Beautiful calendulas for beautiful skin
Here at Harmony Gardens and Grub, the gardens are coming along nicely. One of the first plants I planted were calendulas, as they flower constantly, and the bees love them. They spread from a tiny seedling into a huge patch of stunning and cheerful orange and yellow flowers, and they require very little maintenance other than regular deadheading.
Calendulas are edible, and are fantastic to add to your salads, or used as a decorative garnish. They are also very handy to make into a skin salve. Calendulas have anti-inflammatory properties, and they are said to help calm redness and irritation on the skin. They can help to protect against oxidative stress, and can help to slow visible signs of ageing. All of this from one beautiful flower, grown in your garden!
Calendula is not suitable for people who are allergic to plants in the daisy or aster family, such as chrysanthemums, ragweed, marigold. Calendula can cause irritation in children with severe eczema, so it should always be used with caution. For full medical advice, please make sure to consult your health practitioner.
Here at Harmony Gardens and Grub, we are very excited to have made our first calendula salve!
We harvested our calendulas, and dried them thoroughly.
Then we separated the flower petals from the seed heads, so that we could keep the seeds. We infused some solid coconut oil with the flower petals, using a double boiler method, for about 1 1/2 hours. Then we strained the oil, and added some beeswax and shea butter. We melted these and combined them all together, poured the mix into tins, and allowed it to set. It is lovely and soft, easy to apply, and is great for soothing itchy and irritated skin patches
