Glorious Green Greetings to All

The apprentices and I have harvested the last of the nettles to dry. What we haven’t gotten to will go to seed, and we will harvest those seeds this autumn. Except for those we will continue to harvest throughout the summer to make nettle rot fertilizer to feed the garden plants.

Now that nettle gathering is complete, we can devote ourselves more herbs ready to harvest: prickly flowering comfrey stalks and picky red clover blossoms. The students at the Great Remedies class last weekend helped us pick a big basket full of perfect red clover blossoms. Many hands make the work go quickly. Thank you!

A wild wind blew through last week and shook all the mulberries from the mulberry trees. The apprentices picked them up and started a mulberry wine. Then we went out and picked elder blossoms so we could make elder flower champagne and elder flower tincture.

Speaking of which, both elder and mullein told me they are irked at me for not including them in the Great Remedies class. (We talked about nettle, red clover, comfrey, linden, oatstraw, plantain, yarrow, and motherwort.)

“But the students can only learn so much in one day,” I protested. “After we cut young nettle from the soup patch, harvested shiitake (thanks Sean) from the shiitake logs, added both to boiling water, and dropped in some dried astragalus root to make ourselves a delicious soup. And after we harvested and made a salad of sheep sorrel, wood sorrel, yellow dock leaves, lamb’s quarter, creeping jenny, self-heal, five-finger ivy, mallow leaves, wild oregano, plantain, and clover blossoms.

And after we harvested nettle and hung it to dry; and harvested comfrey and hung it to dry. And harvested yarrow flowers and made a tincture. And then harvested flowering motherwort and made a tincture. Well, I had intended to include you both, but there just wasn’t enough time.” (They are still annoyed. Burdock and yellow dock are content to wait until autumn, when they star in the Digging Roots class late this fall.)

This week I bring you the sour herbs of summer. Get ready to make friends with some tarts in the true sense of the word.

Green blessings
Susun

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