How to Properly Label Herbs, Tinctures & More

It is really important to make sure you label your herbal remedies efficiently.

You can't always bank on your memory, there has been times when I have forgotten to label something and it took a bit of time for me to be able to figure it out. Now that's from me dealing with herbs for a decade, if you don't have that much time or experience with herbs, it might be even harder and you might have to actually try the remedy to figure out what it is. You also want to be careful, especially with items to like tincture, or liniments which are for external use only.

Always label your items, notating what it is for, as somebody else may decide to use the product.

Secondly, it's really important to label because you want to make sure you're able to duplicate your results, you don't want it to come out different every time.

In today's video I'm going to show you how to label your herbs properly.

First, I'm going to show you how you want to label your herbs after you either purchase them or dry them and you want to bottle them up. Here I just have a jar of rose petals, and I'm going to just go ahead and fill it up. Typically if you're trying to fill it up with previous herbs remaining, you'd want to take what's out of here and put the freshest herbs on the bottom but I've got all of this together at the same time so we're just going to continue filling it up.

You always want to put the oldest of course at the top so use it up first.

I always make sure I get all the air out I pack it as much as I can.

You want to keep light, air, moisture and heat away from your herbs so that you can keep them nice and potent. Put the lid on nice and tight, now it's time to label.

If you're wondering where to get your labels from, the best place to get them from for me, and the most cost efficient has actually been Goodwill. You want a nice thick label, I'm going to use multiple on top of each other.

First we want to put the name of the herb. Im using roses so we can put red Rose petals, mentioning that it is whole, cut and sifted, etc. Always notate the actual part, so we have petals. For instance, there's chamomile flowers, nettle leaf, dandelion leaf or dandelion root.

Next we're going to put the scientific name and so depending on where you get your product, they will typically have the Latin name or scientific name. That's important because you want to know what species of plant you're using. For chamomile there is Roman chamomile there's German chamomile, so you you want to know which type it is to be as specific as possible. Here I will notate the scientific name which is Rosa and it's just one of the species of so I would write Rosa Spp.

Next you also want to put the country of origin. If you grew the herbs you can put "backyard" but you want to know the country of origin for various reasons.

On the label you can also add information about the herb. If it's a low dose herbs you do definitely want to put that on the labeling. While you may know that, if somebody else is in is in your home and they decide that they want to try it, you want to make sure that you have that indication on there.

The last bit of info to add is contraindications. if you are new or you're a beginner or you just think you might not remember and you want to make sure the people in your house are also aware. You should not go by the labeling on the packaging. Most bags will say one teaspoon per cup of water, using the same generic instructions all the time. Make sure that you know the appropriate amount to use.

Again here's what our label would look like

the name of the herb, the part that is used

scientific name, so you can know that it's exact genus of the plant that is used country of origin

date when you actually harvested it, that would be really helpful to you and then contraindications and any directions about how to prepare them

now we're doing things a little bit different here all right so we want to put the actual ratio that we use to make this tincture extract or whatever okay and so we um and so if you're using what's known as the Hulk method what I would just do is put exactly how much I filled up the jar the reason why you want to do this is because if you really like the results you'll be able to replicate it more easily and so I would just put you know one to five if I measured it out or I just can say half full or three-fourths full all of that is perfectly fine as well

Next you want to know what percentage of alcohol , glycerin, or other menstruum that you used. You want to put the alcohol proof or you can also put the ratio. I also label whether it's fresh or dry so if it's fresh I put an F if it's dried I put it a D.

So what this might look like would be like

calendula flowers F or you can put F calendula flowers or D calendula flowers calendula officinalis, the scientific name

Vodka, 1:5, Proof of Alcohol

Date, the date that you made it or you can do the date that it will actually be ready