Custom Blending herbs, teas and spices is one of the many cool and creative things I get to do for The Herbal Sage Tea company. 

This week we began to harvest Spicebush Berry for a new custom blend. Spicebush   Lindera benzoin  also called wild allspice is an abundant understory plant in SE Ohio.

 

Years ago one of the old timers showed me how he and his family would harvest the twigs and soft branches during the fall season to  make a tea. He also would pick a few twigs and chew on them. Though I like the gentle spice from the branches of this plant, I prefer to harvest the berries, dry them, then add then to herb blends.
My current custom blend request is from Denison University located an hour or so north of The Herbal Sage Farms. They wanted a BIG RED blend, we'll also be adding our native Elderberry fruit to their blend , more on amazing elderberry next time!

I think these berries qualify for a BIG RED theme, don't you?

Winter Elderberry

Finally a reprieve in our winter storms, at least for a few hours. David and I have been checking on our young elderberry plants ( Sambucus canadensis) throughout these winter months and have a few images to share. For those of you familiar with Herbal sage Farms or have seen our talks at @MotherEarthNews these images will be more of an update.

Early summer 2013, we were able to harvest 80% of the mature rootstock from a local winery which was no longer going to grow elderberry for their wine. From the plants themselves we planted 139 cuttings. 
In the fall of 2013 we realized that we had a success rate on these starts of about 75%, which is quite good. As fall turned to winter, our protective fencing was not good enough to keep the deer out and we had plenty of deer damage. 

 The last image shows a start that had developed quite a number of buds before winter arrived and remained untouched by the deer. This will be our comparison start to see how the others do.

 Elder elderberry growers ( nice play on words, yes?) assured us that this damage would not affect the starts come spring 2014.These wise elders told us that elderberry is very hardy in this area and would recover by putting out plenty of new shoots as the warm weather arrives.

Stop back for updates, we'll keep you posted as the warm weather arrives...it will arrive won't it?