Open Source Apothecary At Home / The twelve-month course
The twelve-month course
A free, seasonal, twelve-unit course through the whole handbook — the open version of a subscription herbal programme.
guideThis is a structured twelve-month course, arranged so that each unit lands in the season when its plants are actually available. It is the open version of what a subscription herbal programme sells: a sequence, a set of plants per month, a body system to learn, and something to make.
How it differs from the subscription version, and why that matters. A boxed programme ships dried herbs and a booklet. Because this course assumes you are growing or foraging the plant, the schedule is dictated by the growing season rather than by a shipping calendar. The plants arrive when they are ready, which is also when they are at their most potent — and the harvest-timing principle that runs through the growing section is something you experience directly rather than read about.
The shape of each unit.
| Element | What it is | |---|---| | A body system | The physiology behind the complaints that month | | Two or three herbs | The plants in season, with the evidence for each | | A project | Something you make, harvest or plant | | Safety | The interactions and red flags for that month's herbs | | Reading | The condition pages relevant to that system |
By the end of the year you should know roughly thirty herbs as plants rather than as products: how to identify and grow each one, when to harvest it, how to dry or extract it, what the trial evidence says it does, and what it interacts with. That is the same promise the commercial course makes, and it is a reasonable amount to learn in a year.
What it will not do. It will not make you a clinician, it will not teach you to diagnose, and it will not make it appropriate to advise other people on their medication. The safety pages are the load-bearing part of the whole handbook, and knowing thirty herbs does not change that.
The order matters less than the habit. Twelve units over a year works because it matches the seasons. If you start in July, start at unit seven and wrap around — the sequence is a calendar, not a prerequisite.
Growing it
The year at a glance
| Unit | Month | System | Plants in season | Project | |---|---|---|---|---| | 1 | January | Foundations | — | Set up: jars, scale, drying space, label system | | 2 | February | Digestion | Dried: fennel, peppermint, ginger | Make a carminative blend and a bitter | | 3 | March | Nutrition and minerals | Nettle, dandelion (spring flush) | First forage; nettle soup; cold infusion of marshmallow | | 4 | April | The garden | Seed sowing; chamomile, calendula, borage | Plant the apothecary bed | | 5 | May | Skin and topical | Calendula, chamomile, yarrow | Infused oil, then a salve | | 6 | June | Nervous system and sleep | Lemon balm, chamomile, passionflower | Make a calming tincture and a sleep blend | | 7 | July | Harvest at peak | St John's wort, yarrow, lavender | Midsummer harvest; red oil; drying properly | | 8 | August | Preservation | Berries, seed, ferments | Ferment a vegetable; dry and store a bulk harvest | | 9 | September | Immune and respiratory | Elderberry, echinacea, thyme | Elderberry syrup; a cough blend | | 10 | October | Roots and storage | Valerian, echinacea, dandelion, ginger | Root harvest; decoctions; a vinegar extract | | 11 | November | Heart, joints and nerves | Dried: hawthorn, turmeric, willow (caution) | A joint salve; a heart-support tea blend | | 12 | December | Review and the medicine cabinet | Stores from the year | Inventory, label audit, plan next year |
A note on the northern hemisphere. This schedule is written for West Virginia, zone 6a, with a last frost around mid-May and a first frost in October. Shift it by a few weeks either way for your own location, and by six months for the southern hemisphere.
Preparation
What you need before unit one
- The starter kit from build your own box — jars, bottles, strainer, scale, thermometer, labels
- A drying space: dark, dry, ventilated. This is the item most people underestimate.
- A notebook. The single most valuable piece of equipment in this course is a record of what you harvested, when, and how it turned out.
- A garden bed or a set of large pots, if you have neither ground nor a windowsill yet
How to work a unit
1. Read the system page for the month before touching a plant. 2. Identify the plants. Read the growing page and confirm the plant in the field or the garden. 3. Do the project. Make the thing; the making is where the knowledge sticks. 4. Read the safety page for that month's herbs — interactions, red flags, who must not use them. 5. Write down what happened, including what failed. The next year's plan comes from that record.
The one habit that makes the course work
Label everything with plant, part, date and place. An unlabelled jar in eight months is a jar you cannot use, and relabelling from memory is how people end up taking the wrong thing.
Cautions and interactions
- This course does not qualify anyone to advise others on medication or to diagnose.
- The safety pages are not optional reading — they are the part that prevents harm.
- Do not substitute a course unit for medical care.
- Wild plant identification must be confirmed by more than one method before anything is eaten or extracted.
- Some herbs interact seriously with prescription drugs. Check every one against the interactions pages.
When this is not a self-care problem — get help
- Any feeling that you can now advise a friend on their prescription medication — that is the point at which to stop and refer them to a pharmacist.