If you're a new herbalist (or aspiring!), you may be seduced by glass jars, hinge jars, mason jars, canning jars, and bottles of all sorts and sizes. It's part of the fun of making herbal remedies, and a full pantry or apothecary shelf is very satisfying.

However, labeling is an important part of the process that cannot be avoided!

Placing accurate and permanent labels on your jars takes time, but it is so worth it! From experience, I know the heartache of finding a beautiful jar of tincture in the back of the cabinet and having no idea what’s in it. It’s got purple berries – but maybe were they red when they went in? It’s got chopped green leaves – no clue, it could be anything. 

it's not only for convenience, but proper labeling practices are key to abiding by Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), and will keep you on the up-and-up regarding current laws and regulations if you sell (retail or wholesale) any of your herbal creations.

Best Ways to Label Jars

To keep your cabinets and herbal apothecary orderly, and to ensure you don’t waste your ingredients or your time, I advise putting a strip of high-quality white or light-colored masking tape on BOTH the lid and the side of the jar and write the following in black permanent marker: 

1) the name of the plant or plants, and the part such as root, leaf, or berry, 

2) the menstruum or liquid and the proportions/ratios, 

3) the date you bottled it,

and 4) a batch number unique to this herbal preparation.

Do not simply place a sticky note on the top as it will disappear into the vortex.

I also advise keeping a binder or folder with a list of your creations that contains information about each batch: where you harvested the herbs, which herbs, what condition they were in, what the weather was like, who was with you, what they weighed fresh, how you cleaned them, which parts (root, leaf, berry, seed, flower, stem) you used, what you combined it with, and much more. This can be easily written up in a Word doc and reprinted or copied every time you bring in a harvest, so it's quick to simply fill in the blanks and keep a record. Also, make sure you list on this sheet the batch number you put on the jar's label... and double check that they match.

#herbalist #apothecary #jars #bottleobsession #labels #TheEssentialHerbal #Llewellyn’sLittleBookofHerbs #bellebuonoschoolofherbalmedicine