We came out to the garden on Friday to the smell of smoke from the chimneys. The weather has finally changed and although it is late in coming, it feels like it happened overnight. Enter preoccupations with long underwear, firewood and lighters.

Every year at this time, I tell myself “time to dig up the Echinacea to make tincture.” We brought these echinacea plants (grown from seed) from our terrace in Istanbul and they were some of the first flowers we planted in the garden. I waited until they were two years in the ground and then figured it was time to dig them up. Thing us, I never did it. So every spring the echinacea would come up and I’d think “D’oh! Another year gone by with no tincture!”

Well I finally managed to dig those roots up this year. I’ve set aside about a third of them for planting again and will use the rest (500 grams). I’ll chop up the roots (if I had a super blender I could use that, but I don’t so I’ll use secateurs) and put them in a big jar with 750 ml of 95% alcohol and 250 ml of water (= 75% alcohol solution, more or less). Then I’ll shake the jar once a day for two weeks and at result should be a nice tincture to keep us from spending all winter blowing our noses. One nice thing about making echinacea tincture is that you can easily test the strength of it – it should make your tongue feel numb if you put a few drops of straight tincture on it.
I’ll let you know how it turns out!
P.S. – that formula is from the book, Making Plant Medicine by Richo Cech over at Horizon Herbs.