Richo Cech is an internationally known herbalist, the founder of Horizon Herbs, and the author of one of our favorite herbal books, Making Plant Medicine. He started his professional work as an archaeologist and ethnobotanist in East Africa and has propagated over 1,000 medicinal herb species gathered from all around the world to grow on his organic certified farm in Williams, Oregon. Horizon Herbs sells an impressive array of rare medicinal herb seeds that are grown on their farm. Recently, he has botanized in China and Africa, resulting in the introduction of many new and exciting medicinal herb species to gardeners throughout the world.
We are excited and honored to have Richo Cech share his incredible wealth of knowledge and passion for plants with us at Rootstalk! To celebrate, we're giving away a copy of his book The Medicinal Herb Grower: A Guide for Cultivating Plants that Heal and 5 packs of organic herb seeds from Horizon Herbs (Echinacea, White Sage, Tulsi, Calendula, and Self Heal) to help get your healing herb garden growing this spring!
There are 5 easy ways to enter for a chance to win:
1. Read our interview with Richo below and leave a comment telling us your favorite herb to grow in the garden.
2. ”Like” the Rootstalk Festival on Facebook: Rootstalk Facebook Profile Leave a comment here to let us know that you've "liked" the Rootstalk page.
3. Write a blog post about your most powerful experience in the garden or out in the wild. Link back to this giveaway and be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog so we can check it out!
4. Follow us on Twitter at MtnRoseHerbs and tweet about this giveaway with the tag #RootstalkGiveaway. Leave a comment letting us know you've tweeted.
5. Leave a comment on one of our previous blog posts that you find interesting and include the tag #Rootstalk.
Submit all of your entries by next Tuesday, May 3rd and we’ll announce the winner on Wednesday!
Good luck and enjoy reading our new interview with Richo!
Seed Harvesting, Winnowing, Floating and Planting
Richo will bring his seed screens and buckets for this one. We'll start by harvesting a few local herb seeds, and then distill them down to the essence. Relative advantages of each technique will be discussed and demonstrated. We will then plant some seeds of hope in the hearts of all participants.
Vulneraries: Herbal Agents that Heal Wounds
Richo will discuss the main antibacterial, astringent and eliminative herbs. This little gathering will include a chance to taste the gentle astringents and to apply special salves, but if we use any eliminatives, the effects will probably not occur within the time allotted.
I ran over my favorite cat (his name was "White Paws"). I was coming home from work and driving my pickup in the yard with the cat running in front and he stopped to tell me he was hungry and I ran over him. His pelvis was crushed. Not knowing what to do, I went inside and made him some canned cat food and then smothered it with comfrey tincture. I took the bowl of food out to this crushed cat in the yard and he pulled himself forward on his good legs and ate it all up. At that moment I knew he would walk again. After eating comfrey laced food for 2 weeks, he wobbled to his feet and took his first steps. He lived on for years.
We wouldn't know what to do if the elements failed us--enough sun, enough water, the fertile land to grow our food and medicine. My family and I are dependent on this.
I think we can only continue to protect the wilds and cultivate our gardens. This is the kind of grounded lifestyle that has proven, throughout history, to be most sustainable. And of course, plant Empress Trees (Paulownia tomentosa), one of the fastest-growing carbon sinks on the planet.
Revitalizing African Herbalism. I'm involved with a project in Kenya that provides guidance to allow the resurgence of basic useful herbal medicine to be available to the common person. The idea is to find out what the people need and then to guide them to cultivate, prepare and utilize the traditional plant medicines. This project incorporates these positive factors: conservation through cultivation, bioregionally harmonized, effective medicine, non-polluting to the environment and inexpensive enough for all.
Ethnobotany in East Africa. I'm compiling a lexicon of medicinal herbs employed throughout
eastern Africa, complete with Swahili and Latin names and traditional uses. This is a project that helps satisfy my personal desire to learn more about what is available from these diverse equatorial regions, and also is an attempt to contribute to the existing literature. Currently, the lexicon is comprised of over 200 species, and I yearn to go back to Zanzibar to collect seeds, take photographs and continue to augment this learning.
I am seeking a coming together of herbalists from the western states--Western Herbalists, if you will. We are a diverse group in that we practice many healing modalities, but we can be inspired and strengthened by coming together and sharing what we know. In this gathering I would like to cultivate a sense of awe for the gifts that we each have, and pray that each of us can contribute to a healing vibration that enriches the planet first with our grateful breaths coming right from the root, and then with a flower, the simple result of living lightly on the Earth.
Actually, my favorite herb is Self Heal (Prunella vulgaris). Not only did she give me my first experience of an herb actually working (healing canker sores) but she continues to beguile me, winking up out of the grasses with her impossibly bright purple petals displayed asymmetrically like the curls tossed aside by the inadvertent head-tossing of an overly pretty maiden. I love her. And, I love her dried flowering cobs in pure hot water when I make the tea, late in the winter, when all around me people are sick, and my internal membranes begin to sag from seasonal neglect and I can feel an angry army of pathogens, armed to the teeth, leering at the brink of my infirmity, and ready to pounce. I drink her down before bed, and rise in the middle of the night to drink her again, and when I arise in the morning--I'm cured!
For more information about Richo Cech's amazing work, visit the Rootstalk website here:
http://www.rootstalkfest.com/page/richo-cech
Over the last three decades, the Mountain Rose Herbs Team has created and recreated thousands of recipes. This article is the result of many of our staff's combined herbal expertise and passion for herbalism. We hope you enjoy these time-tested recipes.
Richo Cech is an internationally known herbalist, the founder of Horizon Herbs, and the author of one of our favorite herbal books, Making Plant Medicine. He started his professional work as an archaeologist and ethnobotanist in East Africa and has propagated over 1,000 medicinal herb species gathered from all around the world to grow on his organic certified farm in Williams, Oregon. Horizon Herbs sells an impressive array of rare medicinal herb seeds that are grown on their farm. Recently, he has botanized in China and Africa, resulting in the introduction of many new and exciting medicinal herb species to gardeners throughout the world.
We are excited and honored to have Richo Cech share his incredible wealth of knowledge and passion for plants with us at Rootstalk! To celebrate, we're giving away a copy of his book The Medicinal Herb Grower: A Guide for Cultivating Plants that Heal and 5 packs of organic herb seeds from Horizon Herbs (Echinacea, White Sage, Tulsi, Calendula, and Self Heal) to help get your healing herb garden growing this spring!
There are 5 easy ways to enter for a chance to win:
1. Read our interview with Richo below and leave a comment telling us your favorite herb to grow in the garden.
2. ”Like” the Rootstalk Festival on Facebook: Rootstalk Facebook Profile Leave a comment here to let us know that you've "liked" the Rootstalk page.
3. Write a blog post about your most powerful experience in the garden or out in the wild. Link back to this giveaway and be sure to leave a comment with a link to your blog so we can check it out!
4. Follow us on Twitter at MtnRoseHerbs and tweet about this giveaway with the tag #RootstalkGiveaway. Leave a comment letting us know you've tweeted.
5. Leave a comment on one of our previous blog posts that you find interesting and include the tag #Rootstalk.
Submit all of your entries by next Tuesday, May 3rd and we’ll announce the winner on Wednesday!
Good luck and enjoy reading our new interview with Richo!
Seed Harvesting, Winnowing, Floating and Planting
Richo will bring his seed screens and buckets for this one. We'll start by harvesting a few local herb seeds, and then distill them down to the essence. Relative advantages of each technique will be discussed and demonstrated. We will then plant some seeds of hope in the hearts of all participants.
Vulneraries: Herbal Agents that Heal Wounds
Richo will discuss the main antibacterial, astringent and eliminative herbs. This little gathering will include a chance to taste the gentle astringents and to apply special salves, but if we use any eliminatives, the effects will probably not occur within the time allotted.
I ran over my favorite cat (his name was "White Paws"). I was coming home from work and driving my pickup in the yard with the cat running in front and he stopped to tell me he was hungry and I ran over him. His pelvis was crushed. Not knowing what to do, I went inside and made him some canned cat food and then smothered it with comfrey tincture. I took the bowl of food out to this crushed cat in the yard and he pulled himself forward on his good legs and ate it all up. At that moment I knew he would walk again. After eating comfrey laced food for 2 weeks, he wobbled to his feet and took his first steps. He lived on for years.
We wouldn't know what to do if the elements failed us--enough sun, enough water, the fertile land to grow our food and medicine. My family and I are dependent on this.
I think we can only continue to protect the wilds and cultivate our gardens. This is the kind of grounded lifestyle that has proven, throughout history, to be most sustainable. And of course, plant Empress Trees (Paulownia tomentosa), one of the fastest-growing carbon sinks on the planet.
Revitalizing African Herbalism. I'm involved with a project in Kenya that provides guidance to allow the resurgence of basic useful herbal medicine to be available to the common person. The idea is to find out what the people need and then to guide them to cultivate, prepare and utilize the traditional plant medicines. This project incorporates these positive factors: conservation through cultivation, bioregionally harmonized, effective medicine, non-polluting to the environment and inexpensive enough for all.
Ethnobotany in East Africa. I'm compiling a lexicon of medicinal herbs employed throughout
eastern Africa, complete with Swahili and Latin names and traditional uses. This is a project that helps satisfy my personal desire to learn more about what is available from these diverse equatorial regions, and also is an attempt to contribute to the existing literature. Currently, the lexicon is comprised of over 200 species, and I yearn to go back to Zanzibar to collect seeds, take photographs and continue to augment this learning.
I am seeking a coming together of herbalists from the western states--Western Herbalists, if you will. We are a diverse group in that we practice many healing modalities, but we can be inspired and strengthened by coming together and sharing what we know. In this gathering I would like to cultivate a sense of awe for the gifts that we each have, and pray that each of us can contribute to a healing vibration that enriches the planet first with our grateful breaths coming right from the root, and then with a flower, the simple result of living lightly on the Earth.
Actually, my favorite herb is Self Heal (Prunella vulgaris). Not only did she give me my first experience of an herb actually working (healing canker sores) but she continues to beguile me, winking up out of the grasses with her impossibly bright purple petals displayed asymmetrically like the curls tossed aside by the inadvertent head-tossing of an overly pretty maiden. I love her. And, I love her dried flowering cobs in pure hot water when I make the tea, late in the winter, when all around me people are sick, and my internal membranes begin to sag from seasonal neglect and I can feel an angry army of pathogens, armed to the teeth, leering at the brink of my infirmity, and ready to pounce. I drink her down before bed, and rise in the middle of the night to drink her again, and when I arise in the morning--I'm cured!
For more information about Richo Cech's amazing work, visit the Rootstalk website here:
http://www.rootstalkfest.com/page/richo-cech
Over the last three decades, the Mountain Rose Herbs Team has created and recreated thousands of recipes. This article is the result of many of our staff's combined herbal expertise and passion for herbalism. We hope you enjoy these time-tested recipes.
