homegrown vs commercial

[Guest guest]

Do you harvest your Echinacea flowers & leaves the first, second or

third year?

 

Heather

[Guest guest]

As soon as it flowers, usually the second year. Lou

 

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" oleanderscents " <oleandertwo

<herbal remedies >

Saturday, June 12, 2004 7:05 PM

Herbal Remedies - homegrown vs commercial

 

 

> Do you harvest your Echinacea flowers & leaves the first, second or

> third year?

>

> Heather

[Guest guest]

Heather,

 

From all of my studies, my knowledge of echinacea is that the root is the most effective part of the plant. Some people I know do make a separate tincture of some flower and leaf but what I know and the studies I have seen, the root is the part of the plant you want to use. I also feel that echinacea in powdered form is not the most effecient way of working with the plant. Many plants need to extract their medicine into an alcohol base over many weeks. In my opinion echinacea is one of them.

 

In fact there was a big study recently that most of you probably heard of, then gave children tablets of the ariel portions of the plant (leaf, stem and flower) and said that echinacea wasn't effective.......... I know that using the root works, so....

 

Anyway, this is just my opinion.

 

In terms of the 3 years. I was taught that when harvesting roots, you want to let the roots mature for 3 years prior to taking part of the root system so that the plant will stay alive and reproduce the following year. The roots will be effective first year, but you want the plant to be healthy for the next year. Once my plants were a few years old and I started to harvest the roots(which I harvest after a hard frost so that the energy is back in the root and not up in the plant) my plants became so much stronger and bigger. It's wonderful

 

Bonnie Rogers