How I use herbs - Soapwort

I bought a tiny little soapwort plant a couple of years ago and I have been waiting patiently for it to grow because I really wanted to try using it for laundry detergent. I found out about soapwort after I started using soap nuts for laundry. I like soap nuts, but they are imported from overseas and can't be grown here as they are considered a weed plant.

my soapwort plant before I harvested some leaves

Soapwort (Saponaria officinalis) is commonly grown as a flowering plant (unfortunately I don't have a photo of mine in flower). Its leaves and roots contain saponins, which is a chemical that lathers when mixed with water. This makes soapwart an effective cleaner. Soapwart can also be made into a decoction to treat external skin conditions (I haven't tried this), and although it can be taken internally for various ailments, it comes with many warnings, so I haven't tried that either. As soapwort can be poisonous, you need to grow it where grazing animals cannot access it, so I have kept mine in a pot for now. Soapwort is not frost sensitive, but does wilt in hot dry weather. I find it revives if I put the pot in a tub of water for a couple of days. It may do better in the ground though.

The main reason I grow soapwort is for the saponins, and I have been waiting for for it to be large enough to harvest. You can harvest the roots and the leaves, but when I felt around in the pot I didn't think there was much root to harvest, so I just gave it a haircut instead.

Then I followed the instructions that I found here. I put the leaves in a large pot and covered them in water. I boiled the water for a couple of hours, leaving it to steep overnight.

before boiling

ready to strain

Then I strained the mixture through a cheese-cloth and into a large bottle. I ended up with around 5L of soap water liquid. I added about half a litre of vinegar to make it keep longer.

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here . You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!). I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months. I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post! New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog. I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people. I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts. I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo. Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about...

How to make soap with beer (and tallow)

I may have mentioned this before.... soap making is addictive! Once you start, you just want to keep making more soap. And not the same soap, you want to try all sorts of different soaps. I made the mistake of joining a facebook group called Saponification Nation and now my facebook newsfeed is full of glorious soaps, in all colours and shapes, which makes it even harder to resist the urge to experiment. One soap that kept popping up a few weeks ago was soap made with beer. I generally prefer not to use ingredients just for the sake of it, I like to know that they are adding something to the properties of the finished soap. As you know, I don't like to use artificial ingredients either (colours or fragrances). When I read about beer in soap I found out that beer adds sugar to the mixture, which increases lather. I use tallow in my soap, which has limited lather, so anything that adds lather could improve the soap. ...

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