Joy Oasis

Not the most used tool, but something, that is not for the intended purpose. I make stinky comfrey compost tea in a bucket, and water it out each time I water my garden. My garden is in the community garden plot, not near the place I live, so I have to go straight from there to work, and that smell can linger for a while on the hands, which was a problem. I got water dipper -large cup with a long handle, which is used for the bath in Japanese households. Got it in Daiso, Japanese $1.50 store, and it solved that problem nicely.

If recipe says so, they must be safe to eat. If you decided to eat them, let us now, how did it go.

I make our laundry soap with washing soda, liquid castille soap, and baking soda. For two large commercial detergent bottles I use 1 cup of washing soda, one cup of castile soap, and half cup of baking soda. The rest is water. I used hot to disolve washing soda, then add other ingredients, pour evenly between the containers and add more water to fill up. THat lasts us several months, has no smell, if non scented castille soap is chosen. But if you really want fresh smell, nothing beats laundry dried outside in the breeze.

Very cool. It would make a thicker coat than knitting. From my limited experience with food stuff dyeing, color fades quickly in the sun. But it can be redyed really easily too.

Daniel Gélin wrote:I'm not fond of using sugar and worry that it might reduce the efficiency of the herbs.  Would it work with honey?
I am asking because I would love to try too.
Good luck with your herbal medicine!

Thank you. Honey would work very well as it would bring its own cultures. However good honey is expensive, and sugar will be changed, and there will be barely any left in the finished vinegar. I use organic sugar, and you do not need that much to begin with. If you would have access to inexpensive good honey I would make mead, and then use it to infuse herbs for tinctures.

 Wow! Thank you for all the info. So I made my parsley vinegar, and it tastes sour just like vinegar with interesting parsley derived taste. I drank it with water (just like ACV -tablespoon in a glass of water), and feel that it was beneficial at least like vinegar is. I left some out and it is not going bad. Anyway, I use it in my salads and if I feel I need a pick up I use in water.
 To see, if it works as tincture, I would need to use it for the pain or somehting substancial/easily defined. I am familiar with tinctures made with strong alcohol. However, most of alcohol is made with gmo ingredients, which I rather not mess with. Organic alcohol not just very expensive, but not locally available, which means shipping would add to already high price. I am going to experiment with homemade wine as well. Heidi from Rain Country experimented with her made wine for tinctures and said it worked well, but she needed 2-3 times more. She tested it for the pain tincture made with nasturtium leaves.

 I agree, with many of above answers. I try new things all the time. But unless I plan to help others to learn it, I don't have much motivation to document it, take time to take photos, etc. And my small garden is a community garden plot - 17 by 17 feet, where I do mulch and chop and drop, and make a bucket of comfrey tea, etc.
 Plus it reminds me of scout and military badges, which I have strong dislike to. While scouts and solders learn valuable things too, they get trained into rigid obey (and forget your own conscience and intuitive hunches) mindset, that is not attractive to me to say the least.

I think you can buy ph strips to measure the ph or just add a bit more sugar after 1 month to make it stronger. hopefully that wouldn't make it too strong.

So I started making my own vinegars, because I learned how easy it is from Rain Country channel, and now I am wondering -instead of using ready made vinegar to steep herbs in to make herbal vinegar tincture, why can't I just use herbs themselves and a bit of sugar to make them from scratch? Vinegar is made from plant material, filtered water, and sugar, so why not to use plant material or materials I want at once. Unless of course bacteria damages the healing properties in some way? Usually though it makes them more available, and in some cases make new vitamins such as vitamin K2 in natto, sauerkraut, and other ferments.
 What do you think? I am trying now with parsley.

I think it depends on the cause. My son has autism, and he never slept good as a baby, toddler, and even up to until half year ago until we started taking melatonin, and good amount of it (he is almost 17 now). It turns out people with autism and attention deficit disorder do not make enough melatonin. I wish I would have known it, when he was a baby. Melatonin is very safe, and studies with animals, that wanted to see, what is the toxic dose, found that animals taking large doses lived longer instead of getting poisoned. That said, people when they reach puberty naturally reduce melatonin for a while to allow maturation to happen. Also very large doses such as 75mg or more a day is used as contraceptive, so if one wants to have children, do not use a lot. Melatonin is also veryprotective against radiation, so it is great to take before and after xrays, and now daily because of WIFI and cell signal radiation.
 For me personally, I find, that I get best results for sleep, if I take both - melatonin and some sleep herb in tincture, powder, or tea form -passion flower, kava kava, valerian, triphala combo (that has haritaki -sleep herb). For my son melatonin doesn't kick in until at least an hour, but stays in his body until morning. For me it kicks in almost immediately, but doesn't stay long. So I have it near the bed, and if I wake up, I take a bit more. I use pure powder without fillers. study  showed, that people metabolize it very differently to the point, that it can be 300 percent difference, which means some people need much more to get the same effect.