Herbal Hand Healers

Create a hand scrub and lotion from your garden.

- MICHELLE BRUHN

The solution to a gardener's rough, dirty hands can be found right in the garden that created them. As the season wears on, a gardener's hands can take a beating.

Using overlapping ingredients, let's make a gardener's scrub and balm to clean and nourish your most valuable tools: your hands! I love gardening without gloves, but that dirt manicure ends up damaging the top protective layer of skin. This leaves your skin vulnerable to drying, cracking and becoming inflamed.

Even after wearing gloves a gardener's hands can use a good deep cleaning. With a focused blend of Castile soap, oils and homegrown herbs you can clean and soothe your hands.

HERBS AS HEALERS

From companion planting to culinary uses, herbs in the garden just make sense. But we often overlook their innate healing powers.

Much of modern medicine is based on centuries-old herbal wisdom. Often, the trick to using herbs comes down to being able to concentrate their potency and then administer them in a way that the body can readily absorb.

Infusing oils is one of the easiest ways to make the most out of the beautiful herbs we grow. Both balm and scrub making are two-step processes: First, we infuse the oils with herbs. Then, we combine that infused oil with other ingredients. Since there are few ingredients, the quality of them really matters.

CHOOSE YOUR CARRIER OILS

Oils have their own healing properties and different thicknesses, absorption rates and viscosity. A high viscosity rate means a thicker oil that’s more resistant to flowing. They also vary in cost. I'll often infuse in olive or sweet almond oils and use the other more expensive oils in smaller amounts. Let’s learn the basics of a few of the most common carrier oils so you can make the best product for you and your family’s skin.