Herb of the Week Project

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There’s no way you can effectively learn about herbs from a book: you have to work with them yourself to really start to know anything.

Each week you’ll choose an herb – any herb! You can choose it because it looks pretty, you can pick it because you’ve heard of it somewhere before, or because you’ve never heard of it before, you can ask for a recommendation for a certain situation – any reason that you choose a plant is totally ok!

Your goal that week is to consume or apply a preparation of your herb every day. The baseline expectation here is that you will prepare a quart of infusion or decoction from your herb, and drink it, every day of the week.

When you make tea, try making the tea in many different ways: what happens if you just make a regular cup of tea? What happens if you let it steep overnight? What happens if you boil it for a while? How is the tea different each way that you make it? Some herbs need to be steeped in cold water in order to extract the medicinal properties – what happens if you make your tea with cool water instead of hot?

When you drink your tea, spend some time thinking about how the tea tastes, and how it makes you feel. Don’t feel that you must drink your tea all by yourself, either – you can share it with your friends and family too. The more people you share your plant with, the more information you’ll have! Keep notes!

Beyond tea, try your herb every way possible! Maybe your herb is dandelion: you could buy some fresh dandelion leaves from a grocery store and eat them in your salad, or go for a walk and pick dandelion leaves to eat fresh from the earth. Try eating the flowers, too! If your herb is ginger, aside from making tea you can also apply a ginger poultice or compress, prepare a recipe with extra extra extra ginger, infuse ginger into honey, make a ginger syrup, brew traditional ginger beer, etc.

You can also make or purchase your plant in an oil, a salve, or a lotion. You can make or buy a tincture as well. You can find all kinds of different preparations at Whole Foods, Cambridge Naturals, Harvest Coop, and other shops around town; or from online vendors.

You will also research your herb. We recommend you experience your herb before you research much, because sometimes you will feel things in your body that you don’t find documented. This isn’t because you’re imagining it – it’s because herbalists are really busy and we don’t always write everything down.

You’ll write up all your research and experience into a cohesive monograph. Find an example here.

Starter Herbs List

Here are some good herbs to start out with!

These are herbs you can drink a quart or so a day of tea, made at a strength of 2-4 tablespoons of herbs per quart of water. You can also work with them in multiple other formats (tincture, powder, etc).

These are “polycrest” herbs, those with a wide variety of beneficial effects.

herb	botanical name
nettle	Urtica dioica
dandelion	Taraxacum off.
parsley	Petroselinum crispum
plantain	Plantago major, P. lanceolata
burdock	Arctium lappa
mugwort	Artemisia vulgaris
tulsi	Ocimum sanctum
skullcap	Scutellaria lateriflora
red clover	Trifolium pratense
hibiscus	Hibiscus sabdariffa
elder	Sambucus nigra
linden	Tilia europaea, T. cordata
white pine	Pinus strobus
calendula	Calendula officinalis
sage	Salvia officinalis
rosemary	Rosmarinus officinalis
thyme	Thymus vulgaris
oregano	Origanum vulgare
garlic	Allium sativum
shiitake	Lentinula edodes
maitake	Grifola frondosa
ginger	Zingiber officinalis
turmeric	Curcuma longa
cinnamon	Cinnamomum cassia, C. verum
hawthorn	Crataegus spp.
chamomile	Matricaria recutita
catnip	Nepeta cataria
fennel	Foeniculum vulgare
peppermint	Mentha x piperita
marshmallow	Althaea officinalis
lemon balm	Melissa officinalis
schisandra	Schisandra chinensis *
st john’s wort	Hypericum perforatum *

Although the majority of the herbs we work with are safe to take at high doses, there are some herbs that are low-dose herbs, and should only be taken in small amounts. If you are interested in working with an herb which is not on this list, and that you are not already familiar with, be sure to ask us about dosing information and other safety considerations! If you may be pregnant, or if you are taking medications, be sure to let us know.