What to Do With Herbs You Grow – How To Make Essential Oils

Very informative……great blog

The Adventures of Thrive Farm

Plant materials for making homemade essential oils

The key to making homemade essential oils is in the choice of plant materials, such as :

Oils to use: Use a refined oil to attract the essential oils of the plant. Choose one that has pale color and mild scent. Olive oil, safflower oil and sesame oil all work well. Or you can use almond oil for cosmetics, safflower or canola for general purposes, and olive oil for cooking.

Flowers to use: Choose any of the following: roses, jasmine, pinks and carnation, violets, wallflowers, lavender, honeysuckle, hyancith, orange blossom, lily of the valley, sweet pea and heliotrope, frangipani, marigold.

Cut the flowers just before they are fully open and where possible, use the petals only. You can use a single type of flower or a mixture of 2 or more flowers.

Herbs to use: Almost any garden herb can be used to make essential oils. Cut the herbs…

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Identifying plants and weeds, Ontario-style!

This is very helpful advise

down the garden path

Back at work after the incredibly sunny Victoria Day long weekend when I hope you were all outside and taking advantage of the freedom to plant plant plant as the last frost date should certainly be behind us! Planning out the activity in both our community garden and my home garden this week, I’m getting excited to plant tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and all those exciting heat loving crops that we’ve been coddling on windowsills until now. It will be a busy week for sure, as we’ll also be assembling and planting our vertical potato garden. I’ve got a variety of potatoes sitting on my desk beside me which have been chitting (sprouting) all weekend and should be ready to plant by Thursday. Although chitting your potatoes is said not to be absolutely necessary, it gives them a head start, and a guideline for you to follow if you want to cut larger…

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