Goldenseal Garden

Day 258: Growing Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) provides both a refreshing and beneficial tonic and a lesson in conservation. The tea made from the leaves takes a bit of getting used to, as it is somewhat acrid and earthy, but when chilled, a single swallow quenches thirst better than lemonade. I never sweeten my goldenseal tea, having become accustomed to and even enjoying the taste. The roots may also be used to make tea, but this is where the conservation lesson enters in. Each plant produces only two leaves. Admittedly, they're the size of a Big-Leaf Maple leaf, but you only get two per root. Obviously, harvesting the roots would be counter-productive in the strictest sense of the term. Likewise, if you were to pick all the leaves, the plants would be unable to photosynthesize and would die off. I began with two commercially-grown plants thirty years ago. This is my Goldenseal Garden today. As you can tell, they've multiplied over the years, and that's due to my harvesting practices. When they reach this stage, I cut my first batch of tea by scissoring off no more than one lobe from any given leaf, only taking what I require for brewing. I made two quarts yesterday, using about a dozen lobes.As the season progresses, I will trim the leaves which weren't used in the first round, cycling through all of them. As the end of the growing period approaches and the leaves begin to show faint signs of yellowing, I will take a second lobe if there are no uncut leaves available. This process allows the plant to complete its cycle and remain healthy. I never harvest the berries in the hopes that fallen seeds will generate more plants, although Hydrastis generally propagates clonally from the root rather than from seed. That said, I'm apparently doing it right. This year's Goldenseal crop is the best it's ever been.