The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Survival Gardening - Docks and Sorrels

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey y'all, welcome to this week's show. Today we're transitioning just a little bit from the common culinary herbs you might grow in your garden that have medicinal uses, to some that might already be growing all around you. You know, I've said before that I tend to like my garden to look a little wild. Well, one of the reasons is, I like weeds. Weeds that are useful, weeds that that are useful weeds that are edible weeds that are medicinal some of these i'm going to list some wild edibles here that may already be growing all around you if not you can cultivate them in your garden and most people don't even know they're weeds if you're actually growing them in a row and letting them flower and everything.

Starting point is 00:00:53 But I have a whole book on weeds and the medicinal weeds and grasses of the American South, especially in terms of weeds and grasses. They're not by any means confined to the American South. In fact, most weeds are considered to be invasive species. They were brought here from somewhere else. In other words, our ancestors brought them here to be used as food and medicine. And for some reason, we got hooked on having these pristine green lawns and started calling things weeds. Well, they happen to be usually among some of the most nutritious and potently medicinal plants there are. And they're often growing wild all around us. And I mean, you're going to find these plants

Starting point is 00:01:31 from well throughout the continental United States. I mean, from Maine to South Florida, from Oregon to Southern California, and everywhere in between. A lot of these will grow in anywhere from a moist climate where i live to a desert they grow up into canada they grow in down into mexico they're great weeds need to be far more appreciated and i have an entire book it just was published earlier this year as i said called the weeds and grasses the american medicinal weeds and grasses american southeast you can find on amazon and um, you know, the links to my blog and my subject newsletter and everything are in the show notes and you'll find a link there if you want to get it directly

Starting point is 00:02:13 from me. You know, great point, place, great opportunity for me to just put in a little plug. Remember me when you're doing your Christmas shopping. My books make great gifts. remember me when you're doing your Christmas shopping my books make great gifts and so does my woodcraft my my you know carved kitchenware spoons bowls the baskets I make one-of-a-kind unique items I had some beautiful spoons and cooking spoons scoops different things on the site right now made from wild cherry a wild

Starting point is 00:02:45 cherry tree that fell in a winter storm in my yard and a paper birch that did the same and one-of-a-kind unique gifts that you're not gonna find anywhere else you're not gonna buy something like that at Walmart and the prices are incredibly reasonable I want I always try to make everything affordable because I'd rather have people have something of mine use it and appreciate it and pass it down than not. So especially as expensive as things are like Walmart and stuff these days with Bidenomics and inflation. My stuff's a pretty darn good deal actually and it's not made by slave labor in China. And also, as far as the book, Medicinal Weeds and Grasses,

Starting point is 00:03:30 if you give someone a gift subscription to my Substack newsletter, the Southern Appalachian Herbs newsletter, they get a free e-book of their choice, and you could recommend the Weeds and Grasses or keep it for yourself, even. If you email me and say, I gave someone a subscription to your Substack newsletter, but I want the book myself, hey, it's your money. I'll send you the book. And the books, my eBooks usually sell for $9.99 and a month, a one month subscription to the Substack newsletter is only eight bucks. So you're actually getting an incredibly good deal if that was something you wanted to do.

Starting point is 00:04:06 But now let's get on with the show. As I said, it's very important to learn to identify edible plants, and I'm soon going to have a whole book on foraging coming out, so look forward to that. But the edible and medicinal plants that are growing all around us, often called weeds, are really worth cultivating as well. For instance, dandelion is one we've discussed. Burdock is one we've discussed. Purslane, pokeweed, wild roses, all these are very medicinal.

Starting point is 00:04:39 They're considered weeds. Poke has really pretty purple stems and everything. There's no reason you couldn't grow it in your garden if you weren't comfortable with that growing in pots and a lot of people used to do this more commonly yule gibbons even wrote about it they would grow several poke plants in pots so they could bring them in and eat the greens all winter that way you know poke greens are very delicious, they're very tasty, they're very nutritious, and you know, the berries and the root have some

Starting point is 00:05:12 toxicity, but are medicinal. And so people would cultivate, even in town, people who had grown up in the country and liked to eat their poke greens, would grow poke weed in pots, and I do. I keep a couple in pots so I can overwinter them and have them when I want them. And dry some roots out in case I get a bad flu or something. It's a very good lymph purgative, although the berries and the roots do have some toxicity, and you have to use that with care. The instructions are in my herb books on how to do that. Dandelions, when you find them in nature or chicory, the greens can be very bitter. If you grow them in the garden with good

Starting point is 00:05:52 soil, the greens are not that bitter. And you have more access to the flowers if you want to make dandelion wine or syrup or if you want to make a tea from the roots. Percoline will probably grow in every crack in your sidewalk. It's one of the best edible and medicinal plants, weeds so-called, to grow along the edges of walkways and garden paths. It just likes, I mean, it loves the desert climate. So anywhere it can get some sun and dry out a little rocky, poor soil, it's going to do great. So, I mean, start thinking about incorporating these into your yard, but definitely learn to identify them in the wild because they could save your life. I mean, if we were in a grid-down situation from war to another COVID lockdown to, you know, like, well, it was what, about this time last year where I was in

Starting point is 00:06:45 North Carolina visiting relatives and we had a terrorist attack. Somebody shot up a power station and like three quarters of the county was without power on Thanksgiving morning. People couldn't go to the grocery store to buy food. If you know how to identify food around you, fortunately we had just stocked up for Thanksgiving meals, so there was turkey and there was collard greens and potatoes and everything we needed, and I just had to rig up a little grill and start doing my normal kind of hillbilly cooking, and everything came together just fine. But a lot of people had to go to emergency shelters and such because they didn't have heat or food no that's

Starting point is 00:07:32 that's why we do this as preppers it can be a winter storm it can be a hurricane or it can be a terrorist attack and you really do or another covet lockdown you really do need to be ready lockdown you really do need to be ready one of one of the ones that you can really grow as an ornamental is nasturtium we'll get into that in a minute but that's a very pretty plant chrysanthemum by the way has some and there's an edible chrysanthemum and all the chrysanthemums have medicinal properties so we'll get into that a little bit but let's start with something you're gonna see around you pretty. They're docks and sorrels. There are garden docks and sorrels. They've been cultivated. They've been improved, as they say. They're not quite

Starting point is 00:08:16 as bitter or tough. And they're in high demand in high-end grocery stores and restaurants. They're some of the tastiest salad greens and pot herbs there are. They're two different herbs. They're really used interchangeably, though. In fact, really up until all the taxonomy guys started doing their work, docks and sorrels, the same name was used for either. Now, a sorrel can be anything from sheep sorrel, which is common weed in North Carolina, to wood sorrel, which most people call shamrocks, to those garden sorrels.

Starting point is 00:08:51 Docks come in all different shapes and sizes. You usually find them where the ground's a little damp. They're very abundant where I live. They're very tasty. I throw them in with everything. Red dock is pretty common where I live. Bloody dock is actually a popular garden ornamental because they've gotten it to where it has green leaves but it gets these red streaks through it. Very pretty as a plant. You could definitely grow this in an HOA or POA

Starting point is 00:09:18 garden and really very nutritious, very good for you. The wild varieties of the herbs are generally stronger medicinally, and really they're so common in my area, I don't grow these in my garden. I mean, I can go out anytime between spring and really early fall, even mid-fall in some spots, and collect all the docks and sorrels I need. They're a weedy type of plant. They grow in disturbed soil or what you call waste places. Docks especially like a little dampness. So be careful if there's contamination from a road runoff

Starting point is 00:09:55 or a field where somebody's done a lot of pesticides. Sorrels, I mean, in old worn-out cotton fields and such, down in the central and eastern part of the Carolinas, where nothing will grow, the ground has been so contaminated, so stripped of all nutrition, you'll find sheep sorrel growing throughout. We used to call it sour wheat as a kid. It was probably the first wild plant I learned to forage, actually. wild plant I learned to forage actually. So if you if you live in an environment like that where you did have a lot of pesticide damaged land and chemical fertilizer has been dumped on there for

Starting point is 00:10:33 centuries and all that you might want to grow them in your garden because you really don't know what might be running off those fields. Also very popular they would just spray the the fields down with sludge you know sewage essentially, as a fertilizer. And you don't know what's in there. People pour all kinds of stuff down their sinks. They take all kinds of pharmaceuticals. So in that case, if you don't live in the pristine mountains where I live, yeah, I'd probably get a pack of seeds and grow them in a garden pit. But most times, you can and grow them in a garden pit but most times you can

Starting point is 00:11:05 absolutely um you can absolutely find them in the wild i mean one of my favorite things to do is go fishing and i've said this so many times but if you maybe it's the first time you've heard the show i catch some trout have a campfire right by the creek i go find myself some sorrel usually some wood sorrel like that looks like shamrocks, you know, or maybe some docks, and it's lemony, right? It has a lemony flavor. So I will stuff my fish with that and a little wild onion, salt and pepper. Usually maybe wrap it in bacon and fry it in a pan or wrap it up in burdock leaves and cook it directly on the campfire. The coals,

Starting point is 00:11:46 not in the flames, but in the coals. Fantastic. One of the best meals you will ever have in your entire life. The lemony flavor though, the citrusy flavor comes from oxalic acid. So you would not want to rely on these plants as a primary source of your diet in other words you wouldn't want to like you you wouldn't want to use them as like your survival staple even though they do grow very abundantly oxalic acid can actually inhibit the absorption of calcium and other minerals so a lot of well sometimes you'll read people just really warning against it. I don't think it's any big deal.

Starting point is 00:12:26 I mean, if you had a small serving of them a day, yeah, no big deal. I mean, even a fairly moderate serving of them a day, or if you just eat them seasonally like I do, I don't see any problem unless you just, you know, gorge yourself on them three meals a day every day. But, you know, take it with a grain of salt. Trust the experts. I'm not a doctor. I just kind of know from my own experience. Like with poke greens, you know, poke salad doesn't bother me.

Starting point is 00:12:50 Some people are so afraid of the poke plant, you know, it's crazy. I use it both edibly and medicinally. No problem. I've read such crazy statements as you have to boil the greens three times and then fry them in fat. Or they'll make you really, really sick really sick well I actually just eat them raw sometimes I mean yeah I maybe it's just me maybe I have a stronger Constitution maybe because I grew up eating them I have built up a tolerance I have no idea I do know that if you had a very strong poke root tincture and you took a large

Starting point is 00:13:23 amount of it it could kill you. That's true. But, you know, every year or so, some kids will go eat the berries and parents start getting frantic and call them poison control. And they're just like, you know, calm down. The kid's going to throw up and be okay. And the kid throws up. He's okay. But, you know, kid with a very weak constitution could get very sick.

Starting point is 00:13:44 I'm not saying don't listen to the warnings. It's just, you know, use some common sense. I mean, they used to sell poke salad, the greens, and poke shoots in cans in grocery stores even when I was a kid. Nobody, you know, freaked out about things the way they do now. So I guess really the only real warning I would give on that oxalic acid. Oh golly, I've got to reposition myself in the chair here. Oh, my knee is still just trash from falling off that ladder a couple of weeks ago, but it's getting better. I'm not complaining. I just can't cross my legs for very long. All right. If you have rheumatoid arthritis

Starting point is 00:14:22 or prone to kidney stones or hyperacidity, then you would probably want to be pretty careful. And even then, you're still looking more at large amounts, larger than most people are going to eat, in my opinion. But use your own common sense. And remember, always listen to the disclaimer at the end of my show. I give no medical or dietary advice. I just tell you what I think.

Starting point is 00:14:44 These herbs have astringent properties and laxative properties primarily. Disclaimer at the end of my show, I give no medical or dietary advice. I just tell you what I think. These herbs have astringent properties and laxative properties primarily, and were very popular in Elizabethan England. In fact, Culpeper, who was a herbalist in the 1600s, pretty much lumped docks and sorrels together, and he especially liked the yellow dock as a liver tonic or what they call a blood cleanser. He said all of them have a kind of cooling and drying quality the sorrel being the most cold and the blood warts being most drying and then he starts actually talking about burdock as well as one of the docks. You know, it's a very different plant.

Starting point is 00:15:26 But all docks being boiled with meat make a good broth, essentially, and a good food. He really thought it would help strengthen the liver and build the blood. Procures good blood is how he put it. Being wholesome as a pot herb as any that groweth in the garden. being wholesome as a pot herb as any that groweth in the garden. Yet such is the nicety of our times, forsooth, that women will not put it into the pot because it makes the pottage black. Pride and ignorance, a couple of monsters in creation,

Starting point is 00:15:56 preferring nicety before health. That's why we still read Nicholas Culpepper. He was a real character. He was the one who translated all the medical texts, the pharmacy manuals and medical books, out of Latin and put them in English so the common person could treat themselves. And thanks for doing that. The apothecaries, the pharmacy guilds of their days, and the doctors first had to have him charged with crimes, then accused him of witchcraft. And eventually he found himself on the wrong side of the English Civil War and was shot and killed in battle. The Sorrels, he liked the Sorrels, of course, just as I do, because they're a little more lemony.

Starting point is 00:16:46 And they quenched the thirst. He said it was very good for stimulating appetites. He had essentially weak stomachs. And good for agues, which are fevers. And he also said it was good as what they used to call a blood cleanser or a tonic, just something to kind of boost the immune system. And for killing worms, interestingly. And he said it was also a cordial to the heart,

Starting point is 00:17:09 meaning it made the heart calmer and more comfortable. And this is also actually rather important. The sorrels do have sort of an astringent, or what he would call a drying and binding capacity. Makes them good for diarrhea, for one one thing but also excessive menstruation can be very useful so you know you can see these are really good to have on hand for both food and medicine he goes on and on really about the sorrels he used them to expel kidney stones and urinary gravel. Good for jaundice, inward ulcers of the body and bowels, so stomach ulcers and such.

Starting point is 00:17:53 And as a poultice made with vinegar for ulcerated sores, tetters, ringworms, etc. Good to help also as a poultice reduce swelling of the glands in the throat. Juice gargled in the mouth helps heal the sores therein. And he liked it for boils. He liked it for all kinds of stuff. And one of the very important aspects of the sorals andcks that was especially important in times past is they have what's called an anti-scorbutic property. In other words, they contain vitamin C. And, you know, our ancestors suffered greatly from scurvy, whether they were on ships

Starting point is 00:18:37 or they were in the Appalachian Mountains or New England in these cold climates in the wintertime, and they had no fresh food to eat. They were living entirely on stored food, smoked meats, potatoes, and such. And scurvy would give them, oh, everything from skin sores to the teeth falling out to, you know, you can die from scurvy. So anything that had what they call an anti-scorbutic property was very sought after, and the sorrels and docks fall into that category so that's one that you know

Starting point is 00:19:10 start look for it in in the spring you're gonna start spotting your sorrels and docks everywhere once you get used to looking for them you'll also spot some other really good edible weeds and such that are in my book on edible weeds and grasses that usually grow right along with them, like Japanese knotweed and such. And, of course, the dandelions and everything to Jerusalem artichokes and all the good stuff. Really, I like wild foods to make up a good percentage of my diet. wild foods to make up a good percentage of my diet. I think that's eating such things are one of the main reasons why my great-grandparents all lived to be about 100 years old. Getting all these, the variety of natural foods out of our diet and relying more on processed

Starting point is 00:20:00 foods and just a small variety of really meats and vegetables that you might find at a grocery store. I mean, you know, we think there's a great abundance at the meats and vegetables that you might find a grocery store. I mean, you know, we think there's a great abundance of the grocery store, but really it's a fraction of what our ancestors would have eaten a hundred years ago. I mean, they ate just, I mean, you know, I've got a cookbook for the 1940s and it lists the apples one could expect to find at the grocery store at the time. I think there were 120 varieties that would have been common at a grocery store in 1940. Imagine that. And they tell you which ones to use for pies and which ones to use for apple butter and applesauce, which ones for eating out of hand, which ones are best baked. Now you go to the store and you've got three to five varieties

Starting point is 00:20:41 of apples just in that one category we're eating so far fewer such far fewer variety when you think of the greens that our grandparents ate all the root vegetables I mean when was the last time you ate parsnips or rutabaga that was common on the table up until the 1950s and I mean all the fish and game that were also part of our ancestors diets and you know all the you know heirloom heritage fowl and stuff they would be growing on their farms and we just don't have it in the American diet anymore what we have is a whole lot of processed food actually wheat that is made in flour that we commonly eat now has 90% of the less 90% less nutrition than it did a hundred years ago they figured out how to pump it up make it bigger make it round up ready

Starting point is 00:21:34 it's you know fertilizers make it larger which basically just makes means it holds more water and has more fiber but all that uh intense nutrition is gone so and and now everybody you know is gluten intolerant and has celiac disease hey i wonder why that happened but you know and we've gone from um just 100 years ago yeah i mean 100 years ago, just say right before 1900, so 120 years ago, the average American only ate up to between 10 and 16 pounds of sugar a year. And that would be on the high end, really. But I mean, it's stretched out over an entire year, all the desserts and everything. And now the average American is eating between 160 and 300 pounds of sugar a year. So heart disease, disease diabetes all that we've really replaced all that natural food whether it's wild or farm raised with just

Starting point is 00:22:36 you know chips and and snack cakes and you know something you pop in the microwave fast food and and we're paying the price for it so I mean developing a taste for those wild foods is probably going to be very good for your health as well as giving you access to all these medicinal herbs and you don't have in most cases you won't have to do the work of planting these they're out there so we'll talk about this for a few days and like I said my book medicinal weedsasses is already out. I hope to have a book out on foraging by January. So look for that one. And the Omnivore's Guide to Home Cooking actually includes what I would consider like the top dozen or two dozen wild edibles and how to cook them and how to enjoy them.

Starting point is 00:23:28 If you're interested in that, I've also got lots of fish and game recipes in that one, plus everything you can grow in the garden. It's almost like an encyclopedia of real food, if you want to look at it that way, and instructions on from scratch cooking. So I hope you'll check those out if you haven't gotten a copy already uh everyone loves my cookbook uh you know more

Starting point is 00:23:50 people like to eat than they like to use medicinal herbs so it's been a big hit and uh i mean people the praise has been really uh really no um no i've gotten just nothing but positive feedback on that so far thank god God. Knock on wood. Hopefully that'll keep up. It would make a wonderful gift for someone in your life or for yourself. So keep that in mind. Y'all, I will talk to you next week. And we'll continue on these medicinal weeds that are sort of optional to grow in the garden for the next couple of weeks.

Starting point is 00:24:23 And I think you're really going to find a lot of this interesting. A lot of these, I mean, think about the millions of dollars people spend on chemicals to try to eradicate these plants when they could be enjoying them and the hours of labor spent pulling weeds and hoeing and using those little drill twisty things when you could be eating them and using them as medicine and enjoying them. You know, in the book of Genesis it says God looked at the creation, everything he made was good. So it's about, I think, high time we start remembering that and recognizing that.

Starting point is 00:25:00 So anyway, y'all, have a great week. I'll talk to you next time. The information in this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or condition. Nothing I say or write has been evaluated or approved by the FDA. I'm not a doctor. The U.S. government does not recognize the practice of herbal medicine, and there is no governing body regulating herbalists. Therefore, I'm really just a guy who studies herbs.

Starting point is 00:25:24 I'm not offering any advice. I won't even claim that anything I write or say is accurate or true. I can tell you what herbs have been traditionally used for. I can tell you my own experience and if I believe in herbs help me. I cannot nor would I tell you to do the same. If you use an herb anyone recommends, you are treating yourself. You take full responsibility for your health. Humans are individuals and no two are identical. what works for me may not work for you you may have an allergy a sensitivity an underlying condition that no one else even shares and you don't even know about be careful with your health by continuing to listen to my podcast or read my blog you agree to be responsible for yourself to your own make your own choices, and not to blame me for anything ever.

The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Herbal Medicine for Preppers: Survival Gardening - Docks and Sorrels

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.