From HerbMentor.com, this is Herb Mentor Radio.
You are listening to Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. I'm John Gallagher. My guest today is Richo Cech. Richo is a village herbalist and conservationist.
He and his wife, Maitre, are owners of Horizon Herbs, an organic medicinal herb seed company based in Williams, Oregon. Their mission is to sow seeds worldwide for the benefit of people and plants and the planet. Richo is also the author of the book Making Plant Medicine. Their Horizon Herbs catalog is well known not only for its variety of hard to find extracts and seeds, but also as a treasure trove of information.
And you can get one for free and discover many, many amazing things at HorizonHerbs.com. So good afternoon, Richo. How are you doing today?
Hi, John. I'm doing just fine.
Well, you know, it's early spring now, and I know it's probably the height of your busy season, right? For people ordering seeds, constantly.
So I appreciate you taking the time and talking with us today.
You're welcome. Yes, we're shipping out a lot of seeds these days and a lot of plants from our organically certified greenhouses. And then we're also having a little spring fever and trying to find time to plant a lot of seeds ourselves outside. So, it always is a busy season, but it's great to feel the to get up in the morning and go out on the lawn and feel that it's warm and it has not frosted.
Well, you're lucky You're a little further south than us and here it's, you know, not quite, you know, but, yes, it's happening.
You know, there are many people on, herbmentor dot com who have had some gardening questions. So being the time of year it was, I thought I needed to get someone who knew something about gardening on. And why I like questions. Questions are easy.
Why not go right to the person who is, you know, well known for your knowledge in seeds and planting and gardening?
So, you know, before I get into some people's questions though, I just, actually it's pretty much a question for myself and it's probably a good place to start because, it's a good foundational place to begin. And just want to give you a little background on myself actually because probably a lot of listeners would be relieved to hear that Kimberly and I aren't really the best herb gardeners.
We haven't done all that much.
But most of our training and work with herbs has been in wildcrafting and making things with plants that we just harvest here and there. And part of that's been that in our eleven years together, we've been moving we've moved around a lot. We've only settled in the house like in the last few years. We had to move around due to our economic situation and whatnot.
And so, we were always like, well, we can always go out and pick other plants. Right, of course. A garden. And so, we had a few key key species that we move around with us from place to place that we throw in a little garden plot like ones that we relied on like Ella campaign for cough syrup and bone set for flus and a few of those mother wart and a few others.
But see here I am in this place, I've got this postage stamp yard. It's just a regular old suburban yard here. And, now that the sewers are finally gonna be installed in our town, I can actually think about a garden now because before, I didn't know what was gonna be dug up. So with that in mind, you know, I've got this big blank place here, and, I'm just wondering, like, so if myself if it's myself or someone who is, like, you know, I'd like to really, you know, start a little herb garden if I go in phases or something like, how do I get started? What should I plan?
Right.
Well, that kind of breaks down to somebody just asked me about the my five most essential, medicinal herb plants.
And I think my answer to that was St. John's wort and calendula and then, the true Comfrey and the Elecampane that you already mentioned.
And the last one, I can't really remember what I said, but it could be anything of a few thousand species.
But yes, if you stick with the major antiseptic herbs, I think those are the ones that really get used the most in home medicine because you have the emergency, somebody gets a spider bite or somebody gets you remove a tick or, the kids have a scrape or, somebody's developing a mouth sore or something of that nature and you want to have something to put on it, then the classic antiseptic tincture is really something that you always want to have around and you can make that with equal parts of St. John's Wort and calendula flowers and then yarrow also. Or if you want to make it more on the trauma tincture side, then you can always put arnica in it. And so that might be my my number five would be arnica or goldenseal maybe something like that. But, yes, all of these are relatively small annual or perennial medicinal herbs that do well in full sun situations, small yards, bedding plants, if you will.
Yes, So those would all be good choices. And then if you do have a small yard, then also consider definitely using the other axis, not the horizontal axis but the vertical axis and plant passion flower up your fences and put in some permaculture bushes and trees around the edge to create a more open feeling for all of the interconnected web of life, the beneficial insects and the crow that eats the grasshopper and providing some grateful shade for your plants as well as some windbreak and maybe also keeps you from having to be too connected with the life and livelihood and barbecue odors of your neighbor.
Exactly.
Or the exhaust fumes from the lawnmowers, right?
Exactly.
Try to bring in that mix it up, mix up the plantings, create a diverse offering because that's the way that healthy ecosystems are and you can bring in a modicum of that health even in a small area by planting a lot of diverse species. And then, you never really have a problem with pathogenic diseases or with tests or anything like that if you mix up the plantings.
Okay. And that goes actually into a question that somebody had emailed in, just a basic. So some basic advice for, you know, there's there's advice for what do I do if I have pests?
But really the question should be how can I just not have to deal with them?
Right.
And what about the soil? Is there things I should keep in there if I have diversity? If I have a lot of diversity in my garden then there's less of a a chance. And what about the soil?
Is there things I should keep in mind that I need to do to my soil to keep it healthy or you know?
Yeah. You definitely grow your gardens from the soil up.
And the more preparation that you do on the soil, vis a vis cover cropping and tilling in or home compost making and applying compost and working that in, then the more healthy is the whole microsystem.
And so a lot of folks will want to do a whole lot in buying plants and planting plants the first year, but really it would behoove them to work on their soil the first year and have their garden the next year.
Because the healthier the plants are going to be.
Well, that's good that you say that because that was kinda my plan this next year is just to kinda make start making beds.
Yes. And a lot of people will sheet compost and put down straw and then manure and then straw again and then manure.
And they do that on top of cardboard or something?
You can put it on top of cardboard or actually if you do deep enough layering, you can do it on put it on top of grass and the grass won't grow through it. And then you can let it compost down for one season and then plant your plants in the rich soil the next season. And just if the grasses start to grow into it, then you can pull those back from the edges.
Natural weed barriers are very nice, but they're never a substitute for elbow grease and wiping the, sweaty forehead with the back of the forearm.
So you're saying, what it comes down, we gotta work at it. Yeah.
You need to, you know that's part of the connection is your relationship with the plants and I always use it as a kind of a dharma when I'm out there working with the plants.
I think about I think positive thoughts.
I watch my mind stream.
I try to dispel discursive thoughts like about, a Sheryl Crow song or what stupid thing Hillary said.
And I just try to more connect with the energy of the plants, feel the environment, both the physical and the etheric and the etheric environment and even make up little mantras in my mind to keep my mind focused on what I'm doing. Think about the medicine, where it's going to be going, how people will use it, empower the medicine that way with positive thoughts. And then I find that that also empowers me. I feel stronger after I do this work.
And it really is if you're someone who's really wants to work with herbs and get into herbs, it seems like either have to be out there doing some wildcrafting or gardening to really learn the plants and understand them versus folks who might not say, oh, I'll just work with dried plants and make tinctures and salves and things. And so it really is vital to that connection.
Absolutely.
Yes. Something I want to mention here that I saw on your website is you have this lifeline medicinal herb garden which is actually it seemed like that was something you put together out of probably a lot of questions that people saying like just what I was asking you, where should we kind of start kind of thing and it seems like you have all the essentials right there.
Well, we try and it was really it came out of an impulse that Machen and I had one day when we were walking in our own garden and we were looking at all the useful herbs that we have growing organically on the land and thinking about all the folks and organizations and worthwhile garden clubs and academic requests, etcetera, etcetera that we always get saying, We're a nonprofit organization and we would like you to give us lots and lots of seeds, etcetera, because we're doing a worthwhile thing. And that all became overwhelming after a while reaching the level of sometimes three to five requests daily.
So we said, well, let's create a lifeline garden that has eighteen different varieties of organically grown medicinal herb seeds from our own land and let's move those out to people at cost.
So that is available and definitely a recommended place to start. Then when we get these requests for free seeds, we say, well, we're a non profit also. And actually, if we give money or plants or seeds away to an organization, for some reason, it isn't a tax break for us. And so here, take these things.
We're offering them at our cost and start moving up from there. Then we also chose those on the basis of not only their value in terms of their echinacea is in there, etcetera, etcetera. But also in terms of their appropriateness to grow in most temperate gardens. So, the people who are all worried about, well, is that good for my zone 5A or whatever like that is just really not an issue.
These are all straightforward medicinal herbs that mostly came from Northern Europe in the first place and now are quite good for growing throughout the United States.
Oh, that's excellent.
Yes.
Yes, that's a great and I love on your site and your business and everything just and it's really an inspiration and for a lot of people tell us, oh, I like your family is involved and everything and all that sort and that spirits in there. And I really get that when ordering or working with Horizon Herbs too. It's like, wow, you know, I'm working as a family here and I love you know, the kids' herbs kit with your daughter that created when she was younger and we used to carry that actually when we were shipping other folks' products here on Learning Herbs and people loved it. You know, it was it's great.
Well, Zena is grown up now and she has a daughter of her own, Naya, who's one. And Naya is very interested in farming. Sena has been runway model for years and lived in Paris, etcetera. And she came back with her French husband to live with us, sort of a Green Acres kind of scenario and the one year old baby.
And if you ask the baby, Naya, do you want to be a model when you grow up? She says, no. And then if you say, Naya, do you want to be a farmer when you grow up? She says, yes, yes, yes.
You're like, yes, it's it's kept a generation.
It gets generations that way and now she's really she was a little perplexed at first why we were so interested in making these little holes in the dirt and dropping these funny shaped and variously sized items into the holes. But now she's kind of getting a feeling for the cycles and she's very excited about the whole thing.
Yes, it is a family endeavor. Sena and I are now cooperating on a new book called, Growing Plant Medicine and it will have the cultivation instructions for about six hundred different medicinal herbs and then it has my whole concept of natural gardening techniques and how to just grow closer to nature?
Oh, I can't wait for that because you're I love your Making Plant Medicine book. I mean, so if it's any, that's a and vital reference tool. Okay. Good. Thanks.
I appreciate it.
It's a medicine maker. To the point and it's thorough and, I love it. It's a great reference. And so I can't wait for that one.
So you do, like ship plants like starts too because I saw on your site like you have the link for plants on there.
You know, starting medicinal herbs from seed is it can be quite challenging if you don't know what you're doing.
Right. That's my question.
Long germination times, sometimes long stratification times, a lot of them are fall sown and germinate in the spring. People just don't really have the facilities.
Some people don't even have the greenhouse facilities to accomplish standard greenhouse cultivation techniques.
And so we found that a lot of people really appreciate getting the plants and we don't want to torture our plants. And of course, we don't use any fertilizers. So we plant our plants in deep pots. And we really enjoy raising them up. And then around about this time of year, people go on the website and there are about three hundred species I think available right now. And so they're getting their echinacea teniciensis or their gynostemma, the jiao gulan, which is a vine in the cucurbit family that has five times more of the ginsenosides saponins than American ginseng root. And so it's an adaptogenic cucumber basically.
So there anything like that and everything in between including a lot of permaculture trees and bushes that we encourage people to plant for wildlife and to bring in this kind of healthy diversity that we feel protects our gardens from any kind of pathogenic influences.
Excellent. Yes. And then so then you know that your catalog is a resource in itself and then so this book you're writing, when do you think that might come out?
It should come out in about six months.
One time we wrote a book and we advertised it before we were finished with it. And we're not really we learned our lesson that's really a wrong thing to do because it takes a long time to, fix all my spelling errors.
And so And so, I can write on and on and on and then somebody has to read it and make it all be academic.
And then, it will blow the foxglove bugles with appropriate fanfare when the book is actually available.
And we're going to try to make it be viable even though it's going to be in excess of six hundred pages. So, yes, we're working on it.
And Senna is doing all the illustrations and it's really great. We try to keep things genuine and true around here and she's just she can be found at any corner of the land making, sketches from growing plants. And and, I've I've I'm hoping to focus her on making illustrations of the germinating seedlings so that people can know what it is that's coming up when it comes up and also, the useful parts. So she'll be, in other words, if it's Oregon grape, since it's mainly the root or the stolen that's used, then she'll be making illustrations of that instead of a picture of the flowers.
Great. And I should also mention that on Horizon Nervous in the meanwhile, I picked up a compiled set of publications, a cultivation bunch of articles and things that you put together, which is really handy. So, if you want some folks need some ideas, about growing and just some real stuff to really help you get going and overall philosophy and all. It's a good publication.
Well, that's old writing. Some of that is fifteen years old. And luckily, I was writing it before I really knew what I was talking about because now that I think I know what I'm talking about, it just takes a lot more words to express anything.
Alright. Right.
Right. And anyway, yes, that's available. And the book Growing at Risk Medicinal Herbs has been very popular and that covers twenty of our most potent Native American medicines.
And it also promotes United Plant Savers, which is a really worthwhile organization.
Yes.
And our company is about donors of proceeds of our game go to United Plant Savers.
Thank you.
And that's a big part of what we promote as well. Speaking of what you were just talking about, someone actually had a question about a little information on starting endangered woodland plants from seeds such as ginseng, goldenseal or Kahosh.
Well, there's a chapter on each one of those in growing at risk, but to keep it short, most of those woodland medicinals that make their seeds in berries like goldenseal or ginseng will not withstand dry storage of the seed.
So you need to harvest the berry in its full ripeness and then smash it and do a water separation in a bucket, the bad seed and the flesh of the berry will float away. You decant it and the good seed is in the bottom of the bucket. And then you plant the seed right away in your moist rich soil of the shade garden or the woodlands and germination is then in the spring of the second or third year.
And so it is a long nature doesn't care about humans and our concept of time. It's nature I always say the earth breathes long.
To a woodland plant, a few years really is somewhat meaningless. A lot of them will require repeated cycles of cooling and warming before they even germinate. And your black cohosh is a good example. Really, that plant and a lot of plants in the crowfoot family, the Ranunculaceae, are, a warm, cold, warm germinator.
So you plant the seed in the, like in the autumn after it's ripe. You plant it directly out of the pod into the soil. It spends a few warm months before the winter kicks in. Then the winter kicks in.
It goes through the cold cycle. And then it germinates in the spring when the ground warms up again. And without that warm cold warm cycle, you can't grow the plant. You can't just take the seed, the dry stored seed and plant it in the greenhouse and expect it to come up in a few days like beans and peas would.
So you really need to meet those natural requirements, the oscillating temperatures of the seasons as they pass, the oscillating temperatures of night and day, the leaching effects of rain, all these are very significant, elements for awakening the germination of these of these difficult and long germinating seeds.
Mimic nature.
Yeah. Mimic nature.
That in itself is, golden words right there, right? Mimic nature. I like that. Yes. That's kind of what you're doing when you stratify C2, right? Is you're putting it through a fake winter in a way.
Yes, cold stratification can be helpful at times.
Yes.
So actually that, that was part of this other question, Kelly wrote in, that she planted some chase berry seeds in a flower pot about three weeks ago. She bought the seeds from you and, she had them sitting on her windowsill, the whole time so they would get a lot of east facing sun in the morning. She waters them every day. They haven't peaked through the dirt yet. How long does it take to germinate?
Also once it germinates, how soon can I transplant outside? Do I have to harden it off there? She asked. And she lives in South, MS, Missouri. Right?
Right.
Or is that Mississippi?
Oh, no. Mississippi, MS. MS is Mississippi where it's really hot. Right? Right. So m a MS is I think it's Mississippi or is that MI?
MI is Michigan. Oh, MO is Missouri. Mississippi is MS. Yeah. Alright. Go ahead.
Go ahead.
Well, I'm MR.
Anyways anyways, yeah, that that window sill propagation of seeds is, very problematical in my opinion because it's a little bit too yin for seed germination on the most part. Like you can grow chamomile that way really well, but chamomile likes to grow during the, you know, cooler times of year. Cool and moist is great for that. But something like chaste tree that's a desert species really, needs something closer to greenhouse temperatures or sometimes people work with these, propagation lights and they train the lights on the top of the flat.
So, the general chaste seeds on the surface, put about a quarter inch more of potting soil on top of the seeds, press down thoroughly, keep evenly moist and then keep in very warm temperatures. And germination should be between two and six weeks. Then transplant is after the seedlings make their second set of true leaves, which is a pretty good rule to follow for just about any, herbaceous plants or trees. After the second set of true leaves appears then you can prick the plants out of the propagation flat and put in individual pots.
Then you can grow them out that way until they reach sufficient size to transplant to the landscape. For a chase tree, really, I would hold the gallon pot for a year and let the chase tree get to be like eight inches tall before I even subjected it to the rigors of the outside. So if you have a very long lived tree that you're growing from seed, then you need to give it a year or two in successively larger pots before you can really expect to plant it successfully outside.
Okay.
Yeah. Too much gin.
Too much, right. Exactly.
Too much cool and moist is not really good for a desert species.
So Right.
Right.
Yeah. And I don't know. It might they might come up fine or they might not. I I actually need to renew renew my, seed source for Chase Tree. Their the germination is starting to to decline on those.
So if she has and in relation to that, a person has a general question that she's, if she manages to kill off her sprouts before their true leaves and I think it's due to damping off.
I've gotten fresh sterile soil, but I'm still struggling. So some info on this will be helpful.
She's so tired of killing her herbal seedlings.
I understand. Well, again, yin conditions, cool moist, is not really generally useful, although certain plants will like that. For instance, your marshmallow or your valerian or something of that nature, that's already a plant that grows in very moist conditions.
But for the most part, be careful of damping off.
Sterile soils are recommended by most nursery people and I go completely the opposite direction. I put pot I put compost in my potting soil so that there's already a healthy mix of fungal and bacterial microorganisms in the potting soil. And I find that this provides more balance again so that you don't have a flash growth of some kind of a pathogen Then, you know, if you have a cool moist day, don't water.
And if you have a nice warm day and the surface of the soil is drying out, go ahead and water your seedlings.
Right. So so try to try to be smart about, not creating the overly cool and moist conditions that will support the growth of damping off disease.
Also thin your seedlings early, not late. Because if there are overcrowded conditions, then they won't be particularly healthy.
And pull out the ones that seem small, poorly developed or wrong in any way like misshapen leaves, this kind of thing. Remove those. It's called selecting for vigor.
Always select for vigor. The most vigorous plants are the ones that you should keep and then realize that, say for instance, you're trying to grow marshmallow for making medicine for treating upper respiratory infections or for as a mild immune enhancing herb that you can put into teas, etcetera.
If a person plants a hundred marshmallow seeds, they're likely to get eighty or ninety seedlings. And if you were to choose each one of those and pot them up and grow them up and put them out in the garden, taking care of eighty or ninety marshmallow plants would actually be a lot of work. And it would also be about sixteen or twenty times too much material to really make use of.
And so I would say better to choose the six best seedlings and work with them carefully. I always say a few well grown herbs produce more good medicine than many poorly grown herbs.
And if you bite off more than you can chew, then you're just gonna choke.
So just just choose a few, grow them well, and, take care of them well just the way that you would like somebody to take care of your body if they were in charge of it. And that's going to make the powerful medicine. You don't really need so much.
And learning, exactly.
And also, learning a bit about the herbs, before growing and maybe what kind of where they were from originally and what they're like. I had this job, I worked at this nursery and just brand new at all this. Right? And I and and so I had to go around and water the plants, you know? And and, and so I, would go in and I just kinda kept and I'm up here in the north wet northwest. Right? And I before it was time, I just kinda kept watering that basil.
I basically probably ruined thousands of dollars worth of basil inventory that my supervisor had to cover for me.
Gardening is about the pauses.
Gardening is about the pauses. You go out, you do something, you apply compost.
Then you go away and you do something else for a few days, and you come back after a few days and you notice, oh, the plant is growing well. Oh, looks a little dry. Okay. Now I'm going to water it. So you water the plant, then you go away.
And you do something else for a couple of days. And then you come back around again. If you instead go and and water the plant, put on compost, water it some more, put some more compost, water it some more, you'll kill it from too much love.
And so I always I always, think about gardening in being as much about the not doing as it is about the doing.
That's amazing advice. I like that.
So then there's this person who in landscaping around her house and has been, subjected to non organic weed control. So there's a good amount of herbs that I could use. However, I'm concerned with the safety due to these products.
So if I keep things organic from this point, will the plants be okay to use Or do the chemicals render them unsafe for the life of the plant?
Well, I'm not a very good person to ask about how dangerous chemicals are because I I avoid them like the plague myself.
Right.
But, there are some there are some plants that you can grow that purify the soil.
And if it was me, I think that again, I would take the first growing season to just improve the soil and I would grow some cover crops in there like maybe peas and oats or maybe a red clover or a quick cover of crimson clover or buckwheat.
And then, sure, the plants are going to be somewhat tainted from, you know, poop in, poop out. If you put poop into the system, you're gonna get poop out of the system. If you put bad quality herbs into the manufacturing, then you're gonna get bad quality put bad quality herbs into the tinctures out in the end. There's no and apply the appropriate remedies.
And so, yes, grow a cover crop and don't eat the cover crop. Just till it back into the earth and the earth will heal itself automatically over time. And our earth will heal itself automatically after humans are gone. It will be a really, really great place when it washes the humans off of its surface. I have no worries about it.
Eventually, I have no worries about it. Eventually, nature will prevail.
And so, yeah, be patient and grow those cover crops and work the cover crops back in and use organic compost And eventually, the wounds will be forgotten. And next year then you can grow your medicinal herbs and feel really confident that they're growing from healthy soil and so, they won't be toxic.
Calendula is a good herb to grow. The first year it will biologically refurbish the soil. It will be antiseptic to the soil if there are weird pathogens growing because as soon as you start to dampen the growth of one thing, then you have an unnatural growth of another thing.
So as soon as you apply herbicides, then you have something else coming in.
The imbalances is rife, then the system is sick. And so you can grow chalendula or you can grow Yerba del Manzo, the Animopsis californica is famous for cleaning up wrong dirt. So you'll find it growing for instance in sumps in Central California where there are a lot of nitrogens and chemical, leachates going into the water, the Yerba del Manseau will grow in there and it cleans up the system without actually setting the toxins in its own tissue. This is done by means of oxygenation.
It oxygenates the system and allows natural breakdown to occur oxidation.
And it also is just a special talent of the plant. I can't really explain why a lot of these plants do what they do.
And then like I mentioned before, the cover crops, any kind of cover crops would be really a good choice. Also, calamus root, if it's a very if there's a wet system there, plant calamus, acorus calamus and that plant filters the water and clarifies the water. If you take a little piece of calamus root and you chew it in your mouth, of course, FDA doesn't want you to do that anymore. But take it from me, you can do it.
It won't hurt you. Take a little piece of calamus root, chew it in your mouth and then take a drink of water. The water tastes like water from an Elysian well. It tastes better than any water that you had before.
And so this is your own body is proving the same thing that Calamus does in a water system in cleaning water and removing negative biological overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria from the water. So all those plants can be useful. And again, just have patience and make sure that you're growing your herbs in good soil and then you can sure use them and they'll promote your health.
Just don't till the comfrey.
Don't till the comfrey, right.
When you said that by the way, just to go back real quick, when you said true comfrey, did you mean growing true comfrey? Do you mean the purple flower one or what?
Well, it's just one of those things. The, all the herb companies in the U. S. Have been making comfrey extracts and comfrey products from what they called Symphytum officinalis for the last fifty years.
Actually, they're all made from Symphytum X Uplandicum, which is a hybridized Bakken fourteen cultivar of comfrey.
It's not Symphytum officinalis at all. So all those products are mislabeled.
And I struggled with this issue for a long time because my core herbal teacher, taught me wrong. And I had problems with the comfrey because I didn't understand how Symphytum officinalis was not making seed.
Then eventually, after a lot of inquiry and in getting samples of comfrey seed from all around the world, I eventually determined that our Symphytum officinalis is not making seed because it's not Symphytum officinalis. It's a hybrid sterile comfrey and started growing true comfrey Symphytum officinalis from seed that I got from Germany.
And we're just in love with this new plant. It is so much.
It has a lot of purple coloration in the leaves. The leaves are less hairy and they're longer and thinner. It's also a very vigorous grower like the hybrid comfrey but the flowers are vastly more beautiful and varied and pull in lots and lots of pollinators because pollinators are not fooled the way that humans are. They don't read the label. They're just after the nectar.
Right.
And And, and then the plant makes seeds and you can collect the seeds and regrow the plant from seeds. So we're really promoting the Bakken fourteen for permaculture use because it's a bigger, more robust plant.
And it is good medicine and it does everything that Comfrey is supposed to be is supposed to do in your agricultural system.
Accumulator. It brings up micronutrients from deep in the soil. It's excellent to grow among grasses because it's not really bothered by that. And the leaves are twenty percent protein.
Want to grow comfrey but you don't want it to keep spreading from your seeding like in your garden and growing all around. I mean Right.
Then I think you would use the blocking fourteen, sterile cultivar and not chop up the roots and spread them around. And then you would have a comfrey that's just sitting in one place or you could grow the, true comfrey in a half a wine barrel perhaps. That would be good. I don't know.
Actually, John, everybody talks to me about invasive plants and worries about this getting loose and that taking over etcetera, etcetera. And I tell people, you know what? I'm sorry. I'm tired of it.
People are invasive entities. Plants are not. Plants are just taking advantage of the environment and doing their best to bring the balance in.
And so and so, you know, for me, having lots of true comfrey in my yard in in the in the city would be a giant blessing. It would be only positive.
Now using that particular comfrey, between the two comfries and using it internally, which would you choose?
Well, I'd definitely choose the true comfrey.
For one thing, it's lower in the, pyrolizidin alkaloids.
And for another thing, it's the comfrey that Galen was talking about. When Galen talked about comfrey, I wouldn't use something that was hybridized and manufactured and genetically modified basically through human influence, I would use the original what we call the original land race, which is the original type that the earth made that doesn't have anything to do with humans. And this is true across the board. Everything that I try to offer as much as possible, I go for the original land races. And your horticulturalists will look at my catalog and go, well, where are all the variety names? Right. And I'm like, well, we don't have variety names because we're trying to provide the the core medicine.
Gosh. You know, it's I I just it's the more I investigate the whole Comfrey internal issue, the more confusing it gets because every person has, like, a different story about where the studies were from and where they came from and which one's safer.
And these are all from, like, you know, people who've like yourself who have been doing this a long time.
Well, there's a book There's a CRC Press book called Pirelles in Alkaloids that really has has, it accrues all the evidence and and puts some very level headed information out there for for one thing.
And for another thing, check my book, Making Plant Medicine, and look under the comfrey heading for a very level headed assessment of of internal and external use of Comfrey and the problems, perils and goodness that's available from the plant. It really shouldn't be that difficult for people to figure out. You really don't wanna use it internally when you're pregnant. It can cause veno occlusive disease.
Otherwise, you can, you know.
You're not going to use that much of it anyway. Exactly.
Even if you do infusions, like I do is comfrey infusions, nourishing infusions, and I don't do them all the time. I just every once in a while, I'll do it, you know?
Exactly. Well, the thing about it is that it's not a tonic herb. It's an herb that is that is healing to trauma.
So think about trauma. Well, trauma occurs in there's an episode and then there's the healing of that episode. And so you can use it like it's going out of style for a couple of weeks while you're healing that episode, but don't use it like a a tonic herb. It's not.
And so if you're using it, according to need, then there's no worry about any possible ill effects from some alkaloids that are riding along on the back of the healing mucilage, you know.
Right. Right.
So, yeah, just use it properly and then you won't have any worries.
But then there's folks who say it's regularly.
Well, you shouldn't do that because that's really not what it's what it look at look at the traditional use of Comfrey and it's used for knitting broken bones, it's used for externally for healing cuts. It promotes very fast cell proliferation. So something that proliferates cells is not really a tonic herb, that's a healing herb.
And even if it's bringing up all of these minerals and vitamins, it's just there's just too much.
Well, in an organic agricultural system, it's accumulating, minerals in the from deep within the soil. But I don't know about whether it really changes the body ecology in the same manner. I don't really feel that it does.
Well, thank you for that. That was really helpful to get your take on that because I'm starting to ask more and more people because I guess I So, for the dry alkaline or clay soil? I believe this is a person who lived in Nevada or somewhere in the Southwest. Good.
They can grow Goji, which is a wonderful new concept of hip cuisine, goji berries.
They can grow licorice.
Licorice likes the alkaline soils and the dry. So that would be the true glycyrrhizal glabra.
They can grow any bioregional, medicinal, so that they like. They They can gather seeds from the local environment and bring them into the garden. And then they can create plant habitat and maybe creating some of this plant habitat will look like erecting some shade cloth, putting in a micro sprinkler system, getting some coir and incorporating coir or peat into their local soils and thereby kind of mellowing out that alkalinity and that hardness and then they can grow standard medicinals in that area.
So what you do is you use your bioregionally appropriate plants for your main focus. And then if you like some other plants that don't really necessarily do well in those kinds of conditions, then you alter the conditions. You create plant habitat and you put the plants there. And that's the secret of Horizon Herb. That's why we've been able to propagate a lot of plants that are otherwise unavailable is because we will alter our plant habitat. We'll create a lot of different plant habitat by using sand applications, by building stone walls, by using the micro niche approach and using outdoor propagation beds for seeds.
And those kinds of techniques will really increase the size of your herbal pellet.
Wonderful. Thank you.
One last question before we wrap it up.
And she knows a lot of herbs do not like fertilizer. With that in mind, what does Richel recommend when one is growing flowers and herbs together, so the flowers have what they need, but the herbs are not overpowered?
Right. Well, that's good.
I think that if you use small amounts of organic compost that you can use that in preparing your beds before you plant your plants. And just about all plants really appreciate that kind of treatment because, it gives a balance of micronutrients and it's not strong like some kind of maxi grow fertilizer would be. Then after your plants start to grow, if you see some signs of nutrient deficiency like yellowing leaves or if things aren't growing or fruiting or flowering the way you'd like them to, then you can take additional organic compost and side dress around the plants. After you weed, you just take a few handfuls of rich black compost and throw them around there.
Or you could water with the, comfrey tea, comfrey sun tea is inexpensive and it's made from the comfrey leaves stirred in a barrel in the sun for a couple of weeks. It'll kind of stink like cow manure, but it's really good for your plants or you could put a dilute kelp tea on the plants. So, yeah, I think that if you don't choose any of the real strong bat guano knot, miracle grow knot. These kinds of things, just don't even bother with it.
Just go for the mellower organic compost and then it's just not an issue.
Okay.
So thanks for that. So just before we wrap it up here, you talk to a lot of folks and you teach. I know you're going to be at the Northwest Herb Fest this summer. Yes.
You can meet Richo and Horizon Herbs. You can go to herbaltransitions dot com to check out and register. I love that conference. Unfortunately, I'm going to be on the East Coast visiting family this year.
I see. I'm sending a person to represent us, though. Nice.
So, any parting word of wisdom for the person who's going to and it might be an overall philosophy that you keep in mind when you do your work or anything that might help folks?
Well, what I'm excited about, and this isn't really answering your question and I apologize.
Oh, that's fine. I I you can answer any way.
What I'm excited about is going to different cultures and finding out what is important in their herbal materia medica and finding plants that they're using that I think would be useful for growers in the temperate north and bringing them back and cultivating them organically and offering the organic seeds and plants to people for diversifying the herbal materia medica.
And this year, I'm going to Zanzibar, which is good because those are the Spice Islands off the coast of East Africa. And I'll be doing some snorkeling and also some gardening and collecting. And I have a Swahili, I have familiarity with Swahili because I lived a lot in Africa in years gone by. And so that's going to be real fun for me and I'll be bringing back some new African basil varieties and some new varieties and what have you from there.
And then, my general advice to gardeners is to go out in the garden and put your hands around one of your favorite plants and work the soil around the plants and remove the weeds and sort of empty your mind and find out from the plant what it's really there for and what it needs and then move on from there. There will be plenty to do. Things will occur to you as you empty your mind. There will be a kind of a communication with the plant that you're working with and with the plant world.
And I think that will be very healing for the gardener. And if more of us can do that, then I think it will be healing for the world. The world is really in a lot of trouble these days and I don't know if growing gardens of medicinal herbs is the main answer for how to heal the ills of humanity, but I don't think it's a bad place to start.
That's wonderful, wonderful. Thank you. I get so caught up in your words there that I have no idea what I was going to say next now. It's beautiful.
We could talk all day here, of course, and, wouldn't mind doing that. But I think we'll have to have you on again in the future, if you wouldn't mind, maybe when your, when your book is ready and we can get the word out.
Maybe when I'm back from Zanzibar.
Oh, you'll have some stories. I will. You'll have some stories. So, once again everyone you can get Horizon Herb seed catalog right now even purchase seeds, extracts, plants, books, including Ritos books.
It's you'll get lost on the site there. It's very exciting and that's HorizonHerbs.com.
So thanks so much again, Rich, for your time with us.
You're welcome, John.
Thank you all for joining us on Herb Mentor Radio on HerbMentor.com. Goodbye.
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