The Herbal Medicine-Maker's Handbook_ A Home Manual - James Green [34]
PLANT PRESS DRYING
Pressing a plant for no other reason than that it is irresistibly beautiful, or for preserving a specimen to be identified later, can be facilitated by using a field press book. This tool is simple to construct and well worth the effort. Take time to make a good-quality one. It will serve you well for many years, and can someday transform itself into a prized and practical heirloom. Grandchildren seldom ever forget the joy of collecting wildflowers with grandma and grandpa and putting them in the press book. Your grandchildren will probably want to keep your old press book after you decide to move on to the Elysian fields to pick more flowers.
The plant pressings that you make are suitable to arrange and display in a home herbarium, a herbal scrapbook, a seasonal plant diary (call it what you will), or mounted on handcrafted greeting cards, arranged as inspired flower pictures, or used to embellish lampshades, whatever. I find that herbal medicine is equally as effective when gazed upon as art, or walked through in a garden, or taken as a tea. Healing plant spirit can reside happily in all three.
A simple plant press is composed of three things: rigid wooden board, absorbent paper, and maintained pressure.
To construct a field press book, first place on the floor a 3/8-inch thick piece of 10-inch × 16-inch plywood (1/4-inch thick plywood is too flimsy and 1/2-inch plywood is unnecessarily heavy and bulky). Upon the plywood, stack three pieces of folded newspaper (this can be a piece of corrugated cardboard instead), two layers of paper towel or other white paper, three more pieces of newspaper or cardboard, two more pieces of paper towel and so on, until you have created a significant little pile. On top of this place a second piece of 3/8-inch plywood (cut to the same dimensions as the piece on the bottom). The plant specimen you collect are placed in between each two pieces of paper towel.
Homemade Plant Press Book
After inserting your plants in this pile, lay three bricks or heavy rocks on the pile to supply the pressure. In a short time the plants will flatten out, the paper towels will absorb moisture, and the warm location you keep this press in will assist the drying process. Give it a couple of weeks. Then check the plants, but very carefully. They are now a thin, fragile commodity. Nine out of ten times, you will be totally delighted by the results. However, things do happen that are often hard to talk about, but you’ll cope, and it will all translate into meaningful experiences that you will learn from. That’s Herbalism. Jot down some timely memoirs in the spiral notebook that I will soon be discussing. These notes will remind you what to do differently next time. It’s good to make a mistake; it means you’re courageously pushing your limits by pursuing creative new adventures, but it’s dumb to make the same mistake twice. I can attest to that; I can even attest to doing it three times.
To streamline this press book, so you can carry it with you on hikes and plants walks, you can trade in the bricks for 4 feet of Velcro® and 34 inches of 1—inch wide cotton strap. You can see how and where to affix them in the illustration on this page. The Velcro binds tightly together the two boards (and everything in between). Place your plants in between the paper towels as described above, but this time instead of laying bricks on the pile, kneel on the pile using your body weight to supply the pressure, and while kneeling wrap the bristly part of both Velcro straps around and affix them to