June 2014 – Dokudami: from the garden to the bottle

Hi all!

We are now very excited picking up herbs and flowers of Dokudami. Yes, apart from selling the dry herb, we are now offering dry Dokudami flowers as well!

And because June is the month for picking up Dokudami, we wanted to share the trip that Dokudami makes, from our garden to our products.

Keep reading!

Picking up Dokudami

Our garden is already full of herbs. Lavender, Hakka (Japanese mint), Apple mint, Lemon balm (Melissa),
Peppermint, Calendula, Rosemary, Camomile,..

And Dokudami!!

A normal morning of gardening for us in June:

Collecting Dokudami herbs:

We have to take Dokudami herbs before the flowers appear, because the most powerful moment of Dokudami (when it has more properties) is just before the bloom. After that moment, most of that power goes to the Dokudami flowers.

Collecting Dokudami flowers:

Part of the Dokudami is allowed to bloom. When the flowers bloom, we pick them up. As a very precious object, Dokudami flowers are very small and light, but very valuable.

What happens with Dokudami afterwards?

We take herbs and flowers, wash them and remove the water from them.

Part of the herbs and the flowers are put to dry. From that, we make Dokudami powder and dry Dokudami flowers for selling, and for making soap and infused oil.

The other part of the herbs and flowers are used in a different way. We take the leaves from the herbs and cut them into chunks. After that, we will put them into alcohol and marinate during 1 year. After that year, we will have ready the dokudami extract and will be able to make our toner. We do the same process with the flowers, but the extract obtained will be used to make our serum.

Summarizing, this is the long way we make to use Dokudami. We hope that this has been interesting for you. We happily accept comments, questions, and ideas for future newsletters.

Thank you for reading us,

Best wishes,

Bea from Tomoe Kobo