Harvest and Make Your Own Herbal Remedies - Backyard Medicine

I wanted to rate this book more highly because it does have a ton of useful information in it, and several points strongly in its favor:
* The color photos are helpful and well done
* The recipes are largely simple and easy to follow
* It covers a huge number of plants, and most of them are things people can realistically expect to find or grow themselves without trouble
* The writing is clear and easy to understand.

Unfortunately, a couple details seriously hamper the effectiveness of those great traits.

* The print is very small and the green font used to mark headings or differentiate text is so dark that it does not stand out well, seriously hampering their usefulness or visibility. I feel like I would need to go through this with a highlighter and block things out in different colors myself to be able to find anything reasonably quickly when I wanted it again.

* Maybe this is just personal preference, but there's no listing or discussion of remedies by condition. Although you can find conditions listed in the index (depression, for example) with page numbers for plants that might be applicable to treating them there is no direct, easy-to-reference discussion of the options for treating a given condition, what factors needs to be taken into consideration in selecting the method for your situation, etc. So unless you memorize the book, you're going to end up looking up and re-reading six or different herbs/plants every time you want to treat something specific to figure out what your options are and how to select the best one. Not exactly what I'd hope for in a reference book.

* Finally, there is no organized discussion of how to set up an herbal medicine cabinet, so the speak, using the knowledge in this book. It will tell you what you can do with any given plant, but offers no coordinated advice on how to pro-actively harvest, make and store the kinds of tinctures, teas and other remedies you want to keep on hand, leaving you forced into reactivity when a problem presents itself or bumbling through on your own, figuring out what to make and when in hopes of being prepared.

Bottom Line: If you're looking strictly for reference to look things up, this is great. If you're looking for a coordinated get-started-with-herbal-remedies book, this is not it.

I had borrowed this particular book from my library late last summer when I realized my socially-unacceptable, neglected,"weed" filled yard was actually my own personal (and free) apothecary "shop" full of health and wellness plants for all kinds of remedies. With spring's arrival I decided I should own the book that helped start my family's independence from big-pharma meds. One caveat: you should consult something like a field guide for proper plant identification. The information this book contains is plentiful if you're looking for the use of many common backyard plants and there are pictures of each included as well, but use another source or several if you are even a little iffy on any identifications. :-)

Like another reviewer, I first got this book from the library. Helpful, good pictures, lots of information. I like the book over some other herbal medicine books for the variety of information. When I saw the kindle version I decided to go for it - cool! Was going to buy a kindle copy for my daughter as well, but now that I've seen that there is no table of contents, I am hesitating. There is an index, which is helpful, but it really needs the table of contents to make it easy to browse.

I wanted to rate this book more highly because it does have a ton of useful information in it, and several points strongly in its favor:
* The color photos are helpful and well done
* The recipes are largely simple and easy to follow
* It covers a huge number of plants, and most of them are things people can realistically expect to find or grow themselves without trouble
* The writing is clear and easy to understand.

Unfortunately, a couple details seriously hamper the effectiveness of those great traits.

* The print is very small and the green font used to mark headings or differentiate text is so dark that it does not stand out well, seriously hampering their usefulness or visibility. I feel like I would need to go through this with a highlighter and block things out in different colors myself to be able to find anything reasonably quickly when I wanted it again.

* Maybe this is just personal preference, but there's no listing or discussion of remedies by condition. Although you can find conditions listed in the index (depression, for example) with page numbers for plants that might be applicable to treating them there is no direct, easy-to-reference discussion of the options for treating a given condition, what factors needs to be taken into consideration in selecting the method for your situation, etc. So unless you memorize the book, you're going to end up looking up and re-reading six or different herbs/plants every time you want to treat something specific to figure out what your options are and how to select the best one. Not exactly what I'd hope for in a reference book.

* Finally, there is no organized discussion of how to set up an herbal medicine cabinet, so the speak, using the knowledge in this book. It will tell you what you can do with any given plant, but offers no coordinated advice on how to pro-actively harvest, make and store the kinds of tinctures, teas and other remedies you want to keep on hand, leaving you forced into reactivity when a problem presents itself or bumbling through on your own, figuring out what to make and when in hopes of being prepared.

Bottom Line: If you're looking strictly for reference to look things up, this is great. If you're looking for a coordinated get-started-with-herbal-remedies book, this is not it.

I had borrowed this particular book from my library late last summer when I realized my socially-unacceptable, neglected,"weed" filled yard was actually my own personal (and free) apothecary "shop" full of health and wellness plants for all kinds of remedies. With spring's arrival I decided I should own the book that helped start my family's independence from big-pharma meds. One caveat: you should consult something like a field guide for proper plant identification. The information this book contains is plentiful if you're looking for the use of many common backyard plants and there are pictures of each included as well, but use another source or several if you are even a little iffy on any identifications. :-)

Like another reviewer, I first got this book from the library. Helpful, good pictures, lots of information. I like the book over some other herbal medicine books for the variety of information. When I saw the kindle version I decided to go for it - cool! Was going to buy a kindle copy for my daughter as well, but now that I've seen that there is no table of contents, I am hesitating. There is an index, which is helpful, but it really needs the table of contents to make it easy to browse.

This is a wonderful book and a great resource for anyone interested in home remedies. I learned so much from reading it. There are many more herbs than I ever knew about and many of them are easily grown in the home garden. Thank you!