Edible and Medicinal Plants

I’ve signed up for Wilderness Awareness School‘s Edible and Medicinal Plants course. It’s taught by John Gallagher, of Learning Herbs.

Have you ever wanted to know the plants that grow all around you? Would you like to learn how wild plants, even in cities, can both feed you and take care of your health? This informative and hands on weekend experience introduces participants to the most common and useful plants of our area through direct experiences of touching, eating, cooking, and making meals and medicines. The nature of this weekend offers a new relationship with plants--whether found in urban yards or vast wilderness--that intimately connects us to their lives while enhancing the nourishment, nutrition, and health of our own. Skills include:
  • Plant identification to confidence and safety
  • Herbal oils and salves for most minor first aid situations
  • Tincture making with wild plants for cold & flus
  • Herbal teas and infusions
  • Herbal nourishment for better daily health
  • Mineral vinegars: the ULTIMATE "vitamin"
  • Making a wild foods meal that is nutritious AND delicious
  • Poisonous plant identification
  • Herbal first aid so you can treat yourself naturally
  • AND lots of other fun herbal surprises
We will weave all these skills into a way for you to bring wild herbs into your life to enhance your health. What is seen by many as an overwhelming subject will be presented in a simple way, so you can easily access herbal wisdom on your own. There will be a good balance between class time and herbal activities. Students will go home with herbal remedies for their home first aid kits. Students will also go home with a free copy of Wild Foods for Every Table, an amazing 100 page wild foods books with delicious recipes such as sorrel soup, creamy nettle soup and spiced wildberry jelly.

For signing up early, John sent me the Herbal Remedy and Vitamin/Mineral wall charts. I recommend the Herbal Remedy chart – it’s been useful to me already.