About the ledger
A gardener's reference to medicinal herbs: how they grow, when to harvest, how to dry and store them, and where the real risks sit.
Herb Ledger began with a simple gap. Most herb writing online is either a seed packet in paragraph form or a health claim with no horticulture behind it. The useful middle ground — how the plant actually grows, when the part is ready, how to dry it without mould, and which lookalike can hurt you — is usually scattered across three kinds of source.
This site collects that middle ground for 32 herbs that a home gardener can reasonably grow in a temperate climate. Some are Chinese materia medica staples; some are European kitchen and cottage herbs. All are treated the same way: cultivation first, handling second, history clearly labelled third.
How the reference is built
Growing notes are checked against horticultural references, principally the Royal Horticultural Society, NC State Extension's Plant Toolbox, the Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder and Plants for a Future. Where those sources disagree on hardiness or spacing, the profile gives the conservative garden range and says so in the intro.
Harvest windows are described by plant part and by visible signals — leaf colour, flower opening, seed-head colour, die-back — rather than by a single date, because latitude and season shift everything. Drying temperatures are given as ranges that work in a home dehydrator or a warm, airy room.
Safety notes are written from public health and regulatory sources such as NCCIH, MedlinePlus and the European Medicines Agency's herbal monographs, plus the horticultural literature on toxic lookalikes. They are deliberately conservative. Where the evidence is thin, the profile says that rather than inventing certainty.
What this site is not
- Not medical advice. There is no diagnosis, no dosage and no treatment protocol anywhere on the site.
- Not a foraging guide. Wild collection is discouraged for every plant in the index. Identification from a photograph is not enough for anything you intend to ingest.
- Not a substitute for a pharmacist. Many herbs interact with common medicines. The safety notes point you toward a professional conversation; they do not replace it.
- Not a cultivar catalogue. Named cultivars matter for flavour, yield and hardiness, but the profiles focus on the species.
Who edits the site
Herb Ledger is written and edited by the Herb Ledger Editorial Team, an independent editorial project. Profiles are drafted with AI assistance, then checked against the sources cited on each page and edited for structure, clarity and safety language. The desk is not a clinic, a herbalist practice or a medical publisher, and it does not provide clinical advice.
AI assistance is part of the drafting process, not a substitute for source-checking. Every profile carries a source block; safety statements are checked against public-health and horticultural sources; traditional-use notes are labelled as history, not efficacy. We do not claim a named clinician or medical expert. Where clinical advice is needed, the site directs readers to a qualified professional.
Corrections are welcome and are logged on the page that changes. If you spot a horticultural error, a broken source or a safety omission, write to [email protected].
Colophon
The visual language is a modern botanical field guide: deep green, bone and lime, large plant photography and a clean catalogue grid. Type is set in system sans and serif faces. Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons and are credited on each profile and on the image credits page. Analytics and advertising may be enabled as described on the privacy page.