PLANTAIN HERB PREPARATION and USES

Hello friends and welcome back to my homestead. Today I have harvested a little pile of plantains or as I was taught to call it подорожник. That's how it's pronounced in Russian and подорожник means literally it's growing a side of the road or by the road or on the road and yes plantain can be found in anywhere where people where humans left their a trail right so it's gonna grow by hiking paths in even a very well compacted soil. Plantain is very forgiving and it's going to grow there and it's amazing because very often it is used by travelers to help to stop bleeding or to treat bug bites or bee stings something like that and I know in my family my kids know it by Russian name because if anybody cuts their finger or scrapes their knee and I quickly shout somebody go get подорожник because we're gonna make a poultice out of подорожник to apply to that area to help to disinfect stop the bleeding and it's so large that it can act as a very large band-aid really so подорожник plantain is widely used in my household. So I've decided to go in the back of my property and harvest some of my plantain before the goats made a big mess out of it because once the goats are on the field forget about it you don't want to harvest anything from there. Even though plantain grows by the road it doesn't mean that it's a good place to harvest it okay you guys know my spiel that it has to be clean ecologically placed and far far away from the major roads because once anything that runs down from the road is contaminated it's toxic and you don't want to harvest there but if you guys go on a hiking trail somewhere or you are visiting a friend who has a big backyard and you see these wild things growing I suggest you pick some so right now in the spring they are very young very small and actually edible okay they're edible a little bit um they have like well obviously they're very earthy tasting but slightly peppery but actually very pleasant to the taste so um I harvested a little pile and I washed it so you guys probably know my rule right so if I harvest and I always harvest from a clean places but still if it's a tall plant off of the ground far away off the ground where there's little chances of dirt splashing up then I don't wash that herb I let it be just the way it is but plantain grows very low to the road and they grow like little clusters right so yes I washed plantain triple triple washed it just to make sure there's no dirt no bugs nothing on it and now I need to somehow process this and I'm going to process in two ways today I am going to make a tincture out of it and you know my tinctures they're super super easy and you guys know that I like to use fresh plant material when I make my tinctures and the second method is I'm just going to cut them up and put it in my dehydrator to dehydrate for later use sorry the door was closing by the wind okay so um yeah so it's super super simple all right so I'm gonna need a couple of things well um you can use a knife if you like or you can use scissors and I have these funky scissors that cuts in many different um many different uh little slices right away so it saves time right because I'm gonna need a jar and I just have a mason jar with a cover and I like to use some um plastic cover most likely if you don't have a plastic cover you can use a metal cover but always line this with plastic first and then put a cover over because a metal can corrode and you don't want to do that so I'm using a plastic cover obviously I'm going to need my plant material and like I said I use fresh as long as it's clean and there's no water on it and then I'm going to be using um good quality vodka this one is what is it I don't even know what proof this is this one is potato uh vodka anyway okay so I'm just going to take the leaves and I'm going to chop them up and put them in my jar okay so the tincture will be used after it sits and uh matures for about six to eight weeks okay and I like to chop them into like little chunks because the more surface areas exposed the better it is for extraction of the medicinal properties so what is it used for it's obviously um a good antibacterial property so during a cold flu season it's good to use because it helps with cough it helps with bronchitis it helps to um like a mucolytic when it thins out your secretions and it helps to cough them up okay so but also it helps as a cough suppressant I've read in some literature calls it uh called cough suppressant so during allergy season uh people who have a lot of um runny noses it can be used for that as well so it is a allergy season right now all right so that what the tincture used for but it can be used fresh can be used fresh as juice so you can squeeze the juice out of it how I remember growing up growing up using it and we still use it to this day if anybody cuts themselves we quickly take fresh leaves and chop them up to release some of the juice and to apply to cuts and abrasions because it helps to stop the bleeding okay and it acts like a natural gigantic band-aid that just goes right over and let me tell you I have stopped some pretty serious bleeding um every time we injure ourselves here in a homestead and that happens a lot all right so I'm just chopping things up all right what else can it be used for well you can make a um you can make a salve and that can be used on minor burns I personally have not used it in such capacity but I have read that it can be used in such a way also it can be used for hemorrhoids so for someone who is dealing with very painful uncomfortable bleeding hemorrhoids it can be applied to hemorrhoids external hemorrhoids I should say as well all right so we talked about the colds we talked about the flu what else what else I took up my book here just to kind of refresh my memory we talked about the poultices right so all right so let me give you an example what can be done if you are out and about and hiking and you don't have a knife or scissors to cut up this plantain so I have done this uh in the pinch just chew it up and apply it as a poultice that way I know it's probably not the best method but when you're in the pinch and you've got to do something and you don't have anything else to disinfect your um wound with um like a surface cut or something that can be done in a such a way as well all right so bee stings bug bites can be applied straight to that area uh kind of scrapes we have done it all the time um but so right now I have half of it is filled up with fresh material and the rest I'm going to top off with vodka okay so I filled it up with alcohol all the way to the top and it was about half a little bit more than half of my fresh plant material so every day for the next couple of weeks I'm going to shake it just to make sure everything is covered with alcohol but then I'm going to only shake it once a week and it's going to sit in my cupboard for about six to eight weeks at that point I will strain it and I'm going to store the tincture in a dark glass bottle with a little dropper because tinctures are measured in drops and that's how I'm going to be using it uh later when we have any allergy issues cold bronchitis coughs that sort of thing all right right here so also I'm going to dehydrate this to be used in tea um so quick little story how much we can use of it um there's some literature that says that we can use if we're using them in capsules they do sell them as in capsules three to six grams per day and if we're going to be using them in tea three to four cups of tea per day is safe to use in the past I have dried them whole just like this after harvesting them and you know it's a hit or miss as far as drying them successfully because um if you don't have a dehydrator and you just want to dehydrate your herbs in a well-ventilated area uh far away from the direct sunlight sometimes it works and I have dehydrated this in the past and it worked fine however we live in New England where it's super super humid so one year actually they did not dry well and they went moldy and I had to discard the whole batch so now from now on I don't leave them whole I cut them up and I put them on a dehydrating tray on a dehydrating tray with a little with a little plastic special mesh so nothing falls through and I put it in a dehydrator for a few hours because it has different parts to the plant to the leaf it has firm parts it may dehydrate a little longer and then so you just have to keep an eye on it but I'm going to dehydrate probably about for six hours and we'll see what what happens I find that if I chop it up in a smaller pieces it dries faster and it dries more uniform rather than if I leave them in big big chunks you know the big fat chunks so that's what I'm going to be doing I'm just going to be chopping them up and putting them in a dehydrator all right so one more thing I wanted to mention besides the cold flu the runny nose the bronchitis tea also can be used for sore throats okay so I remember as a kid we mama made tea out of it for us in the winter when we had sore throats all right so this is pretty simple this is actually very enjoyable I'm outside on my on my porch sitting here in a shade under the umbrella and all I'm just doing I'm just going to cut them up and I'm going to put them in a single layer on my dehydrating tray all right so friends I hope you are enjoying learning about herbs and how to use them every day these common common herbs that pretty much anyone I know have access to them okay just just be careful picking them in the public place where the dogs are being you know walking or something make sure these are clean places okay because you want to you want to bring clean material home when you preserving your own herbs okay this can also be found in herbal shops pretty very simple because it's so common and it's so cheap to obtain all right but friends I hope you are encouraged to learn about herbs and be more self-sufficient when it comes to treating common ailments at home okay on this note I'm gonna say thank you for watching please subscribe and share with those who might be interested and I hope you stay encouraged and try something new