Herbal Medicine | Calendula


hey guys it's me i'm so glad that you're joining 
me i'm going to talk to you about my favorite   flower calendula one of the most rewarding flowers 
to grow the more you pick them the more they grow   calendula is a herbal medicine and today i'm going 
to show you three ways that you can incorporate it there is some controversy about making calendula 
oil i was first introduced to calendula as a   medicinal plant by rosemary gladstar one of her 
books that i read now following rosemary gladstar   and i am taking a course a herbalism course 
by her i learned from her that the best time   to pick the flower is when it is very warm and 
sticky there's a lot of resin on the plants and   that actually has a lot of medicinal 
purposes when it has that resin on it   now following her method you take the fresh flour 
put it in the oil and have the oil cover it the   controversy is is that there's a lot of others out 
there that say that you do run the risk of getting   fungus on it doing it that way and a lot of people 
prefer to dry the flower and do it that method   i've been doing it rosemary gladstar's way and 
i don't have any fungal issues on the ones that   i have done there's no fungus no problems with 
it but because of the controversy i have been   toying with the idea of an experiment 
and that's why i have saved some flowers   and i have them dried to do a comparison so that's 
what i'm going to show you guys with this with my   calendula oil making calendula oil is a lot easier 
than most people think it would be it's just a   matter of filling up a jar three-fourths full of 
calendula flowers whether it be the fresh method   of rosemary gladstar or of the dry flower method 
when you fill that up three-fourths of the way   you want to top it off with oil and have that 
oil an inch from the top now if it's a medicinal   purpose you're going to want to use olive oil if 
you're not using olive oil and you're just wanting   to do it for a cosmetic type of recipe you can use 
grape seed oil almond oil or apricot kernel oil   now that you have your oil covering the flowers 
you want to take and put these in a sunny location   a sunny window in your house that gets a lot of 
sun and you're going to have it there for three to   four weeks after the three to four weeks you need 
to put this in a cool dark spot and it's good for   a year the oil itself can go ahead and be used 
for any rashes anything that's going on in your   skin that's irritating a lot of people prefer to 
use it in a salve and i'm going to show you guys   how to make that before i show you how to make the 
salve i want to point out to you how differently   the rosemary gladstar method calendula oil looks 
compared to the dried flowers these flowers as   i said were something that i picked fresh and 
put in here per her method you'll notice that   it doesn't look as full in the jar these were very 
large sticky flower blooms when i put them in here   so as they become more saturated with the oil and 
putting the resin into the oil and shrinking down   it doesn't look as full as these do for the 
calendula salve you're going to need one cup   of calendula oil as you see i have two jars here 
i'm going to go ahead and strain that and get that   oil ready you also need to have some beeswax we're 
going to be using 1 4 cup of some grated beeswax   and you want to reserve about a 
tablespoon and put it aside you also   want to have some lavender essential oil you 
also want to use a pinch of turmeric root   fortunately for us we grew some turmeric and 
i'm going to put a card above for that video   we're going to be using the double boiler 
method and for this method once it gets nice   and warm you're going to go ahead and add your 
calendula oil and your beeswax once it is melted   all together you're going to take a spoonful 
and put it in the freezer for two minutes   the reason that you want to do this is 
so that you can check the consistency   this is why we held a tablespoon of the beeswax to 
the side this is only two minutes and it's still   soft so i'm going to add the rest of that 
if you want it to be firmer you're going to   add that tablespoon in if you want it to be a 
little softer you're going to add a little bit   more calendula oil so we've made the calendula 
oil the calendula salve now i'm going to show   you how to make calendula cream for the calendula 
cream you're going to need 1 cup of calendula oil   1 ounce of beeswax you're also going to 
need 4 to 6 drops of essential oil for this   i'm using lavender and orange oil you're 
also going to need one cup of tepid water   and just to explain that's about 60 to 100 
degrees temperature of water so for this next step   i'm going to get two cups of the boiling water 
and put it into the blender and i'm going to blend   that up and what you're doing essentially is just 
heating up the blades you're heating up the unit   we are going to dump that water 
out before we put the oil in here   now we're going to be putting our oil and 
our beeswax that we've melted down into it we're going to start blending this up and as 
we're blending this we're going to slowly add   the tepid water into it through the little spigot 
halfway through you should take and scrape it down   from the sides with a spatula 
to try to get a nice even mix so now that we've made our salve and our cream 
we have some oil left over and we can put those   in our containers and use that as well with 
each of the recipes that i've shared with you   we've ended up with a total of eight ounces of 
the calendula oil 12 ounces of the calendula cream   and eight ounces of the calendula salve these 
are all four ounce little containers that i got   on amazon and i will add that link below if that's 
something you'd like for when you make it i hope   you like this video i really enjoy working with 
herbs if you like this video give us a thumbs   up it really helps our channel out if you want to 
see more videos of us working with herbs culinary   or medicinal we're going to add a playlist 
above here and until the next time let's grow together

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