Body Into Balance, With Maria Noël Groves | Tea Talks With Jiling

Jiling and Maria discuss favorite easy-to-grow herbs for a medicinal herb garden, “remedy gardens,” favorite herbs for delicious teas, increasing access for herbal classes within a for-profit business model, and more. We hope this conversation inspires your spring planting, growing, learning, and harvesting projects!
Citrus Essential Oils: How to Choose the Right Citrus Oil

Citrus essential oils are bright, sweet, and sour and are known to bring a smile to your face. They are energetically uplifting and engaging and pack a punch in DIY cleaning products. But which one should you use?
Organic citrus oils are cold-pressed from the fruit peel of various citrus trees. These lovely essential oils are mostly made up of the same constituents but vary in the amounts that they contain. (+)-Limonene is the primary monoterpene in all of them and contributes to their use in surface cleaners, room sprays, and soaps.
What Are Alkaloids in Plants & How to Extract Them

In our quest to unravel the tangled strings of phytochemistry, it’s important to understand that it takes time and practice to grasp the ins and outs. Taking it slowly, leaning into one constituent group at a time, can help the herbalist fully embrace their actions and needs. While studying the constituents in plants and the menstrua that extract and preserve them seems a bit too “science-y” for some, remember that is what the alchemists of yesterday were all about. Perhaps they didn’t have names such as polysaccharides, antioxidants, terpenes, and the like. However, they laid the groundwork for herbalists today with their attempts to classify and catalog the reactions of herbs in the bodies of their patients. It was in the 17th century that alchemy became chemistry as the emphasis leaned more toward experimentation and critical thinking and relied less on spirituality and mysticism. We, as experienced or budding herbalists, can explore both critical thinking and the mystical side of plants.
Buchu Leaf: A Complex Aroma That Herbalists Are Divided On

We all know some herbs that are good for us but don’t necessarily smell or taste appealing. Sometimes we have to get past an unpleasant smell to get the desired benefits we desire. We asked a few adventurous Mountain Rose Herbs Mercantile staff to take a quick break to smell one of our botanicals with a hard-to-describe aroma! Buchu leaf may not be anyone’s favorite smell, but it has a lot of uses. Around the world, you’ll find it in the perfume industry, as a component in artificial fruit flavors, and in alcoholic beverages, frozen dairy desserts, candy, condiments, and relishes. Buchu leaf can also be combined with other herbs and ingested as a healthful tea or tincture.
Hemp Essential Oil: What Is It, What Does It Smell Like, & Why Organic Certification Matters

Recently we had the opportunity to visit SunGold Botanicals in Philomath, Oregon. The brainchild of Isaac Daniel and Josh Gulliver, SunGold Botanicals was created to address the lack of infrastructure to process hemp into certified organic full spectrum oil and other products. Today SunGold Botanicals plays a central role in the organic hemp community here in our home state and is one of the first Demeter-certified Biodynamic hemp processing facilities in the nation. We love that they champion third-party certifications to promote transparency and integrity in an industry that was once the wild west. Turn on your diffuser, sit back, and take a trip to this organic farm to see the botanicals they grow and hear about the wonderful aromatic qualities of their certified organic hemp essential oil.