at a little alcohol to moisten the powdered herbs, seal the jar, and set it in a sunny window or outside, for a day, to help the herbs release as much of their potency as possible (many herbs are water or alcohol soluble, not just oil soluble, and you get more from them, with this extra step). The next day, I
fill the jar the rest of the way with oil, and heat-infuse that, at about 110 - 125°F, in the sous vide (you could use a dehydrator, oven, yogurt maker, etc) for a few hours, then remove it, to cool for an hour, then back in. I repeat the heat/ cool cycle a few times, then leave it in the sous vide overnight. In the meantime, I powder another batch of the herbs & alcohol. When the oil comes out of the sous vide, I line a press-type potato ricer with good cheesecloth, and use it as a sieve, to strain the oil, then fold in the cloth, and press all the oil out, that I can.
Then, I do the same with the 2nd batch, prepping the plantain for its turn. So that by the time I'm done, my same oil has been double infused with each of those two herbs, over the course of 4 days. Because I use it as a base for all my salves, and it's such a long process, I try to only do it once a year, and I typically do 2 full processes at once. I don't add anything else, until I know which specific salve, lotion, lotion bar, cream, or soap is needed.

In the most basic healing salve, it's just 5 parts ( I always measure by weight, not volume) of this double-double infused oil and 1 part beeswax. If the beeswax can't be used, I use 4 parts of the oil and 1 part mango or shea butter. If a very potent salve is needed, I'll add the other ingredients I mentioned, above. I keep both types in my medicine cabinet, as well as a drawing salve, with this oil as my base. The drawing salve is equal parts activated charcoal, bentonite clay, and the oil, with just enough beeswax to make it thick and sticky/gooey - sorry, I just play that by ear.

Anne Miller wrote:

My preference is to use the plantain leaves fresh, though I have not made a salve.

This is an incredibly powerful poultice, and if there's fresh plantain available, this is my first aid preference, too. If I'm out, and a scrape, bite, sting, minor cut, rash, etc happens, some of the best immediate medicine I can think of is to chew up a piece of plantain, and put it on the affected area.

Anne Miller wrote:

Rachel Royce wrote:Very interesting thread. Thank you!

We have a lot of plantain in the yard. To infuse the oils do I use the leaves, the flower stalks, flowers? Do I have to dry them first or use fresh herbs?

My preference is to use the plantain leaves fresh, though I have not made a salve.

It will be interesting to see how others use the plantain leaves whether fresh or dry or the seed head.

We’ve been using the leaves. We have 1 plant outside our door that this year has produced leaves larger than my hand!
For the salve we dry it out in a mesh bag for a few days. then crumble it up into the olive oil. This year we just set the jars on the stove as we baked and cooked. Just did a full day of baking random stuff before it got too hot outside. Recipe we found said to put it into a double boiler setting(like jars in a crockpot of water) and set it to keep warm for a few hours.

Working on making a salve now.

Infusing in a double boiler I have

Dried dandelion leaves and fresh flowers, fresh pineapple weed.  
Dried sage, lavender, bee balm leaves, thyme, plantain

The oil has turned very green.

I'll add a bit of tea tree oil too after it's done. It's far from 'ideal' and I think the herb growth is so fresh they won't have the potency of later in the season, but it's what I have growing this early, and I have a ton of little infected or red spots I'd like to try something on.
I wanted to use dandelion since my calendula is a long way from blooming, and I had to wait a bit for it to bloom again. Who would have thought I'd be desperate for dandelions?!  Both the dandelion and pineapple weed are supposed to be 'soothing', the others are supposed to be antibacterial, antiviral, and/or antifungal.


Will try to update and say if it's effective! And likely make a supply of some with the herbs people recommended, later in the season, when things are more mature and begin blooming.

I make calendula salve with just calendula and rendered beef tallow.  I use Sepp Holzer's guidance in his permaculture book and use the whole plant:  leaves, roots, flowers.  It's very easy to make and works wonderfully on minor wounds.  Plus for me it's free (I get the beef fat free and I grow my own calendula).

Helen Siddall-Butchers wrote:Hi!  This is a really interesting post, and I'd love to have a go, but I don't use beeswax.  Is there an alternative that would work please?

Shea butter and cocoa butter work well.  When you are in the final stage of salve making, take a dollop and put it on a plate in the freezer for a couple minutes to check that you have the desired consistency (just like with jelly making). I imagine the lack of beeswax would make a softer salve. I use 50/50 beeswax and cocoa butter normally.

Umi Saudade wrote:

Helen Siddall-Butchers wrote:Hi!  This is a really interesting post, and I'd love to have a go, but I don't use beeswax.  Is there an alternative that would work please?

Shea butter and cocoa butter work well.  When you are in the final stage of salve making, take a dollop and put it on a plate in the freezer for a couple minutes to check that you have the desired consistency (just like with jelly making). I imagine the lack of beeswax would make a softer salve. I use 50/50 beeswax and cocoa butter normally.

Thank you Umi, I'll give that a go!

Hi Catie, how did your salve turn out? I enjoyed reading these recipes! I usually stick to making infused oils, calendula and St. John's wort, but I'm planning to make salve for gifts this year as my garden grows in size. My favorite herbs in salves are: goldenseal or any berberine plant for soothing eczema, lavendar for burns, St. John's wort for viral rashes and sores, calendula for scabs, cosmetic grade sulfur (not an herb though) for acne, oregano/marjoram/thyme for fungus, yarrow for bacteria, and sage for oldness. (I think yarrow makes the best medicine when it is really unhappy, growing in rocky exposed ground.) But I wouldn't put everything in one all-in-one salve, as many of those things would work against each other. The most important thing for us has been quality--freshly dried herbs strongly and even doubly infused. It's hard to find any more, another reason I'm planning to make my own.

For your strong orange salve, I have heard that you can get an orange color out of usnea. The other possibility for orange, besides calendula, is rose hips, which are said to promote collagen linkages.