Ravensong Seeds & Herbals, Courtenay, BC (2026)

09/10/2026

Roost harvest season has begun 🌿

Each plant part we use for medicine, bark, leaf, flower, seed and root, has an optimal harvest window during the growing season. The harvest window is when the medicinal properties in that part of the plant are at their peak. Knowing these harvest times is one of the secrets to making potent herbal medicines.

And as summer begins to give way to fall, our attention starts moving underground.

For many perennial medicinal plants, the best time to harvest their roots is during dormancy, after the above-ground growth begins to die back in the fall and before new growth begins again in spring. At this point, the plant has finished flowering and setting seed and has moved its resources back underground to sustain it through the winter.

But the best time to dig depends on the plant. Biennials such as burdock and mullein are generally harvested in the fall of their first year, before they use those stored reserves to flower and set seed the following season. Perennial roots are often allowed to grow for several years before their first harvest.

Here on Vancouver Island, our root harvest usually begins in September, once the autumn rains have softened the earth and the garden begins to settle into fall.

Root harvesting is one of my favourite parts of the growing season. There is digging and prying, shaking off soil, washing, scrubbing, chopping and processing, and with many perennial medicines, dividing and replanting the crowns so they can continue growing for years to come.

I’ve put together a full guide to harvesting medicinal roots on the blog, including when to harvest annuals, biennials and perennials, how to dig and clean different kinds of roots, and how to dry, store and make medicine with your harvest. You’ll find Underground Apothecary: A Guide to Harvesting Root Medicines here https://ravensongherbals.com/blog-post/underground-apothecary

And because medicinal plants look very different once you get below ground…

How many of these 10 medicinal roots can you identify? 👀🌿

Swipe through and leave your guesses below. Bonus points if you can name all ten.

09/09/2026

Some medicines begin with muddy boots and pouring rain. 🌧️🌿

Fall seems to have arrived early on Northern Vancouver Island, and last week’s intern day came with raincoats, shovels, and a whole lot of roots.

Together we dug elecampane and dandelion root to make fresh plant tinctures and begin stocking the apothecary with root medicines for the season ahead.

Elecampane is one of my favourite aromatic and warming respiratory herbs. Its roots have a long history of use for helping to open the lungs, move stubborn congestion, and support a productive cough.

Dandelion may be less dramatic, but it is one of the most versatile alteratives in our apothecary. We use the root to support the liver and digestion while encouraging the body’s natural pathways of elimination through the liver, lymph, and kidneys.

I love following our medicines through their entire journey. We grow the plants here on the farm, tend them through the seasons, dig the roots from the earth, wash and process them, and tincture them fresh, often within hours of harvest.

And some days, all of that happens in the pouring rain. 🌧️

And it’s pretty wonderful to get to share this work with such an awesome crew. Our interns are such an important part of the rhythm of our farm, and we’re incredibly grateful for the energy, enthusiasm, and many hardworking hands they bring each week. So much of what we grow, harvest, and make through the seasons happens with their help.

It was a very good day on the farm, with wet clothes, muddy boots, smiling faces, and beautiful roots. 🌿

P.S. And if you’re looking at these muddy boots and thinking you’d quite like to get paid version of work like this, we’re hiring! 🧑‍🌾 We’re looking for a fourth person to join our core farm team this fall in a long-term gardening position, working three days a week from March through November. Applications are open until September 15, and you’ll find all the details here https://ravensongherbals.com/garden-assistant-position

09/08/2026

We’re hiring! 🌿

There are currently three of us working together at the heart of Ravensong, along with our wonderful seasonal interns, and we’re looking for a fourth person to join our core farm team.

We’re looking for someone who genuinely loves working outside, working with plants, and working hard. This is first and foremost a gardening position, and much of your time will be spent tending our medicinal herb gardens: weeding, mulching, planting, propagating, mowing, digging roots, hauling wheelbarrows, harvesting and doing all the other work that keeps a farm growing through the seasons.

It’s physical work. Some days are hot and dusty, some are cold and rainy, and some involve spending hours with your hands in the soil. We’re looking for someone who finds that kind of work satisfying and enjoys coming home tired after a productive day outside.

There are plenty of other things woven into the position too. Depending on the season, you may help harvest and process medicinal plants, make fresh plant tinctures, wildcraft herbs, clean and package seeds, work in the apothecary, and occasionally help us with our seasonal interns.

You don’t need to be an herbalist or have extensive gardening experience. We can teach you an enormous amount. What matters most to us is that you’re dependable, hardworking, physically fit, curious, open-minded, comfortable working independently, and interested in learning.

Most importantly, we’re hoping to find someone who wants to stay. This isn’t intended to be a one-season farm job. We’d love to find someone who becomes part of Ravensong for years to come, learning the rhythms of the farm, taking on more responsibility and growing into the position over time.

🌿 Medicinal Herb Farm Garden Assistant
Tuesday, Wednesday + Thursday
Approximately 9 am–4 pm
March through November
Black Creek, Vancouver Island
Starting September 22 (may be flexible)
$22-$25 per hour depending on experience, with incremental increases as experience and responsibility grow

If spending three days a week tending medicinal herb gardens in the forest sounds like your kind of work, we’d love to hear from you.

Applications are open until September 15. You’ll find the full job description and application here https://ravensongherbals.com/garden-assistant-position

And please feel free to share this post with someone who might be just the person we’re looking for. 🌿

09/03/2026

The sweetest medicine in the garden. 🌿

Fresh green fennel seeds are almost unbelievably sweet. Plump, juicy and intensely aromatic, they taste like little bursts of anise-flavoured candy straight from the garden.

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is a classic digestive herb. Its aromatic seeds are warming, carminative and antispasmodic, helping to ease gas, bloating and digestive cramping while gently stimulating digestion. They’re one of my favourite herbs to reach for after a rich or heavy meal, and delicious simply chewed straight from the plant.

But there’s another reason I’m harvesting these seeds while they’re still fat and green.

When I’m gathering fennel for medicine, I’m looking for a very different stage than I would if I were saving seed for planting. For viable seed, I leave the umbels on the plant until the seeds have fully matured, browned and begun to dry.

For medicine, I like to catch them earlier, when the seeds are fully formed but still green, succulent and bursting with aromatic oils. You can smell the difference. You can certainly taste it.

Learning to recognize these little windows is one of the beautiful parts of harvesting your own medicine. The ideal medicinal harvest isn’t always the fully mature plant.

Milky oats are gathered while the developing grain still releases its white, milky latex. Echinacea cones can be gathered while the developing seeds are still plump and juicy. And fennel is exquisite in this fleeting green stage, before those sweet, aromatic seeds begin to dry down.

Sometimes harvesting medicine is less about a date on the calendar and more about paying close enough attention to notice when the plant says: now. 🌿

(Learning when and how to gather plants at their medicinal peak is one of the things I teach in The Herbal Harvester, my seasonal online course in growing, gathering and making your own herbal medicine. Registration opens in the spring.)

09/01/2026

Poppies have a wonderfully clever way of telling you when their seeds are ready. 🌱

After the petals fall, the o***y at the centre of the flower begins to swell into that wonderfully sculptural seed capsule. Inside, the seeds are still developing, so even when the pod has reached its full size, it isn’t necessarily ready to harvest.

Leave the pods on the plant to fully mature. As they ripen, the capsules change from green and fleshy to dry and papery, and something wonderful happens beneath the little crown at the top: a ring of tiny vents opens.

That’s your signal.

The capsule is designed almost like a botanical salt shaker. As the dried stems sway in the wind, ripe seeds tumble out through those little openings and scatter around the mother plant.

Once those vents have opened, I harvest the pods on a dry day and tip the seeds into a paper bag or bowl. Before storing, make sure your seeds are thoroughly dry, then keep them somewhere cool, dark and dry until it’s time to sow again.

In this reel, I’m saving seed from our crimson-flowered O***m Poppies (Papaver somniferum), also commonly called Breadseed Poppies. We’ll carefully gather and clean their seed over the coming weeks, saving plenty to grow again here on the farm and preparing the rest to share with you in the new year.

❤️

A few seed-saving basics that apply well beyond poppies: choose healthy, vigorous plants with the characteristics you want to preserve, allow them to complete their full life cycle, and learn what ripe seed looks like for each species. Some pods split open, some shatter, some seeds take to the air, and poppies open these wonderful little vents.

Once you begin paying attention, you realize that plants have all sorts of ways of telling they’re ready. 🌿

08/31/2026

Possibly one of the strangest flowers we grow. 💙

Exotic Nigella (Nigella hispanica) looks like something dreamed up for another planet. Deep indigo-blue petals surround a dramatic ring of wine-coloured stamens, with long, dark styles reaching out from the centre like the legs of some tiny insect.

And somehow, it gets even stranger after flowering.

As the petals fall away, the seed capsule begins to swell upwards, while those long styles remain perched on top, creating a wonderfully bizarre, horned seed pod. We leave them to ripen on the plants, where they add another whole season of interest to the garden, and they are beautiful gathered for dried arrangements too.

The plants grow into airy, branching annuals about 2–3 feet tall and wide, covered in finely divided foliage and an abundance of these incredible blue flowers. They're easy to grow in full sun and average garden soil, and will happily self-seed if allowed to drop their ripe seeds.

And they aren't only beautiful. The flowers are edible, making a spectacular garnish for salads, cakes and summer dishes. You can use the whole flower or pull off individual blue petals and scatter them over food for a flash of colour. The ripe black seeds have also traditionally been used as a spice and condiment.

One of those plants that makes you stop every time you walk past it.

We grow and save our own Exotic Nigella seed here on the farm, and seeds are available in our shop. 🌿 https://ravensongherbals.com/seeds-n-z/p/exotic-nigella

08/27/2026

If a cozy blanket were an herb… it would be Skullcap. 🌿

I often tell my students that taking Skullcap (Scutellaria lateriflora) can feel like being tucked into a big warm blanket, under clean sheets, on the most comfortable bed ever, after the best day hiking through an alpine meadow with your best friends.

Soothed. Relaxed. A little giddy with contentment. And perfectly ready for sleep.

Skullcap is one of my favourite herbs for the nervous system, particularly when the mind and body have trouble letting go. It has a long history of use for nervous tension, restlessness, anxiety, muscle tension and sleeplessness, and modern research is beginning to give us some insight into why.

Some of Skullcap’s most interesting chemistry involves GABA, our brain’s primary inhibitory neurotransmitter. Skullcap contains GABA itself, while several of its flavonoids, including baicalin and baicalein, interact with GABA-A receptors. In simple terms, GABA helps turn down the volume on an overstimulated nervous system.

Skullcap also appears to interact with serotonin receptors, and preliminary human research has found improvements in overall mood without reducing energy or cognition.

Herbalists have also traditionally reached for Skullcap during times of withdrawal, including when reducing substances such as ni****ne and alcohol, and as supportive care during transitions off certain anxiety and antidepressant medications. It doesn’t simply make withdrawal symptoms disappear, but its ability to settle nervous excitation in the mind and body can make it a valuable ally through periods of transition. I also like to combine it with Milky Oat and Passionflower for this purpose.

An important caveat: withdrawal from alcohol, benzodiazepines and some other medications can be medically dangerous, and Skullcap should not be used as a substitute for appropriate medical supervision.

For me, the science keeps circling back to what herbalists have observed about this plant for generations.

Skullcap helps the nervous system let go.

And sometimes that feels an awful lot like climbing into the coziest bed in the world. 🌿

08/25/2026

Marshmallow (Althaea officinalis) is one of our most important herbs for soothing tissues that have become dry, raw, irritated, or inflamed.

Its roots are exceptionally rich in mucilage, a slippery plant starch that absorbs water and forms a moist, protective layer over the tissues it comes into contact with.

This gives Marshmallow a particular affinity for the mucous membranes of the respiratory, digestive, and urinary tracts.

For a dry, scratchy throat or irritating cough, Marshmallow coats and soothes the irritated tissues that can perpetuate the cough reflex. In the digestive tract, it can help calm raw, inflamed tissues and has traditionally been used for gastritis, ulcers, and other conditions where irritation of the mucous membranes contributes to pain and spasm. A cold infusion or decoction of the root is also traditionally used to soothe irritation and inflammation of the bladder and urinary tract.

Interestingly, research suggests that Marshmallow may do more than simply coat irritated tissues. Laboratory studies have found that extracts of the root can influence epithelial cells involved in tissue repair, suggesting that some of its traditional healing action may involve supporting the tissues underneath that protective layer as well.

It is also a wonderful topical herb. The root can be made into a poultice for dry, chapped, irritated skin and has a long history of use for wounds, boils, and abscesses. The leaves can also be infused into oil for soothing irritated skin.

Although the leaves and flowers are medicinal, the large, sturdy roots are generally considered the strongest part of the plant.

🌱 GROWING MARSHMALLOW

Native to Europe and western Asia, Marshmallow is a hardy perennial in zones 3–9 and is surprisingly easy to grow.

Plants eventually form a beautiful clump, sending up numerous sturdy stalks 4–7 feet tall with velvety leaves and soft pink flowers with lilac-coloured centres. It is lovely enough to grow simply as an ornamental.

Marshmallow appreciates rich, fertile soil, full sun, and, true to its nature, plenty of moisture throughout the growing season.

Seeds germinate readily and can be direct sown in fall or spring, or started in flats in spring and transplanted into the garden.

For medicine, I usually wait until the second or third year before digging the large, multi-branched taproots in fall or winter. The roots, leaves, and flowers can all be used fresh or dried.

And the entire plant is edible!

The original marshmallow confection was actually made with Marshmallow root. One of my past apprenticeship students once made homemade marshmallows with fresh root and brought them to share with our class. They were incredible.

For me, the easiest way to remember Marshmallow is not by memorizing a list of ailments, but by thinking about the state of the tissue:

Dry. Raw. Irritated. Inflamed.

When tissues need moisture, protection, and soothing, Marshmallow is one of the first herbs I think of.

08/24/2026

There comes a point in an apprenticeship when all the separate threads of learning begin to weave themselves together.

This weekend marked our sixth gathering of the Herbal Apprenticeship, and I found myself watching that happen again and again.

We spent part of the weekend studying herbal formulation, clinical practice and case studies. As we worked through the process of creating formulas, so much of what we’ve explored over the past six months came into the room with us: materia medica, herbal actions and energetics, constitutions, medicine making, plant spirit medicine, and all the hours spent observing and working directly with the plants.

One lesson building upon another as the season has progressed.

We also had our first Plant Ally presentations, something I look forward to every year.

At the beginning of the apprenticeship, each student chooses one plant to work with deeply throughout the season. They spend months getting to know it through plant sits, harvesting and medicine making, taking the medicine themselves, journey work, research, creative practice, and simply returning to the plant again and again.

This weekend, the students began sharing what those relationships had become.

There was art. Song. Movement. Medicine. Story. And beautiful accounts of the ways these plants had entered their lives, offered their teachings, and gradually become true allies. It was incredibly moving to witness.

Outside, the season was shifting too. The gardens are ripening and seed heads are forming everywhere, so we turned our attention to seed saving: learning to recognize when a seed is truly mature, exploring the different stages for harvesting seeds for medicine versus saving viable seed, and gathering seeds from plants throughout the farm for everyone to take home.

And, as always, we spent time getting to know the plants themselves through materia medica, this month with some of our late-summer medicines: Milky Oats, Skullcap, Gumweed and the last flushes of California Poppy.

There is something profoundly rewarding about reaching this point in the apprenticeship. The plants we met in spring have grown and flowered and are beginning to set seed. And alongside them, I can see the many layers of learning and experience taking root in the students too.

After six weekends together, it feels less like a collection of individual lessons and more like a living body of knowledge, each piece connected to the next.

It was a deeply connecting weekend, and such a gift to witness.

08/20/2026

Evening Primrose is a plant of late summer.

As the nights begin to lengthen again, one of my favourite things to do at dusk is spend a little time watching the Evening Primrose bloom.

Each flower waits until the light begins to fade before opening. What was a tightly furled bud only moments before begins to loosen and unfurl, taking just a minute or two to become a large, luminous yellow blossom.

And if you sit beside a patch at just the right time, you can watch them open one after another.

It is a little bit magical.

Evening Primrose (Oenothera biennis) is a biennial wildflower native to eastern and central North America, including parts of Canada from Alberta east to Newfoundland. During its first year it remains close to the ground as a basal rosette of leaves. In its second summer, it sends up tall, branching flower stalks that can reach six feet or more.

By late summer, those stalks are covered in yellow flowers and distinctive seed capsules, with new blossoms opening each evening as dusk falls. The flowers are heavily laden with pollen and attract bees during the day, while their evening opening and fragrance make them particularly important to night-flying moths.

Evening Primrose also has a long history as both food and medicine.

Nearly the entire plant is edible. The tender first-year roots can be boiled or roasted and have been compared to parsnip or rutabaga, young leaves can be cooked as greens, and the flowers can be scattered into salads. Even the young green seed pods can be cooked as a vegetable, while the mature seeds are rich in protein and essential fatty acids.

Traditionally, the roots and leaves have also been used medicinally for coughs, sore throats and other respiratory complaints, and externally for sore muscles, bruising and swelling.

Today, Evening Primrose is probably best known for the oil pressed from its seeds. The oil is particularly rich in linoleic acid and also contains gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), an omega-6 fatty acid. Evening Primrose oil has become a popular herbal supplement, particularly for women’s health and inflammatory skin conditions.

In the garden, Evening Primrose is wonderfully unfussy. It thrives in full sun to part shade, tolerates drought and poorer soils, and is perfectly at home in the dry, open conditions of a meadow garden.

Seeds can be sown directly in fall or spring, or started in flats in spring. Because it is a biennial, plants spend their first season developing their leafy rosette before flowering the following year. Once established, they readily self-seed, scattering their seeds from the beautiful upright capsules and returning year after year.

And by late summer, when the days are beginning to shorten and dusk arrives a little earlier each evening, you can head out to the garden and watch the flowers open all over again. 💛

🌱 We grow and save our own Evening Primrose seed here on the farm. Seeds are available through our online shop https://ravensongherbals.com

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