Herbs In Every Season May 15, 2025
Kenny Coogan: [00:00:00] I purposefully grew a white dandelion and a pink dandelion. Both are native to Japan, but I’m a lazy gardener and I wanted something prolific and something that was very good for me. They’re not weedy like the yellow one, but with a little bit of cultivation, you can really propagate ’em. Can you tell us about the medicinal benefits of dandelions?
Bevin Cohen: I’m glad that you brought up the dandelion because I think it illustrates such an important point is, being a “weed” quote unquote, that we’re gonna find basically everywhere that we go.
It is such a useful plant from the top of the flower to the bottom of the root, every part of the dandelion is useful. Of course as a food stuff, most certainly the leaves of the dandelion, although quite bitter are very nutritious and can be utilized in foods. Young leaves can be used in the salads as a bitter green. They could be cooked and enjoyed that way. Bitter herbs really help stimulate the digestive system. Which is why [00:01:00] traditionally you’d often see bitter herbs offered at the end of a meal to help stimulate and move the digestive system along to help with your meal. So that’s really nice that way. The flowers, of course we can use them in teas and that sort of thing, but we most commonly at Small House Farm will actually use dandelion flowers, will dry them, infuse them in oil, and create a topical salve. And this topical salve is fantastic for dry, itchy, red rashy skin. It’s very soothing. It’s very soft. It’s really nice as a topical product, but I think that it’s the root that is the most powerful part of the plant. The dandelion root we’ll harvest that in the early spring is a nice time to do it, or later in the fall when the plant is dormant, when it’s stored, most of its energy down in the root system is when it’s gonna be the most potent, and we’ll gather that root up and we can dry it. And I like to make it into a tincture. So this is an alcohol extract and a dandelion tincture is one of the most powerful herbs for stimulating and nourishing the liver and the gallbladder.
Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends [00:02:00] podcast. At Mother Earth News, for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast we host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Kenny Coogan: Good day everyone. I am Kenny Coogan, and joining me on this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends is Bevin Cohen. Bevin is an award-winning author, herbalist, owner of the Small House Farm, and host of the Popular Seeds and Weeds podcast, Bevin’s newest book, Herbs in Every Season: 48 Edible and Medicinal Herbs for the Kitchen, Garden and Apothecary is available now.
Welcome back [00:03:00] to the podcast, Bevin.
Bevin Cohen: Hey, Kenny. It’s good to see you, man. Thanks for having me.
What is an Herb? What is a botanical herb?
Kenny Coogan: We’re excited to have you in your new book, Herbs in Every Season, you highlight 48 edible plants, and some of them do not fit the strict botanical definition of an herb. So let’s start there. What is an herb? What is a botanical herb?
And if the plants in your book are neither of those, what are they?
Bevin Cohen: Sure. Yeah, botanically speaking, an herb would be a seed to bearing plant that does not produce a woody stem that dies back at the end of the year after flowering. I think that’s would be the definition of there of that.
And we, you’re right, many of the plants in the book do not fit that definition at all. But some of our more common quote unquote, “herbs” don’t fit that definition either. If we think of plants like thyme and rosemary, that most of us would certainly consider herbs botanically speaking, they’re not. So in this way we’re using a more, a loose [00:04:00] definition of the word herb.
So these are plants that bring flavor spice and excitement to your life. So we’re talking about botanical herbs, most certainly. We’re talking about woody stem plants. We talk about a couple of trees in the book. We even talk about mushrooms, so we really cover the gamut. And mushroom is not even technically a plant, right?
But I didn’t want to exclude any of my favorite plants when we were working on this book. So everything, just for the sake of this this book we put everything under the umbrella of herbs to make it so the reader would understand what we were talking about. But we didn’t wanna leave out any of those awesome plants, so we put ’em all in there.
Why is Seasonal Herbalism Important?
Kenny Coogan: Very good. Now, this is also a little bit in your title, so why do you believe that seasonal herbalism is important?
Bevin Cohen: I think it’s critically important as part of being an herbalist or a gardener or a homesteader or whatever it is that was bringing folks to this book. Is this relationship with the natural world.
And that’s really the premise of the book. That’s really the [00:05:00] message I’m trying to get across here is helping people develop that relationship with nature, with the plant kingdom. And we do that through seasonal observation, right? Understanding lifecycle of these plants from seed all the way through the new seeds that they produce at the end of the year.
We also explore the seasons of our lives, right? The seasons of the year, the seasons of our lives, the seasons we experience as people. I think that’s very important. So what we’ve done is we’ve broken down this book into four seasons, and I started with Spring. For me, that’s where I feel the seasons will kick off is with Spring and we explore the herbs that are available to us in that season, but also the needs that we have as people throughout the seasons, and we can see that as our needs change throughout the year, the plants available to us also change. Or the parts of the plants that we’re looking for are going to change. And it’s really interesting to take the time to observe how related we are.
Our cycles are related to the cycles of the plants, and we just really wanted to explore that. In a [00:06:00] way to hope, hopefully, like I said, get people out there to observe nature in a different way. Whatever we gotta do to get people outside and exploring nature in some way, that’s the ultimate goal. And I thought that through the lens of the seasons was a really fun way to do that.
Medicinal Benefits of Danelions
Kenny Coogan: Since we’re recording this podcast in the spring and your book begins with the spring, like you mentioned, dandelions are ubiquitous in the environment, but also prominent place in herbal medicine. I was thinking this morning that I purposefully grew a white dandelion and a pink dandelion. Both are native to Japan, but I’m a lazy gardener and I wanted something prolific and something that was very good for me and something that could self seed.
And these two non-native dandelions I’m mentioning they’re not weedy like the yellow one, but with a little bit of cultivation, you can really propagate ’em. [00:07:00] So can you tell us about the medicinal benefits of all the different types of dandelions?
Bevin Cohen: I’m glad that you brought up the dandelion because I think it illustrates such an important point is, being a “weed” quote unquote, that we’re gonna find basically everywhere that we go.
It is such a useful plant from the top of the flower to the bottom of the root, every part of the dandelion is useful. Of course as a food stuff, most certainly the leaves of the dandelion, although quite bitter are very nutritious and can be utilized in foods. Young leaves can be used in the salads as a bitter green. They could be cooked and enjoyed that way. Bitter herbs really help stimulate the digestive system. Which is why traditionally you’d often see bitter herbs offered at the end of a meal to help stimulate and move the digestive system along to help with your meal. So that’s really nice that way. The flowers, of course we can use them in teas and that sort of thing, but we most commonly at Small House Farm will actually use dandelion flowers, will dry them, infuse them in oil, and create a topical salve. And this topical salve is fantastic for dry, [00:08:00] itchy, red rashy skin. It’s very soothing. It’s very soft. It’s really nice as a topical product, but I think that it’s the root that is the most powerful part of the plant. The dandelion root we’ll harvest that in the early spring is a nice time to do it, or later in the fall when the plant is dormant, when it’s stored, most of its energy down in the root system is when it’s gonna be the most potent, and we’ll gather that root up and we can dry it. And I like to make it into a tincture. So this is an alcohol extract and a dandelion tincture is one of the most powerful herbs for stimulating and nourishing the liver and the gallbladder. Those are the two organs that process many of the toxins that we encounter throughout the day. So this is a really wonderful way to take care of your body, right? Taking care of the organs that have to process all these toxins, just to strengthen them and nourish them, is overall gonna help all of our systems function better. So it’s a very powerful herb, but you can also just roast the dandelion roots in the oven to toast them up a little bit and make a really nice coffee alternative.
We have some recipes in the book where we’ve [00:09:00] taken some toasted roots and made variations of a chai tea very tasty. Really enjoyable. So we really try to cover the fact that these herbs are medicinal, but they also have many culinary applications as well. We really want to utilize all of the parts of the plants for so many different things.
Kenny Coogan: I rented a camper van and I traveled around Iceland for 10 or 12 days many years ago, and we had to bring our own food. And they had the largest dandelions I have ever seen the greens each leaf was probably 12 inches or larger, and we would make sandwiches and then we would harvest the dandelion greens and just add ’em to our store-bought sandwiches.
Bevin Cohen: That sounds delicious. Absolutely. That’s a great way to use the plant, and that’s very simple, it doesn’t even take a lot of preparation. Just gather up the leaves, wash ’em if they need it, and they’re ready to go.
Herbs as Medicine
Kenny Coogan: So each herb section in your book is further separated with headings like for the apothecary [00:10:00] in the kitchen and growing and gathering.
And there’s a fine line between what designates a food stuff for the apothecary versus the kitchen use, which you alluded to. So where does one, or where do you find evidence that some of these herbs are medicinal? Compared to just edible. Are you basing this off of indigenous cultures? Is it modern day scientists?
I’m assuming some other cultures blur the line even more than what we think of as what we’re ingesting is actually medicine and not just food.
Bevin Cohen: Sure. So I think that there’s a couple of answers here we can unpack a lot of different stuff. Kenny, so first off, let’s talk about food as medicine. Right?
I think that’s an important thing to consider. When Timber Press approached me about writing this book, they originally wanted me to write a strictly herbal medicinal, that’s what they were looking for. [00:11:00] Let’s talk, let’s get a book together about medicinal herbs in the way that we can use them. That’s great, but I’ve already written a book like that, right?
The Artist and Herbalist. So I thought let’s explore this a little bit deeper. As a person who, whose life is filled with herbs, I’m, I, herbs are a big part of my everyday life. I don’t separate these two things. I don’t separate culinary herbs and medicinal herbs. In reality, both of those things are happening in my day-to-day life, right?
I’m eating herbs and I’m making medicine from these herbs. So I really wanted to lean into that book, was to understand to, to help the reader understand that to live an herbal life, to live a life abundant of herbs is to do both. Is to enjoy it in the kitchen and to enjoy it in the apothecary.
Now, I think that if we were trying to define the difference between these two things, I think simply herbs in the apothecary. Medicinal preparations are going to be more potent. They’re gonna involve more herbs in the recipes. They’re gonna be more potent extracts. And they’re gonna be [00:12:00] utilized in different dosages because of the medicinal qualities.
Whereas if we’re using herbs from a culinary standpoint, we’re probably just doing it for the flavor enhancing and we’re gonna be using less of the plants. Now to get to your part of the question about the evidence of why, of how herbs are medicinal. There’s a ton of evidence available to us.
We could look at indigenous uses. Indigenous populations here in North America and in everywhere else in the world have utilized plants as food and medicine for thousands of years. And they did that. I. Not necessarily through scientific experimentation, but just through trial and error perhaps.
But what we know is that for thousands of years, people have utilized plants for very specific things and they’ve done it successfully. So we can look at that as an example to guide us through our herbal journey. But there is an incredible amount of scientific literature available to us as now we’ve gotten into these plants and we’ve, we found the different compounds and constituents that are available in each one of these plants, and we understand how the body reacts to them.
So there’s a lot of science behind that as well. What [00:13:00] we find is that the scientific community is really just catching up to indigenous knowledge. They’re quote unquote now will say, “proving” what indigenous people have known for a very long time about why these plants work for these certain things.
A great example of course, that I like to use is wintergreen leaf. Wintergreen leaf indigenous people of North America utilized for pain relief for, again, possibly thousands of years. But science now has gotten in there to see, oh, there’s a compound in the wintergreen leaf called methyl salicylate, which is very similar to the compound that we use to make aspirin.
So the science proves that this indigenous use. It’s true and it works. And there’s also of course, the anecdotal evidence that we can find. You eat too much spicy food. You go to an Indian restaurant and you overindulge, you eat too much spicy food. On your way out, you’ll see there’s a little dish of fennel seeds, right?
Kenny Coogan: That was me on Monday.
Bevin Cohen: Yeah, and you eat some of those fennel seeds, and I’m telling you what, it helps with the indigestion that comes. That’s why that they’re there. So even just using the herbs and saying, oh, this worked for me as well. It worked for indigenous people for a thousand years.
[00:14:00] Scientists say it’s going to work. I tried it. It worked for me. So that’s the beauty of herbs is it’s a universal truth. Wherever we find ourselves in the timeline, people have been using these plants for these same things for so long.
Kenny Coogan: I think I’ve heard somebody once say what do doctors call traditional, ancient herbal medicine? They call it medicine because if it works, then it’s medicine.
Bevin Cohen: Exactly right. You got it.
Kenny Coogan: So in your book, like we mentioned, four chapters based off of each of the seasons. And then each season has 12 herbs and that is how you get to the number 48. And we’re gonna be sticking with spring just for a little bit longer.
What is another herb that is common in the spring that listeners can maybe start utilizing that’s, as benign as dandelion, something that they’re familiar with.
Benefits of Stinging Nettles
Bevin Cohen: I think many of your listeners might be familiar with stinging nettles [00:15:00] Urtica dioica. And this is a plant that grows often near, near water in, in lower grounds, near rivers.
It seems to prefer the shade of the forest. And your listeners would know it mostly if they’ve ever brushed up against it ’cause that’s how it gets its name stinging is it definitely leaves some irritation behind some redness some itching, some swelling for some folks even. And what this is it’s actually formic acid and histamines that are into these little trichomes along the leaf and the stem of the plant. It’s part of the plant’s defense mechanism. Once you’ve worked with the plant enough, you come to, to kinda like it. You get a use to it. It’s an invigorating spring tradition to go and harvest the nettles now for sure. And this is the plant that I, if your listeners aren’t familiar with it, I would love for them to get more familiar with it because it’s such an awesome plant. Again, this is a plant that almost every part of it is useful for something. All right first as a young green. It is delicious and edible once you heat it or dry the leaf, it dissipates. The formic acid makes it safe to consume. It is one of the most nutritious wild plants. It is chocked full of minerals and [00:16:00] micronutrients. It’s absolutely fantastic. So you can cook it up and use it as a green. You could also harvest the plant and use it topically. It’s anti-inflammatory. It’s fantastic for stimulating blood flow. Opens up the capillaries. It’s good for for joint pain, inflammation, arthritis, that sort of thing. Really useful. As a topical plant, the stem of the plant can be used to make cordage so we can make ropes and things out of the nettles plant.
It is a fantastic spring Herb. It’s one of the plants when we began our herbal journey many moons ago, it was one of the first plants that we were lucky enough to work with. There’s a big patch of it that grows on the edge of the forest where I grew up, and the plant that I’ve been connected with for a very long time.
So I do have a sentimental connection to it most certainly. But even for somebody who’s totally new to herbs, this is a plant that you should get to know. It’s fantastic for allergies. It’s great for folks that are low in iron.
Kenny Coogan: They grow pretty easily. I don’t think they’re great at being transplanted, but I did have a friend once bring me over, like a [00:17:00] little two inch seedling. I nurtured it. It turned into a huge bush. Then I made tea out of it, and people thought I was crazy because they’re pretty prolific. Once you find them, usually you don’t need to nurture them.
Bevin Cohen: No, they will get going. They will spread on their own. We actually brought in some straw from a farmer down the way to mulch in our garden and it had a little bit of nettles in it apparently. And it was quite a battle to get it out of the garden, for sure.
Planntain Herb Use and Benefits
Kenny Coogan: So summer is also approaching and we’re about to experience the long days and big rewards in the season of abundance as you write in your book. What are one or two of your favorite herbs that you can find during the summertime and grow and gather them and use them?
Bevin Cohen: I’ve got a couple here that I think would be great choices. Of course plantain would be the first. And plantain is an herb that I would assume your listeners are quite familiar with.
It is again yard weed that is absolutely everywhere. It’s such a, a [00:18:00] hardy plant, you’ll find it growing through the cracks and the sidewalks. It’s all over the place, but it’s anti-inflammatory so most people know it. You can chew up the plantain leaf and you can put it on bug bites and that sort of thing.
Bees stings, and it helps with the swelling and itching and pain associated with that. It also has a compound in it called alloid, which helps skin cells repair themselves at a faster rate. So it’s great on cuts and scratches and bruises and abrasions. We use it in a topical salve, but it’s also edible especially the young tender leaves are delicious, but even the older leaves can be used in the book. We actually make a recipe where we supplement the plantain leaf instead of a grape leaf and roll make gr stuffed grape leaves with it. So that’s pretty tasty for sure. Even the seeds of the plant are edible and delicious. So that’s a plant that’s right underneath our feet, everywhere that we go. So that’s why I’m like, oh gosh, everybody should know this plant and really get to know it. You’re aware of it, but get to know it because it can offer us so many things. And that’s a plant you don’t even have to have a garden. That’s kinda the cool thing. So the growing and gathering section, some of these are cultivated herbs, but [00:19:00] some of ’em are wild plants, and I want people to be aware of the abundance of nature right at our fingertips everywhere that we go.
Benefits of Lemon Balm
Bevin Cohen: Another great summer plant that I like to talk about is lemon balm, Melissa officinalis. Lemon Balm is a plant that just brings joy. It’s just such a happy plant. I’ve never seen anybody smell lemon balm and not smile immediately. It’s just such an awesome little plant, and it is great for any number of things. It’s antiviral. So it could be used medicinally in, in teaser tinctures that way.
It also it’s very calming. It’s it really helps relieve anxiety. It’s a nice, peaceful, happy plant. So in the book we’ve got a recipe where we’ve combined the lemon balm with tulsi, holy basil, and peppermint and made it into a tincture which is a really nice way to, to utilize herbs on the go. They’re very potent extracts, so you don’t need a lot of it. And it’s a really nice way, just a few drops of that. If you’re feeling on edge, feeling a little stressed out or whatever. A little bit of lemon bombs gonna help bring you down, help you balance out. Really nice plan. And then again with its nice lemon [00:20:00] flavor. It’s a wonderful culinary herb, we’ve used it in a number of different recipes. We’ve got a stuffing with shiitake mushrooms and lemon balm that we made that’s in the book. And gosh, you could just make a nice lemonade style drink with it. It’s an herb that can do so many things for us, and boy is it easy to grow. It’s in the mint family. Once you get some lemon balm in your garden, you got lemon balm for life.
Kenny Coogan: Yep. You just keep propagating it.
Bevin Cohen: Yeah, for sure. I got a patch out here. I was just talking to somebody about it yesterday, and it has grown.
The patch has gotten bigger. I’ve taken cuttings and moved them to other places, but that initial patch, I’ve had that for 10 years. 10 years. I, it’s been growing there, and I don’t really like, all I do is thin it out every once in a while. I don’t really care for or take care of it.
But it sure takes care of me. It really does.
Kenny Coogan: When you were talking about the holy basil and the lemon balm, I was thinking that sometimes people have trouble getting them to grow and the more you harvest and the more you cut from them, the bushier they get and the more prolific they become, which might be [00:21:00] counterintuitive.
Bevin Cohen: You could even think about it like the more you shave, the thicker your beard’s gonna get or whatever it might be, it’s the same thing. You’re right. The more you cut these plants, the more you work with them, they will continue to grow and branch and get bushier. So yeah, and sometimes for somebody that may be new to harvesting herbs or whatever, you might be anxious about that and you’re like, oh, let it grow or whatever.
But no, get in there and chop some out of it and get. Get a chance to work with the plant, get to know it, and then see how it reacts to you harvesting it nine times outta 10. It’s gonna react positively. It really does enjoy that. So don’t ever be afraid. That’s another thing I try to touch on in the book quite often is herbs are so forgiving.
They really, they’re so perfect for beginner gardeners or anything. Just get in there and try it and do it. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes is how you learn, right? So just get out there and try new things and experiment in the garden and work with these plants and have fun. Life is short.
You only got so many seasons out there in that garden, so make the most of them.
Kenny Coogan: We are going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor, and when we return, we’ll be focusing on [00:22:00] preparing herbal products and medicines.
Kenny Coogan: We are back with Bevin Cohen, who’s new book Herbs in Every season, 48 Edible and Medicinal Herbs for your Kitchen, Garden, and Apothecary is available now. The book is filled with beautiful, colorful photographs and the layout is very easy to use, allowing the reader to go to specific plants and use it as a reference for what they need and when they need it. So Bevin, in your book, you have several common types and methods of herbal products and medicines that readers can make throughout the book.
And one method are capsules. And when I was a 12-year-old, I volunteered at the local aquarium and my job was to make all the capsules for the penguins, and I would make a hundred capsules at a time. And this is still to this day might have been one of my favorite [00:23:00] activities, knowing I was giving those penguins, they’re essential vitamins and minerals.
Benefits of Capsules
Kenny Coogan: So making capsules are very easy for humans. Where do you buy the capsules or the capsule container that you fill with the herbs and. Why should listeners be using capsules? What are the benefits of this type of ingestion?
Bevin Cohen: Sure. I don’t necessarily wanna plug any necessary suppliers or whatever, but there are a number of online sources for these types of products.
If you Google them if you search for them online, you’ll be able to find them, I guess I’ll say, so
Kenny Coogan: what? It’s a common thing. It’s not like it’s, oh my gosh.
Bevin Cohen: Very common. You can get ’em all over the place. There’s some great reputable herbs, suppliers. Anybody that’s selling a reputable company, selling herbs online is gonna be able to supply these.
If you have a co-op grocery store near you, they probably sell some sort of bulk herbs. They might already have capsules. If not, you can ask them, they’ll get them in for you. It’s very easy to find these things. Do they
Kenny Coogan: come in like a top and a bottom? Are they [00:24:00] already together? And you have to put ’em apart?
So
Bevin Cohen: both. It depends on where you get ’em from. I’ve seen ’em both ways where they come together and you gotta take ’em apart. Some of them come with the tops and the bottoms separate. Separates obviously gonna be easier for you ’cause that’s a whole step you can skip. Most certainly. I think that the reason that people like to use capsules is just ’cause it’s convenient.
It’s a convenient way to take a dose. Of herbs without having to make a different preparation. Once you’ve made up a bunch of capsules, you’ve got them, they’re kinda like the supplements that you might get at the grocery. It’s very similar to that sort of a thing, except you know exactly what’s in ’em ’cause you made ’em yourself.
And I think that’s pretty important as well. But it’s also nice for some folks, if you’re trying to consume an herb that might not be as palatable as you might like it to be. I know some folks that’ll make, they’ll do capsules out of turmeric or perhaps ginger, something like that and that may be something that you don’t enjoy tasting, so you can take it, the capsule and then you don’t really get that flavor.
So that’s a nice convenience there as well. A lot of folks will do, Echinacea Root. I’ve seen [00:25:00] Valerian Root utilized this way, and anyone that’s worked with Valerian root to be polite for your listeners, it’s like old feet is kind, what it’s tastes like and smells like, so it’s not like delicious.
So it’s a great way to utilize these herbs that are less palatable to get ’em down and take ’em that way. So capsules is something I really try to. Talk about all these different vehicles, these different methods to work with the plants to be as inclusive as possible so that there’s something for everybody out there, right?
So whatever’s gonna work for you. We touch on it in the book just to make the information more accessible.
Steam Distillation and Hydrosols
Kenny Coogan: Another method is distillation. Can you tell the listeners what does that mean and involve?
Bevin Cohen: Now steam distillation, that’s how we’re gonna be making essential oils. And then also hydrosols. Hydrosols is the second product that comes from steam distillation. So this involves a bit of equipment. So it’s a, sometimes a, there’s an investment involved if you wanna make your own. Most certainly it’s a copper kettle where, so the water’s in the bottom of the kettle, then there’s a mesh screen.
And then the herb goes on top of that. So then it’s [00:26:00] boiled and the steam goes through the herb and up and around, and then it goes through a condenser. It’s cooled right to recon, condense it. And what this does is it separates the essential oil itself from the rest of the product. And it can take quite a bit of plant.
A usable amount of essential oil. It takes quite a bit and it’s gonna vary from one plant to the next. They’re all very different. But it does take quite a bit of plant material to make the essential oil. But the other product that’s made, which is the hydrosol, so once the oil is separated from the liquid, the remaining liquid is called the hydrosol.
And that’s useful for any number of things. It’s ingestible, so we can. Use them internally. They’re topical so we can incorporate them into lotions and other topical products that we wanna make. It’s a really fun way to really get into the essence of a plant. But there is that upfront cost of getting the still to do it.
But I recommend to folks sometimes if you have a little bit of a community of folks that are working together everybody could chip in and get a nice sized kettle. But then you can all, share it and work together. And that’s a fun way to [00:27:00] work with plants too.
Kenny Coogan: I own a carnivorous plant nursery, and carnivorous plants require rainwater, distilled water, or reverse osmosis water. And all of the customers always ask me if they can just take a bucket of water and let it sit out overnight. And I say, no, that’s like dechlorinating it. That’s not distilled water. And then I have to explain to them the whole, when you buy it jug of distilled water, what that process looks like. It’s the collection of the steam, so there’s no salts or minerals or other chemicals in the water,
Bevin Cohen: right?
And that’s a cool point to make. ’cause if you have the distill to make these distillations from herbs, you could also make your own distilled water right there. So that’s a really cool use for the equipment as well.
How to Extract Herbs: Teas, Tinctures and Oils
Kenny Coogan: There are a few ways to extract herbs for practical purposes. What are some of the more common ways to make more potent [00:28:00] medicinals out of herbs?
Bevin Cohen: So the three big ones, would be teas, tinctures, and oils. And those are all gonna utilize different forms of extraction. So with a tea, it’s a water extraction, and I’m sure your listeners are all familiar with a tea, of course. But to make a medicinal tea often we’re gonna make a water infusion.
So instead of just allowing a small amount of herb to steepen water for a short amount of time, like when we make a cup of tea. We’re gonna use a larger quantity of herbs and allow it to steep for a longer amount of time, right? So it becomes a more potent water extraction. So in this situation, we’re extracting the water soluble chemicals from the plant material, whereas with the tincture, which I touched on a little bit earlier, this is an alcohol extraction.
You’re gonna use usually somewhere between 80 to a hundred proof, whichever one you have available to you. A hundred proof is, fantastic for all sorts of plants, right? So a hundred proof if you’ve got it, but 80 proof will certainly work. Alcohol extractions and these are very potent medicinals.
Some things are water soluble and some things are fat soluble, like when we infuse our herbs and oil. But almost everything in a plant is alcohol soluble. So these are very potent. [00:29:00] So the dosages for tinctures are often measured by the drop, right? 10 drops, 15 drops, quarter teaspoon is quite a bit, there’s a very strong medicines. And then the oils that I talked about, these are fat extractions, and these is if we’re gonna make, say, a massage oil, or a salve, or a lotion or whatever, the first step here is gonna be infusing the herbs in oil. And that could take, if we’re gonna do it, the traditional method, it could take, six to eight weeks of allowing the herbs to sit in this oil.
So the fat soluble chemicals are then extracted from the plant material and held in the oil. You’ll be able to tell that you’ve got a good extraction with any of these methods because the color of the medium is gonna change of the aromas are gonna change. Like a tea isn’t obvious. You pour hot water on a teabag, it’s almost instantaneous. You get to see the colors in the water start to happen. You can smell the herbs. This will happen with our other forms of extraction as well, which is how we know that we’ve properly extracted the chemical constituents. From the plant material and they’re suspended in our solvent. In herbalism, we call it a menstruum, but it’s a [00:30:00] simply a solvent to that holds the medicine from those plants.
The Cyclical Nature of Everything Around Us
Kenny Coogan: You conclude your book by writing “one of the wonderful side effects of working with herbs from a seasonal point of view is gaining greater awareness of the cyclical nature of everything around us”. Can you explain that phrase or that concept a little bit more?
Bevin Cohen: I think that ultimately my goal, and not just with this book, but with everything that I teach, other books that I’ve written ultimately I want folks to slow down their lives a little bit and observe the wonders of the natural world.
That’s really my purpose in all these books that I write and these workshops that I give and that sort of thing. And if we can slow ourselves down enough to see the cyclical nature of plants, what a wonderful world we live in, Kenny, to see these young seeds burst open and these plants, these young sprouts and how they grow and they flower and they produce seeds.
There’s something [00:31:00] really special about that. And there’s so many benefits to not only developing this relationship with these individual plants, but slowing down the pace of our life a little bit in order to do i, there’s a lot of benefits to that. This book was many years in the making and one of the greatest, the most exciting parts of it for me was forcing myself to slow down, to observe these plants through the cycle of their life, through the seasons, and to see how the world around us changes.
The plants change, we change the soil changes, everything changes cyclically through the seasons. Life and death. Being so intertwined. So there’s something philosophical about that I think as well. But from an herbalism point of view, all herbalism is relationships. It’s a relationship with yourself.
It’s a relationship with the plants around you and the people in your community. And we can’t accomplish that if we don’t take the time to get to know the plants throughout their entire life. So that’s the ultimate goal here, is go in the garden and [00:32:00] sit down and just observe all of the wonderful things that are happening out there.
Kenny Coogan: I feel my blood pressure lowering already.
Bevin Cohen: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Mission accomplished.
Kenny Coogan: Thank you, Bevin for the great conversation today about using herbs in every season. You can learn more about Bevin’s work at www.BevinCohen.com.
Bevin Cohen: Thank you, Kenny.
Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. You can also email us at Podcast@OgdenPubs. com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod. The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.
Jessica Anderson: Until next time, [00:33:00] don’t forget to love your Mother.
