Herb Hack & Small Update on Me

Witchy Wisdom
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I saw a really neat hack for removing leaves from mint stems this morning and wanted to share it with you all! I was scrolling through Instagram this morning and saw a post by Prue Leith (from Great British Baking Show) where she shared that if you stick the stem of mint (or presumably other fresh herbs) down through the holes of a colander or steaming basket insert from a cooking pot, and then pull on the stem from the other side, it strips the leaves off the stem and the leaves are caught in the colander! :scream_cat:

If the hyperlink above doesn’t work, please let me know – I still have no idea how to use Instagram :sweat_smile: haha

Does anyone else have any cool herb hacks you’d like to share? :smiley:

Now for the update on me :sweat_smile: As a Kitchen Witch, I’ve always been drawn to herbs, and since I’ve been exploring the plants in my yard, I’ve become obsessed with the idea of also starting to get more into Green Witchcraft. I read Cooling Herbs for Hot Summer Days by the Herbal Academy and fell even more in love with the idea of using herbs not only for spellwork, but also potentially for health and wellness in general.

In addition to the yarrow that I found in my yard, I’ve also found spearmint, horseradish, juniper, sweet Annie, motherwort, burdock, plantain, and catnip!

As a reward to myself for making it through the super intense medical terminology and beyond boring ethics summer courses I’m taking, I decided to treat myself to an introductory herbalism course through the Herbal Academy! (Is more studying really a reward though?? :nerd_face: haha)

I looked around at various online herbal courses, and from what I could find, the one at Herbal Academy seemed to be by far the most in-depth and in-line with the topics I want to learn.

I don’t know whether I can recommend it or not yet since I just started, but I’ll try to remember to update y’all on my thoughs once I’m further into the course and/or finish it!

I’m only on Lesson 4 of Unit 1, and I’ve already learned so much – I can’t wait to learn even more and share what I’ve learned with you all! :green_heart:

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Thank you for sharing! That’s very exciting for you! I hope it expands your craft & you continue to want to learn & grow with it! :heart:

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Not a herb hack exactly, but one of my lavender plants started dying on me. No idea why, I’ve got an identical one that’s thriving in the same planter.

But I left it planted and its sort of dried itself out in the sun. So today I’ve taken off all the dried flowers and I’ve not got a jar full of lavender for spell work :slightly_smiling_face:

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Okay, that was very cool, watching her with that mint.

And congrats on the new herbal course, that sounds neat!

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I’m glad you’re finding your specialization in the Craft, Wade!! I hope you will share some of your most interesting discoveries with us along the way.

Also, whenever you like, it would be great if you can make a topic in the Recommendations category linking to the Herbal Academy if you have time to write a review, opinions, etc.

Blessed Be! :pray:

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Thank you :slight_smile: I’m really enjoying it so far, and it’s providing much more depth to my Kitchen Witchery – now I’m learning how to incorporate health/medicinal properties in addition to the magickal properties :nerd_face:

I’ll create a topic in the Recommendations category in the coming days as I get more background on the course to be able to provide more depth to my opinion :slight_smile:

I hope you had a great weekend and that your week gets off to a great start tomorrow! Blessed be :pray:

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Thanks for the very cool mint tip @Jewitch- I hadn’t heard of that de-stemming method before! :star_struck:

And congrats on starting the course with Herbal Academy! :tada: I love their free eBooks and they have some great content and tips on their blog, but as of yet I haven’t taken a full course with them. I’d also love to hear your thoughts as you go through the course! :heart::open_book:

Learning is a blessing, but I know you have a lot on your hands lately! Please remember to take breaks, rest well, and take good care of yourself as you enjoy your learning :pray::blush:

Happy asparagus picking to anyone who gives it a try! :grin:

Not sure if this counts, but when I was living in Tuscany a local showed me how to properly pick wild asparagus :herb:.

The trick is not to snip/cut it at the bottom like we would do with most herbs, but to gently grasp the asparagus and apply pressure as you pull your hand up the stalk. It will break naturally in the best spot- giving the picker the most delicious piece of asparagus (so you don’t have to snip off and waste any tough plant material) and leaving the plant strong enough to regrow again :muscle:

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That’s so awesome!! I have to try that hack!!! I have some rosemary that I dried and I’ve been procrastinating on!! I will try the hack!! Thanks! And if you love learning what you love, then yes learning is a reward! :relaxed::star:

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Let us know how it works with the rosemary if you give it a try! :star_struck:

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Oh, absolutely!!! I will do!!!

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Oh that’s such a good idea! :partying_face:

I don’t know if I have any sort of herb hacks besides using my Seek app to identify things in my yard. I did have to recently bring my mint plant inside because she wasn’t happy outside. I think a combination of things was going on but she just wasn’t having it. I brought her inside, cleaned her up a bit, and now she’s growing more new leaves! I’m going to have to cut her back again though because she’s already getting too tall for inside the house.

That course looks really interesting! I would love to do something like that someday so I hope you’ll let us know how it goes!

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I’ve been growing and drying all kinds of flowers lately. I’ve found that tying them to a string upside down is a little tricky looping the string around the little stems.

So I’ve discovered if I tie a little loose loop in the string first then put the stem through the pre-tied loop it works better when tightening the string down.

Its way easier then trying to hold the stem and tie the string at the same time.

I hope my description is understandable. That’s my latest hack! :heart: :herb: :blossom: :sunflower:

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That makes sense to me! I’ll have to try that – I’ve had difficulties getting herbs tied together too. Pre-making the loop sounds like a good solution! :smiley:

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I am really happy to know this @Jewitch, this reminds me of self love, where I believe it is always a blessing to take time out for yourself and anything thing that makes you happy. Since you are a kitchen that have always been drawn to herbs, i do wish you love and light exploring the plants in my yard and this new course.

Wishing you all the best on your path! :hugs:

Blesssd beđź’«

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I’ve started learning Italian through Babbel. I’ve always enjoyed studying if it’s for me and self-improvement, and as we’re planning to move to Italy at some point in the future I need to be able to speak the language!

I also studied for my Masters in Forensic Psychology an Criminology part time through the Open University whilst working full time as a Solicitor “for fun” :joy:

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@Jewitch the hack worked!!! I used both methods but I like the cheese grater better because it has smaller holes. I used it for rosemary. Now, I have more rosemary drying along with cilantro. Thanks so much!!!

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Yay! I’m so glad it worked! :heart_eyes_cat: Thanks for the update — I’ll definitely have to try it now :star_struck:

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Im definitely going to use this method from now on! :grin::pray:

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@Jewitch I’m a baby green witch and found an app to identify plants (also one for rocks lol) and went out walking in my neighborhood hood and yard taking pictures of all the different plants (my neighbors probably thought I was nuts) and was AMAZED by how many herbs and plants that I had randomly growing around me that I could use for spell work. Last month I actually harvested 3 lbs of yellow dock seeds, stems/leaves and roots just out of my own yard. I also found stinging nettle, cinquefoil, nightshade, plantain, yarrow and discovered that my neighbor actually has belladonna growing in her flower bed :flushed:of course I harvested some of everything after asking permission from nature and even got permission to cut a small amount of belladonna from my neighbor (though I’ve mostly just decided that it will just be a pretty item in a jar on my altar shelves because I’m so new to working with herbs and don’t wanna risk hurting anyone by attempting to actually use belladonna for any reason)

I found a neat herb hack. My mom has a small ghost plant growing in her kitchen window and I took a couple of the fallen leaves and placed them in a jar with a cork lid and put it in the Hinged lid box I keep all my herbs jars in on my altar. I never found anything I wanted to use it for and after a few months I noticed that the jar was full of liquid. But I left it be and about a month later noticed that it was all liquid and just had green gunk floating in it. Turns out that the liquid was chlorophyll. I had received some herb plants in the mail from across the country in a trade I made with another witch and they didn’t travel well by mail and so I researched trying to revive them by using the liquid chlorophyll I ended up with (you can even use the liquid chlorophyll you can buy in health food stores like GNC) and pouring it onto the soil when I watered my little plants. Sadly my plants were too far gone to save by the time I had this idea BUT it did make my aloe vera plant double in size and the arms on it doubled in thickness… If you don’t want to buy the liquid chlorophyll you just take some cuttings from a live plant and put them in a glass jar with a cork and store it in a dark place for a good while (like I said it took 2-3months for me to discover mine) and maybe shake it a little once a week or every other week and it should produce. I’m not sure but I think succulents may work best for this because the second batch I’m working on now is not producing nearly as much.

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Always leave plants/herbs/flowers dried or not in the open with oxygen. They’ll end up soggy like yours or moldy. I figured that out the hard way, too!!.

There’s an app for rocks called Rocks Identifier.

And this one:

Those are both great apps. But the first one you have to pay for after a 7 day free trial.

For plants,

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