DIY Green Healing Salve
Make your own salve to heal cuts & scrapes. This salve uses three different herbs for powerful healing and antimicrobial properties.
Ingredients
Oil extract:
- comfrey dried
- calendula dried
- yarrow dried
- 7 parts olive oil
Salve:
- 1 part beeswax
- vitamin E optional
- tea tree essential oil optional
Instructions
- To make the herbal oil extract, fill a large jar with your herbs of choice. (I used roughly equal parts of herbs.) Then, pour olive oil on top until the herbs are completely covered.
- Leave the oil and herbs to sit in a dark, room-temperature place for at least 6 weeks.
- After 6 weeks, strain the herbs out of the oil with a cheesecloth and a fine sieve. Make sure to weigh the oil so you know how much beeswax to use. (I'm sure you could also measure the volume if you don't have a scale.)
- Melt the beeswax in a pot over very low heat. (You may also want to use a double boiler.)
- Add the herbal oil to the beeswax and continue to heat until the beeswax is thoroughly melted throughout the mixture.
- After everything is melted, take the oil-beeswax mixture off of the heat and squirt in a vitamin E capsule or two. The vitamin E helps to preserve the oil longer, but is totally optional.
You can also add in essential oils here - but careful not to add too much, as this salve will be used on open cuts and essential oils are very strong. - Carefully spoon or pour the melted salve into little containers and wait for it to solidify!
Notes
Instead of waiting 6-8 weeks for the oil extract, you can buy an oil extract already made, or gently heat the oil with the herbs in a slow cooker overnight. Just make sure you're not cooking the herbs... use the lowest setting on the slow cooker.