The Power of Dandelions

foreign [Music] [Music] thank you foreign good morning it's really lovely here we're in between two bouts of rain and today is perfect it's dry it's warm it's sunny it's a perfect day to go out and do some harvesting of the wild spring weeds and today I'm really going out to look for dandelion because I've been checking my Apothecary here to see what needs to be replenished and the dandelion I've only one bottle left and why would we bother with dandelion I mean so many people are spraying it and trying to kill it off but it's actually one of the most beneficial wild plants that we have and everybody should be taking it really because it it helps the kidneys the liver the skin the teeth a blood pressure everything um so I'm gonna head outside collect some of the dandelions that I've spotted and we'll talk a bit more about it and then if you say to the end you can see how we can use dandelion as medicine I'll show you some different ways to use it thank you wow Blue Sky fluffy white clouds [Music] what could be better so look there's a few here thing one of the things I've noticed is when you're going out to harvest something you just tend to suddenly see it everywhere so I've got my little trowel here first of all I'm going to take the flower heads because they are medicine and food you could put these into your salad but you can also make a medicine with them I'm going to take that one so of course these are food for pollinating insects so I'm not going to take that one because there's a little B on it already there's another little fly or swimming on that one so always just take five to ten percent of any little group of plants that you're harvesting so um oh look here's one as well but I'll leave that oh here's here's more let me see if I can get any leaves if we can get this one out because we're looking for roots as well oh now so we've got leaves look at that look at the the way the leaf is shaped it's very indicative of dandelion because we've got these sharp teeth we've got the flower head on one single Hollow stem there's lots of flowers that look like dandelion but they might be on multiple brackets coming off the stem and the root you can see the root is white inside so there we have so there's lots more down here oh what a lovely day now here I'll go to that patch there's lots to gather on the way back now look at this little flower I'll show you now that might look to some people like a dandelion flower but I'll just show you the difference because it is a little bit confusing okay here is a dandelion this is a cult's foot they're very similar but look at the difference in the stem this is a plain Hollow stem it has latex like a white milky fluid inside this is Colt's foot it's quite um scaled there's like little scales on the stem and obviously the dandelion flower is larger in this case so we're looking for dandelions and obviously the leaves are very distinctive as well now I'm heading for this bunch here lovely lovely clump of dandelions so all of these flowers can come and as I said they're very nice they add a beautiful um beautiful Touch of color into a salad so I want the leaves and The Roots as well oh coming up pretty easily just loosen it because it's easy to you know for the roots to break off so I just want to get in there leverage that out oh look at these fantastic see the whiteness of the root inside look at that that's fantastic so there's several dandelions here so the I'll tell you why we're using dandelions so the roots are excellent for the liver they support and help tone the liver clean the liver make it more efficient so if your liver is efficient everything else is going to just fall into place and work in a much better way so so after the you know the sedentary time of winter and being sloth like we're waking up now with a beautiful sunshine and the fresh spring weather and it we want to feel more energized and active and that's where the those beautiful Roots I'm absolutely thrilled with those this is where the Roots come in so we can do several things with the roots which I'll talk about inside and then the the leaves are excellent for the kidneys and again the kidneys are an organ of elimination we want them to work smoothly we want them to work efficiently and there may need a little bit of help again after being sedentary through the winter so the leaves are a diuretic so they're going to help you eliminate waste through urine and that will also help to relieve blood pressure but one of the good things about dandelion is a diuretic is that it has a lot of potassium so your salts don't become imbalanced as they would do with um a pharmaceutical diuretic Plus lots of diuretics that you may get from your practitioner they can not only uh relieve you of your potassium but they can also relieve you of your B vitamins and your magnesium so you really need to keep those things in the body to to protect the heart so this ultimately is good for the heart and if something is also good for the liver that's going to impact on the skin so you have fresher clearer skin so dandelion is really looking after many systems in the body and of course the leaves can also be added into your salad because the bitterness of the leaves stimulate the digestive system making it work better for you so that you absorb all the nutrients from your food but on top of that the leaves can also if you chew them up can help restore your teeth enamel foreign for one morning's harvesting because there's a lot of processing to do here so I'm going to go back to the house and I'll show you how to make medicine with this lovely look at it beautiful dandelion come on Jazz and broke [Music] thank you so I just want to impress on people that um it's easy to get carried away with enthusiasm and rush out and harvest everything you see but there's no need to do that because look look at all I have here after just about five minutes or less and I have enough to make enough medicine for all of these jars and I can go out another day and get more because dandelions you know they're here for the summer really so this time I'm taking all the flowers off and I'm going to cover them with oil and that will be used when that's infused after six weeks that will be used to make a salve and the Salve will be used for people who have Rheumatic or arthritic pain in their joints and muscles so it can be rubbed on to relieve pain so you see dandelion is one of those wonderful plants that just is amazingly generous and altruistic okay so I've taken off the heads and I'm just going to leave those to sit there for a few minutes just to kind of Wilt before I make a sound um Infuse them in oil so I'm going to separate the leaves and the roots with roots we can tincture them fresh which is what I'm going to do now we can dry them and put them with the dried leaves and then we can make a tea by decocting The Roots if you want to know what all these terms mean you might think about doing the herbal medicine course which is a digital course and I explain all of this medicine making in much more detail than I can do here but we're going to make teas tinctures and decoctions with the roots just going to cut off The Roots put that in the sink to be washed we'll keep the leaves separate and these just fabulous so I've separated the leaves the roots and the flowers and we're chopping them all up the roots some of them are quite large so I'm going to split them down the middle before I chop them in half so we're chopping it up as small as we can to ensure that there's lots of surface area available for the alcohol to extract all the vitamins and minerals and all the bitter principle and all the other good things that are in the dandelion all that medicine so that we can then benefit from it all the roots are chopped up and I'm now going to chop the leaves foreign now I've got leaves left here which I could dry in a paper bag or in a dehydrator and I've got the flowers this it's very difficult to dry the flowers because they turn straight into the seed heads and then you just left with a pile of fluff so um I'm going to put I'm just going to put a couple of flowers in with this so this is going to make a tincture and to do that I'm just going to fill the jar so I have what's called it this is a full plant tincture because I have um the roots and I have the leaves and I have a couple of flowers so when you're making a tincture it's the exact same process for any plant because some people said well how do you make a tincture for this plant exactly the same you chop up the ingredients as finely as you can you pop them into your jar and then you cover them with alcohol now if alcohol has to be 40 proof otherwise it's not going to extract um everything now when I say 40 proof I'm talking about European measurements um it's slightly different in the US I think you would literally say 80 to 100 Proof but it's the same thing it's just the way it's the way it's manufactured let's make sure there are no bubbles in here you can use vodka I use vodka because it doesn't really have any taste and it's perfect clear liquid so you can see when the tincture is made how it changes color because it's extracted so many of those wonderful constituents but you could use whiskey and you could use gin although I don't know why you would put the lid on always label always label because I'm not kidding when I say you can end up with waste because you just don't know what it is you think you'll remember but you never do so on this label I'm saying dandelion root and leaf tincture because I could just make a root tincture or I could just make a leaf tincture but today I've got both and today's date it's the first of April although it is after midday so this is not a joke so that is my tincture there I've got leaves to dry for tea because it's nice to have a dandelion tea and I've got these few little flowers and I'm going to make a salve with the flowers so they go into the jar they've wilted now for about half an hour but because they're fresh I'm putting in a little cap full of vodka to prevent spoilage and I put in my olive oil let me just cover and this is organic olive oil so that's going to cover these and they're going to infuse for about four to six weeks as well so the dandelion flowers are going to infuse in the oil for four to six weeks again I'm labeling and then that oil will be strained off and um with cocoa butter and Beeswax it will be Blended to make a salve so one plant we can make so much medicine we can make teas we can make detox decoctions we can make tinctures we can make oil infused salves and um it's it's really brilliant to think that this is something that grows right outside it's free you can even put it into your salad you can improve your teeth and um you have that wonderful experience of being creative which is empowering because you're creating your own medicine and that can never be spoken of too lightly that is so powerful and amazing so I hope you get happily crafting over Easter it's a perfect time of year everything is so fresh and vibrant and you will not be sorry that you've made yourself treated yourself loved your body enough to make medicine like this so let me know if you're making medicines let me know how you get on with your um dandelion there's dozens of other recipes people are making um cough syrups they're making soft drinks they're making marmalades and things just be as creative as you can be and come up with something wonderful and share it in the comments below and all the other details about the The herbal course that I mentioned are in the box below so have a wonderful weekend and I'll see you next week [Music] enjoyed today's film for notifications and have a look at the website danu's Irish herb garden.com for more information about us and about the herbal medicine courses I offer and the wise woman way training and if you go to the shop you can find the books the read handbooks and other herbal goodies and remember we put a new film out every Sunday so looking forward to seeing you next week foreign [Music]

Channel: Danu's Irish Herb Garden

Views: 1,412,021

Keywords: Danu, Mother Goddess, Herbs, Plant Wisdom, Healing, Natural World, Nature, Irish Cottage, cottage life, self sufficiency, Wild plants, medicinal plants, foraging and growing, Divine Feminine, Goddess, Dandelion, Spring Herb

Id: cSo2YDCJLs8

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2023