Making your own herbal tinctures and infused oils at home is so easy I can’t believe I never made them until now! With a few basic tips, you can start making your own infused oils and tinctures to use in your home crafting or herbal medicine chest.
After our little nugget was born, another mama in town gave me the book Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year
by Susan S. Weed. I highly recommend this book to any mama or mama to be. What I am currently finding most intriguing is the chapter on “Herbal Pharmacy”. There are specific instructions on how to harvest/store your own herbs, make syrups/oils/tinctures/teas/ointments and it looks to be easier than I ever imagined!
by Susan S. Weed. I highly recommend this book to any mama or mama to be. What I am currently finding most intriguing is the chapter on “Herbal Pharmacy”. There are specific instructions on how to harvest/store your own herbs, make syrups/oils/tinctures/teas/ointments and it looks to be easier than I ever imagined!As I started harvesting flowers and herbs from our gardens, I decided that it was the perfect time to finally start experimenting with using them to make herbal creations.
My first experiment is making lavender infused oil. The lavender needs to sit in the oil (I used olive oil which Susan recommends in the book) for six weeks. It has been sitting on a shelf in our living room for about two weeks now, I occasionally take the lid off the glass jar to take a sniff and see how it is coming along. A few more weeks and it will be finished!
After we picked huckleberries earlier this week, I was able to find Arnica still blooming at the top of the mountain. I harvested as much as I could find that was still in bloom which was tough since a lot of it had already gone to seed. When we got home, I started a new jar of oil for the arnica infused oil and sat it on the shelf next to the lavender oil.
I am also planning to make calendula infused oil as the next round of flower blooms start to open. It is so easy to make, I’m starting to look at other flowers and herbs in my gardens and ones I find in the woods when we’re out adventuring to see what else I can make an infused oil out of.
This week I also tried making my first herbal tincture to treat migraines with herbs from my garden. Since I was a teenager, I occasionally get some pretty nasty migraines and have been trying to figure out what causes them and how to best treat them for years. I tried acupuncture a few years ago and it was amazing, but it was unbelievably expensive so I wasn’t able to go very often and definitely can’t afford it now.
Last week I read a post on how to make an herbal tincture to treat migraines. When I read how to do it, I was amazed at how simple it seemed and was even more amazed that I grow both lemon balm and feverfew in my gardens!
So I headed out to my gardens, harvested a bunch of lemon balm and feverfew and created my first tincture. This one also needs to sit for about six weeks. This is really going to be a good test of my patience! I can’t wait to try the tincture to see if it works so stay tuned….
Like this? Please share it! 
Love tintures! Great, cheap preventive medicine! I am so excited to have found your blog
Ohhh. I totally forgot! Love Susan Weed and that book. I still use it and my kids are 2.5 and 3.5