Storing Medicinal Herbs (The Halfway Homestead)

Dear Neophyte,

I've been collecting herbs for years.  The first batch of real healing herbs I ever received was from my sister.  It was back when I had no money and my Bible Belt town somehow thought that herbs were the devil so we couldn't even keep a natural shop open, let alone would anyone have taken me there to get herbs for healing.  Devil's magic.

Well, there are devils in every religion and mine is kinda cute. Even better, He's willing to cooperate in exchange for chocolate and whiskey.

Since moving to Portland I've regularly visited the Herb Shoppe.  Now they call themselves "Fettle", which I don't like.  I still call them "The Herb Shoppe".  No matter how pretentious it is to add extra letters to a word that is only four letters long.  What's that extra "e" even doing in there anyway?

I don't have pictures at hand, but I spent quite a lot of time cleaning wax out of old candle jars.  I then send them through the dishwasher and let them dry out thoroughly after stripping off the labels.

Candle jars, with plastic rings detached from the lids.

The inner plastic rings come out of the glass tops, btw.  Forgot that, and some of them still had strong wax smells so I had to scrub at them with a hot towel to get them good and soot free.

This is my collection of loose herbs.  You'll notice the writing on some of the bags looks very old and faded.  That's because they are probably 10 years or older at this point.  Yes, they still work.  I recently made cough syrup out of them and it went off spectacularly.

You may notice two different labels.  They are from the same shop, just renamed. 

This is the current herbal storage system.  This is by no means air tight but it is really nostalgic looking and I go in for that.  They're actually plastic ornament bottles I got at a craft store for really cheap.  Glass bottles this size are so much more expensive.  I got these last Yule-ish and put my smaller quantities of herbs in them.

Yule ornament bottles repurposed for herbs.

Last time I was at the herb shop I was there to pick up more cough syrup ingredients.  I couldn't remember if I was out of licorice or not.  Turns out I was not.  So here you can see ground licorice that is over 10 years old next to roughly chopped licorice that is only a few months old.  

Ground licorice and chopped licorice.

I put them into the same jar, with the older on top so that it gets used first.  I am so, SO very glad to finally be done with small plastic baggies (twist tied, no less!) for herbs.  No matter how careful you are some of it will always filter out and get into stuff after the second or third time you have to open it.

Ground licorice on top and ground on the bottom.  First in, first out.

I had hoped I'd have enough candle jars, but I did not.  I resorted to having to use mason jars, as you can see above.  The great thing about this is that it's vacuum sealable.  The bad thing is that it annoys me having them in mason jars.  Yes, it's practical, but I don't like the way they look.  Mason jars are for canning, imho.  Not for storing pretty things that I want to look at. It wouldn't be so bad if the rings were more decorative or the jars themselves didn't always have some kind of design or marking on them.  This obscures a clear view of the herbs, which I greatly value.  Again, aesthetics is 90% of why I buy a storage container for herbs.

I started with the herbs in largest quantity and started jarring them up.  What I don't like about bags is they will lay all over the place if you let them.  And you have to dig through them to find what you want.

Clean jar and a bag of raspberry ready to marry.

A brick of raspberry leaves. 

Raspberry and jar, married.

I repeated this for each of the others till I ran out of large candle jars.  I'll have to invest in some smaller candles.  They regularly go on clearance at my work place.  I melt the wax out and make briquets out of them and use them in my candle warmer.  That way I don't have to babysit a flame and I get my jar that much faster.  I know I could just buy jars online, but the shipping would make it cost the same as the candles, and then I miss out on getting the wax smally-good-ness.

Herbs rehoused in former candle jars.

After I ran out of large jars I resorted to the canning jars, as described above.

Herbs in mason jars.  At least till I can find better jars.

I had four different kinds of ginger.  Dried ginger chips, ground ginger, ginger flakes I had dehydrated myself, and whole pieces of dried out ginger.  I kept the ground ginger in my spice cabinet but moved the rest into one jar.  

It doesn't really matter how your herbs come if you plan to make inctures or syrups out of them.  I think it only really matters if you plan to make tea or something like that.  Maybe even for bath soaks, as it all soaks the same in a muslin bag.  

As for bath soaks:  Do what I do and toss them directly into the bag and pin some muslin over the drain when you get out.  I like the herbs floating loose in the water.  They change color when the vitality is washed out and you know your bath is at peak performance then.

There is my herb shelf before and after.  I have to keep it on the bottom shelf else my roomie will take too much notice of them and want to borrow borrow borrow.

Before

After

No matter if you use your herbs for medicine or for magic (these are for both) be sure to store them properly.  Less than airtight jars are fine if you use them quickly enough, but only vacuum sealing or freezing will work to preserve herbs you don't use that often.  

Salutations,

Sesh

The Halfway Homestead