permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

Feedback about this would be useful. This is poison ivy season.

I started thinking about homemade herbal/plant medications when I got a bad
case of poison ivy. I tried making a salve with the following ingredients.
Some ingredients in this list are ones I did not use but thought might be
good to add if you had them on hand.

plantain, rattlesnake or broadleaf
jewelweed
comfrey
goldenseal
aloe vera
These would be good to use also:
mint
lavender
raw organic honey
witch hazel might be good to add as well, esp. for poison ivy

Two preps could be made:
I.
Macerate the fresh leaves (and seed pods?) of comfrey, jewelweed stems (are
flowers and leaves useful too?), aloe vera, mint, lavender and plantain.
Add goldenseal powder and aloe vera juice if fresh plants are not
available, same with dried lavender. Mix the ingredients together and apply
to poison ivy rash or a burn as a poultice. Wrap with a cloth bandage to
keep it in place. Depending on the severity of the poison ivy change the
dressing using freshly prepared herbs as often as needed. At the start of
poison ivy rashes I would change it every few hours decreasing in frequency
as healing is indicated, easy to detect when changing poultices. I have
never heard of using jewelweed for burns but it could work; all the rest of
the poultice ingredients would be required for fast healing. Jewelweed is
the most effective of all for poison ivy
and honey is an antibiotic and prevents infection, useful when treating
burns.
II.
Combine all the macerated and mixed ingredients in 1) and immerse in water,
add witch hazel if appropriate and put in spray bottle; not sure about
adding unpasteurized cider vinegar but it might be OK; it has probiotics.
-- 
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/