Hands-on how-to: making your own tinctures

Although I've made reference here and there on this blog to throwing together tinctures, it seems I've never done a dedicated post on the subject before.

What was I thinking??

Actually, what I was thinking was that anyone could find the information pretty easily out there on the interwebz. Thing is, turns out the instructions 'out there' are often needlessly complicated, incomplete or downright wrong .. sigh ..

So today's post, like so many before it, is in answer to some of that nonsense. Hopefully I'll be able to clarify some details, clear up some confusion, dispel some myths and help you to see that you, too, can make far better quality tinctures at home than you can buy anywhere - and do it on the cheap, too.

Like cooking or baking, making your own herbal remedies is about following a basic recipe, learning the ratios, then, as you gain experience, winging it according to your best judgement. There are - of course - exceptions to some of the rules, and I'll cover those too.

What follows is my own experience, based on about 2 decades of tincture making.

The TL;DR version of this post? Plants + booze x time = tincture. But there's a little more to it than that, so read on ..

The half-wild apothecary garden - with pics

I was just telling someone about how so many of the Medicine Plants that grow in my garden do so without any input from me, the supposed gardener. In many if not most cases I just stand back and let them do their thing. Whether birds bring in the seeds or they've lain dormant in the soil just waiting for permission and the right conditions, who knows - but the ones that just come up of their own accord are some of my favourites.