Herbal Hotpicks!

Learn about the suppliers and supplies I love for my herbal practice.

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Transcript

Herbal Hotpicks
Intro

Speaker 1  2:06  
So someone had asked that this topic be our hot picks, like or verbal suppliers that we particularly like. So I thought I would just share ones that I've had good luck with, and don't necessarily endorse any company. Let me put that disclaimer out there. And I'm not responsible for how they behave in their other part of their world. So but um, so for herbal suppliers and bulk suppliers, I really like mountain rose herbs, which you guys get a discount at, I don't actually get a kickback from them just to I always like to make that clear, like I do actually like them. starwest is great. A lot of people really like Monterey Bay or company. Pacific but botanicals is really popular. Oregon's wild harvest is a good one, one that you could find it almost every health food store is frontier. And I like frontier because of its consistency. As far as you can always find them at any little health food store or

Unknown Speaker  3:20  
coop

Speaker 1  3:22  
or herbs shop, a lot of them are get their bulk herbs from Frontier, they've been around forever. I've had some instances where the quality wasn't always the best. But I think some of that is you know, supply and demand. And you're not always going to get a perfect natural product. It's like, you know, it's as if it's if you're buying like handcrafted butter or something like that from a farmer, it's not always going to be like the butter of your dreams or something. So I think sometimes when people get really mad because they order something and it's not perfect quality once they get really upset about it. And I think it's anytime you're dealing with anything that's natural, it's going to happen, there's a potential that something's going to be a little bit older than it should be. And you can always return it and ask for them to replace it. And this isn't directly talking about frontier I'm just talking about bulk herbs in general. Sometimes there's going to be a dead bug in it. You know, these are things that are coming from nature. So sometimes people get a little upset. Oh, well I found like a ladybug a dead Ladybug in my in my red clover and I'm like oh, that's because ladybugs kind of like it even if they're sifted and gone through by hand you're you're you're still going to potentially have nature inside of your natural product. So another one that people really like is jeans, greens and jeans. Greens was one of the first ones online like I'm going to tell you I think I was ordering from James greens when I lived in New York and I had my herbal skincare company when it first started and this was like in 19 9697 Then, like they were one of the first places I found online, I could get herbs. Maybe it was a little bit later than that. But I always thought that was really cool. And then another people really like bulk apothecary. And that's more like, you can get herbs. But you can also get like carrier oils and essential oils and beeswax and stuff like that. So I think that's why a lot of people like them. Did you have any questions about any suppliers? I know like you're the only one who is in here right now. So the spotlights on you?

Speaker 2  5:36  
Oh, what about like, jars and bottles? And is there?

Speaker 1  5:44  
Yeah, I got a list for that too. For you. Okay. So my favorite place has always been to get bottles. And part of the reason why I really like this place is they always seem to be like, really on top of their game. As far as like the newest and the latest, like they were the first place you could get cobalt bottles for your SAVs and stuff, and purple. And you know, they just really have always been, I feel like really down with the bottle game like they've always been on top of that. And that's s ks bottle. So it's s ks hyphen bottle.com.

Unknown Speaker  6:21  
They're a good one,

Speaker 1  6:23  
they have asked me now I think they're even doing like labels and vacuum seal packaging. And like, I think they've gone like really, really like they just have some really cool containers. Another one is birch bottle, you can get them in smaller quantities from places like bulk apothecary, and mountain rose herbs. But if if you're needing more than, you know, five or six and you want to get 20 of something or 100 of something, you definitely want to look at something like ES QUE ES or birch or net bottle. But those are all places that have been around for a long time. And they're like 100% in the bottle game. Like you know, they've been doing this for a long time they've been they know how to, they know how to ship them to you and they're not going to get broken. I mean, they just been doing this forever. So those are good places that you can that you can go and get different containers from was there a certain kind of container that you were looking for?

Speaker 2  7:23  
Oh, no, I'm just kind of starting to do some of the you know extracts and tinctures and you know some of the stuff I've never done like I'm just getting into this so I don't have a stock Yeah, of

Unknown Speaker  7:37  
course that makes Yeah,

Speaker 2  7:39  
so I'm just like okay, is is there like yes, I'd gotten some pheromone rows but I'm just curious if there were other like they've had such as slow shipping time lately. I don't know if that's gotten better because I kind of moved away from them but I was just curious if there were other options there and

Speaker 1  8:03  
yeah, yeah, no, I hear you it was so mountain roads was redoing their whole back end infrastructure. So they were doing like redoing all their database and all that kind of stuff. So I think shipping should be much better now. I think like because they had to they had to like they were redoing everything. Which I think is great when a business says hey we're redoing everything be patient and then they get come back and get it all together again. I think that they're probably like just rolling right now really well. But if you're looking for just a few things like I'm not really sure if I want you know 25 tincture bottles right? You can also look at places like Amazon you can also look at places like mountain rose, Amazon, bulk apothecary craft stores like you so even some of the JoAnn Fabric time kinds of stores are now carrying little containers because I think it's just people have just been making so much stuff lately that they also have them so if you're not sure like what size you want or if you want to work with one color or another or one kind of finish or another on the bottle. You know you could definitely do that hardware stores are the best places for canning jars. So if you wanted to get a bunch of like big quart jars to do your tinctures then you definitely want to do something like money center ball because they're safe. Sometimes if you go to a place like the dollar store and they have screw on lids the the jars may not be they may just be for decoration. And you know you're supposed to fill them with something but they're not food safe. So you definitely want to make sure you're going with like a food safe job. I always try to get plastic and glass products that I'm putting things in for sale from the United States or Canada. We are a country where I know has similar ideas about how I want, like ingredients that I want in my containers, like I don't like off gassing. I don't like things that have, you know, potential chemicals in them, you know, I just don't want that. I'm like making an herbal tincture here, I don't want to, you know, have it have something funky in it. And so Mason and ball are made in the United States. And those are pretty much the two canning jar brands anyway, so they're really easy to find, you can even get them now and like purple and red and blue. So that's kind of fun also. Um, so some great places for live plants are strictly medicinal. And you can get like rootstock sent seeds, plants. And these are places I've actually had really good luck with the plants growing for me. And so just an example of what I mean like growing for me, I've grown in the Green Mountains of Vermont. I've grown herbs in upstate New York, like 30 miles south of the Canadian border. I've grown on an island off the coast of Florida in the Gulf, where it is almost impossible to get anything to grow in that salty sandy soil. I've grown in North Carolina, red clay, and in Virginia, and these are brands that have I have used in every single place. Strictly medicinal seed savers exchange, the growers exchange, Baker Creek, and Richter, and they've all given me really good products. The same with Johnny's. Johnny's is kind of good, because they've got lots of descriptions, and lots of YouTube videos. So if you don't know how to use their seed blocking tool, or you don't know how to grow something, they often have a lot of instructional videos on YouTube. And I mean, I've got to tell you, no matter how long I've been doing this, sometimes I'm just like, how do I do that again, and it's Dav Zoa, like, remind me in like a little video like, oh, okay, that's right. That's right. That's how I use this, you know, because there's all these different fun tools out there. And what's the best way to disperse seeds that my almost 50 year old eyes cannot see anymore? Like, oh, okay, they've got a tool for that. So definitely, like, I think those those places are, are pretty stand up companies. As far as I know, I don't take any responsibility for any companies goofiness, but I've had really good luck with plants from those places. And if you go online, and you can often find it through like your extension service, or a Native Plant Society, in your state, you can actually often get linked in with native plants. So the cool thing with that is, is often you can trade or you can just on the if someone has an overabundance, you can you can get those, those plants and you know that they're local, and you know that they will work where you're living, and often they're specific to your environment. So they're very good for that. So it's definitely something that you know, you can think about connecting with a local organization. So again, you would do that through. You could do that through like your extension service program, you can do that through a Native Plant Society, Audubon. Your local, local green, not greenhouses, like Botanical Gardens, places like that. Those are often good places and often botanical gardens and stuff will have plant days so you can either buy plants that they have excess of or that they're they're thinning and they're repotting, sometimes they give them away sometimes you can volunteer, and you know, come home with a lot of really expensive, exotic fun, herbal plants that may be you know, you weren't necessarily you didn't have it in your budget to spend like 40 bucks on the two foot tall plant. But maybe you know, they'll let you if they have extra as if they're thinning something out. So that's something to remember to. Also children's garden projects or community garden projects are also great places to find plants for essential oil supplier, so this is the essential oil supply errs. I will not ever suggest a company that's a multi level marketing company. If you're involved in multilevel marketing, I don't really care. That's your deal. I just don't accept those, though. I just don't. Those companies I find have been problematic in the industry. There's been, you know, fraud and people suing and all this kind of stuff, I just kind of like removed myself from it. And I feel it's a predatory business models. So I'm just like, that's not you know where I want to be. But, um, so the essential oil companies that I find to have the most luck with. And when I say locked, it doesn't mean that every single oil that they make is perfect. I don't, I'm not like brand specific, I want the best lavender, I want the best peppermint, I want the best Cedarwood I want the best, you know, whatever, I want the best of that. And some companies have access to what I feel is a better one. So I will, you know, my essential oil cupboard is is all different kinds of brands. And they're mostly things like Swiss botanicals, our Swiss aromatics, I'm sorry, tisserand, mountain rose herbs. And then other brands that people really like I do really like nature's gift also, sorry about that, um, is revive or Cassia. Plant Therapy, I do have some of there's places like bulk apothecary also carry essential oils, you may find essential oils, I believe Frontier has a line also. So if you were herb shopping, they may have some essential oils that you would like. And essential wholesale, also has essential oils. So when you're purchasing essential oil, there's there's two things to look for, you want to make sure there's transparency. There's a Latin name, where it comes from where it's sourced from, but you also want to understand that essential oils are purchased on a commodities market. So if you don't know what that is, you can look that up. But basically commodities market is purchasers, you know, land wherever they're selling, you know, vetiver oil, for example. So that would be in Africa, and there would be farmers, and they would have their product, and they would be purchased by the barrel, or even larger. And that would be it's just like any other commodity. So there are some essential oil companies that will be like, Oh, well, we grow every plant that we have. And you're like, No, no, you don't. There's no way you grow every bit of what you have in Arizona, it doesn't work that way, you need massive amounts of plants. To make essential oils, I mean, massive amounts, I'm hundreds and 1000s of tons and poundage. And I mean, you need a lot. So they're purchased on the commodities market. Now some essential oil companies have agreements with farms just like just like anything else, this is really comes down to farming, and how the essential oil clams are grown and harvested and, you know, then used for essential oil production, right.

Speaker 1  18:23  
So you know, the idea that, you know, someone's grabbing a bouquet of lavender and making you four ounces of essential oil is just a fancy. And I know this for a fact that it's purchased on the commodities market because growing up my best friend's parents owned the largest essential oil wholesale company in the United States. So not only did I learn a lot about essential oils, but her parents who go on buying trips to different countries, and then these huge barrels of essential oil from whatever farm or wherever they'd contracted to get this certain oil from would then be delivered to their warehouse and then it would then be bottled into, you know, gallon half gallon quart, you know, and then down to you know, 30 mil, so it would just dip and then they would go out to these other companies. So these other companies would then purchase the essential oil from them and put their own label on it. So there is more seed to jar. Clarity nowadays, you know, 20 years later, but it's still a commodities product. And you can even look up commodities prices in reference to essential oils and you can see I mean I think we have an example of this and one of the aromatherapy classrooms but you can definitely see. So finding one brand that's going to have your perfect oils for everything that they offer. For all the time, it's not going to happen because it's a farmed product. You know, sometimes you get corn on the cob. And from a farmer down the road, you're like, oh my gosh, this is the best thing I've ever had my whole life or something like that, or the best broccoli or whatever. And then the next time you get it, it's like, this not know what I was so crazy about last time, the broccolis, it's all right. But the reality is, is it's just like anything else, it's grown from the ground. And so we have to remember that. So these essential oil companies, no matter even no matter how hard they try to make sure, there will never be that the product is never the same, it can't be the same. There's different amounts of oil, there's different amounts of water. In the soil, there's different kinds of soil, there's different amendments in the soil, there's different amounts of sunlight that that plant receives versus the one the year before. So if you find that, yeah, I don't really like this one, you can give it give it a smell in six months, and maybe they have a different batch in it is really batch specific, too. And so you know, that's why I'm always like, smell smell stuff before you go and buy a bunch of it. Now, of course, a lot of it is smell, and then of course, you're gonna want the ability to use it, right? Does it work. So that's important to remember too, but those are brands that I feel I can get a pretty consistent product from. But I do think that sometimes we expect perfection, from everything in our lives, and it's not attainable. I mean, that's, that's, that's a fantasy, you're never gonna, you know, you're never gonna have if you make homemade pesto from one batch to the other, it's never going to be exactly the same. Even if you use the recipe, so just kind of remember that when you're purchasing herbs and herbal products that you know, to give them the same grace, you'd want to give. Give yourself. So did anyone have any questions about any specific companies for anything? Or? Do we kind of go over it for those of you that came in later, this will be recorded and put in the classroom. So my suggestions for for brands of bulk herbs and stuff will be in that? What are your thoughts on starwest or foster? So I've, I have not ordered from starwest in a long time. But that just that doesn't, that doesn't mean anything. You know, I'm just like anyone else I get, oh, this is where I get my stuff, or I'm gonna get the stuff from. I haven't heard anything bad about them. of either of them. Um, I do know, maybe about 12 years ago, someone had a complaint about something that starwest that came across my I don't know if I read about it someplace or something. And starwest corrected it really quickly. So I think a company that's listening to you, and listening to their customers is really important. They're willing to be proactive and and I think that was red clover. They they didn't like the quality of it. And I think I said Well, you talk to him about it. And I think they immediately got it replaced or something like that, but I haven't heard anything bad. But I'll tell you what, I don't really listen to bad stuff. I feel like the world gives us enough bad like people can find something to complain about all the time. So I think if you find something that you're happy with and you feel that it's consistent, and it's good and it's doing its job, you're probably the you're probably right.

Unknown Speaker  23:44  
Okay, thank you.

Unknown Speaker  23:47  
Anyone else

Speaker 1  23:55  
All right, so this was just, this was just a short talk tonight about herbal suppliers and places you can get live plants, bottles, essential oils and herbs. So if no one has any questions about this, does anyone have a quick question about anything else that I can help them with?

Speaker 1  24:26  
All right, I'm going to take that as a no. So you know, we've been here for about 25 minutes so I will let you guys get back to your evening. And if you have any topic suggestions, always suggested them in the in the student group or you can always feel free to email me if it's something that you don't want other people to know you have a question about and I can definitely try to focus on What we're talking about based on everyone's needs, that makes sense. So thank you so much for being here. I know we have a small group tonight. Maybe that's Friday. I didn't realize that when I rescheduled. So thank you so much. You guys. Have a great evening, and I appreciate you. And if you need anything, please reach out. Remember, I can't I can't read your mind. So if you need support or you have a question or something, please email me so I can get back to you and help you out. All right, thank you so much. Have a great night. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.