Benefits of Andrographis with Richo Cech

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It was so much fun to have Richo Cech on the show to talk about the benefits of Andrographis, also known as the “king of bitters.” Besides all things Andrographis, Richo also covers some gardening advice and even life philosophies. We also hear why Richo loves chilis so much and what he includes in his herbal medicine kit.

As a listener, you also have access to Richo’s recipe for Andrographis tincture (and you’ll hear why this is one of the herbal medicines Richo reached for when he came down with COVID). There’s a free, downloadable and printable recipe card available just for you, which you can find in the section below.

By the end of this episode, you’ll know:

► The experience that introduced Richo to the healing power of herbs

► Why Richo recommends Andrographis in tincture form

► Richo’s favorite herbs to cook with

► Why observing nature is the foundation to gardening

► Why growing just a few plants can be more productive than growing many

► The three herbs Richo includes in his antiseptic tincture

► and so much more…

For those of you who don’t already know him, Richard A. (Richo) Cech has dedicated his life to finding, growing and disseminating seeds of medicinal plants, shrubs, vines, trees, and open-pollinated vegetables.  He has botanized throughout the US, Canada, South America, Europe, China and Africa in search of native plants and has introduced many unique medicinal herb species to the US.  His work may be enjoyed by reading any of his books and by visiting his website at www.strictlymedicinalseeds.com. 

This was my first time meeting Richo, but I’ve been benefiting from his herbal presence for decades from his books, seeds, and plant starts. I grow so many different herbal plants thanks to his company, Strictly Medicinal Seeds, so it was a special delight to finally connect with him in person!

I’m thrilled to share our conversation with you today!

-- TIMESTAMPS -- for Benefits of Andrographis

• 01:13 - Introduction to Richo Cech
• 02:49 - From archeology to herbalism
• 10:31 - What his years as Production Manager at Herb Pharm taught Richo
• 18:27 - The gifts of Andrographis
• 23:57 - Andrographis tincture
• 27:32 - Herbs work!
• 29:01 - How Richo works with Andrographis tincture
• 30:23 - Appreciate all the tastes
• 36:22 - Growing your own plant medicine
• 42:31 - The first step to a thriving garden
• 52:44 - The argument for growing everything
• 59:21 - A shout out to Super Orange Blossom calendula
• 1:01:34 - Richo’s herbal first aid kit
• 1:09:59 - Herbal tidbit

Get Your Free Recipe!

This simple tincture is a great digestive bitter.

Ingredients:

• 1 oz. Andrographis paniculata dried herb
• 2.5 oz. organic grain alcohol (95%)
• 2.5 oz. distilled water

Directions:

1. Grind the dried herb and place in a canning jar.
2. Mix the menstruum (mixture of organic grain alcohol and distilled water).
3. Add the menstruum over the dried herb. Cap the jar and label.
4. Shake daily for 2 weeks to macerate.
5. Strain or press the tincture (squeeze the herbs to extract as much of the liquid as possible). 
6. Allow to settle overnight, then strain through a coffee filter. Bottle and label.

Connect with Richo

• Website | StrictlyMedicinalSeeds.com
• Instagram | @strictlymedicinalseeds
• Facebook | @strictlymedicinalseeds

Transcript of the 'Benefits of Andrographis with Richo Cech' Video

Rosalee de la Forêt:
Hello and welcome to the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast, a show exploring how herbs heal as
medicine, as food and through nature connection. I’m your host, Rosalee de la Forêt. I created
this Channel to share trusted herbal wisdom so that you can get the best results when
relying on herbs for your health. I love offering up practical knowledge to help you dive deeper
into the world of medicinal plants and seasonal living.

Each episode of the Herbs with Rosalee Podcast is shared on YouTube, as well as your favorite
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Rosalee de la Forêt:

Okay, grab your cup of tea and let’s dive in.

It was so much fun to have Richo on the show. This was my first time meeting Richo, but I’ve been benefitting from his herbal presence for decades from his books, to his seeds, and plant starts. Seriously, I grow so many different herbal plants, thanks to his company, Strictly Medicinal, so it was a special delight to finally connect with him in person.

In this episode, we talk about the benefits of Andrographis, also known as the “king of bitters,” as well as cover some gardening advice, and even life philosophies. We also hear why Richo loves chilis so much and what he includes in his herbal medicine kit.

For those of you who don’t know him already, Richard Cech has dedicated his life to finding, growing and disseminating seeds of medicinal plants, shrubs, vines, trees and open-pollinated vegetables. He has botanized throughout the US, Canada, South America, Europe, China and Africa in search of native plants and has introduced many unique medicinal herb species to the US. His work may be enjoyed by reading any of his books and by visiting his website at www.strictlymedicinalseeds.com.

Welcome to the podcast Richo. I’m so excited that you’re here.

Richo Cech:

Thanks, Rosalee.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’ve been wanting to have you on for awhile because I consider you one of my herbal teachers. I’ve learned so much from your books and I’ve created an entire herbal garden. Thanks to you, really, all of the seeds and starts I’ve gotten over the years. It’s just an honor to have you here. I love to dive in just hearing about your story and how the plant path has guided you along the way.

Richo Cech:

The plants will find a way. They don’t need me. They don’t need you. They will find a perennial and permanent place on earth. If we can be in their presence, then all the better. I started out as an archaeologist, actually. My professional work started in archaeology. That’s where I went to college to do anthropology. No matter where I went in the world—started out in Colombia. I went to East Africa. I went to, of course, all around the United States.

I was working at the Koster site in southern Illinois in 1971. We were digging through all these layers of Paleolithic settlements. Every time you got to one of the strata that was settlement area, the soil became from buff-colored sterile to a black, dark, rich, what we call the “cultural layer.” It was black not only because there was a lot of charcoal from fires mixed in, but because of broken down organic matter, i.e. compost, albeit compost that went back 20,000 years. We would dig through these layers and we would take copious notes, photographs and try to reconstruct the lifestyle of Paleolithic Indians in the past.

As we dug through, we would put everything into a table screen, which was actually a tool which became very useful later on as I became an herbalist. We put everything through the table screen, and then the chips and the little bits of bone, or maybe some fragments of figurines or whatever would be left on the screen. Underneath it, there would be this rich, dark dirt. Maybe it was a portent of my later leanings that I was always really fascinated by the dirt. I would take a wheelbarrow of the dirt and move it up to the outside area outside the excavation and dump it.

After some time I thought if it was rich earth then, how about now? So, I put some watermelon seeds in there. The watermelons sprouted and grew. They continued to move towards the excavation, cascaded over the side of the excavation, down through the late woodland period, to the early woodland period, to the late Paleolithic, down to the roots of humanity in North America. There they created beautiful melons dangling and hanging. I thought after all this time, this dirt still hasn’t lost its magic.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

We could call it “well-aged compost.”

Richo Cech:

Definitely.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That just brought up a lot of fond memories for me, Richo, because my mom was an archaeologist and an ethnobotanist. I hadn’t thought about this in years, but I remember being a young kid running around the site, the table screens and everything.

Richo Cech:

Somebody was just asking me how to clean comfrey. I said, “Get yourself a table screen, put the roots up there and spray them off with a garden hose.” She’s like, “It’s 20° below zero in Ohio. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that right now.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

So, the early days were archaeology into soil enthusiast. I know you’ve traveled across the world and botanized. How did that come about? 

Richo Cech:

When I was 16 in 1971, I went to Colombia to do surface survey among the Tairona people, the historical Tairona people. This was in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta near Santa Maria on the Caribbean Coast. I experienced my first poultice at that time when my crew leader, Jack Wynn, cut his foot and got an infection, and was moaning in a hammock up in the foothills in a little grass hut, which later burned down, actually, and it wasn’t my fault.

Anyway, Jack was lying back in his hammock. Don Luis Abelardo, who was the one-armed man who was the guide for the expedition, went out into the jungle. He got himself a leaf and put some fat on it. He took it and I can still see him rubbing it back and forth on the chimney of a lantern, where there’s a single flame in there, warming it up. He plastered that to Jack’s foot, and then put on a sock, and then everybody went to bed.

In the morning, I took the sock off of Jack’s foot and peeled off the poultice. On the outside of the poultice, having been sucked through the leaf was all this purulent matter from his infection. It has actually gone through the leaf and ended up on the outside of the leaf. When I peeled it away, there was a little tiny seashell right in the slit of the cut. I thought maybe that was the reason that it infected so much was because there was foreign matter in there. I got out my Swiss Army knife and I plucked that seashell out of there. Jack was fine after that.

I saw the power of healing and the power of using plants right out of the environment. Being a doctor’s kid, I would’ve gone for the Betadine solution, but I had none. I was given a very graphic demonstration of the value of the herbal poultice in a wild setting there in the early days. Things like that kept happening to me until finally, I got tired of looking at old bones and pot sherds, and ended up concentrating on green growing things instead, and also analyzing secondary constituents and raising up a family. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

You strike me as a very adventurous person, Richo. At a very young age, you’re off in other countries. You continue to travel, I know, to Africa, to China. I’d love to hear about the beginnings of Strictly Medicinal Seeds.

Richo Cech:

I was the Production Manager at Herb Pharm. They are manufacturers of liquid extracts here in Southern Oregon. I was the Production Manager and “herbalist” for 11 years with them, so I learned a great deal through multiple batching, creating my own experiments around extraction. Actually, we would extract with 25% alcohol, 50% alcohol, 75% alcohol and 100% alcohol, which is only 95% pure, actually. We would be able to taste test the results. I had little tincture presses that we would use for this. It could press up small amounts of material so we didn’t have too much wastage, and then we could run those through for HBTLC analysis and look at the profile of active constituents, and make some decisions about what the best extraction technique really was. I was involved in all of that, basically, product development for about 300 different botanicals. That really helped me understand extraction of herbs, whether it’s better to use herbs in the fresh state or the dried state. All the little, tiny differences between, for instance, plant part or the season of harvest, all those minutia really could be pinned down. That’s where I started to call myself an herbalist or other people started to call me an herbalist at that point.

None of this is really much good unless you use it in your own life. As a grandpa, I still have instances where, for instance, my grandkids will present with a cough. The little ones, when they get an infection, it’s so quick to come on. It can be so debilitating. It can even be life-threatening. It’s good to know that you can take some elecampane tincture, mix it with a little licorice as an antitussive, give that to the little ones, and watch the cough diminish and bring the fever down. Have some means to create wellness and rest among those that you’re closely associated with. These kinds of things are part of our natural birthright as human beings. We’ve lived among the plants since the olden times.

The plants are there for us as long as we understand the value of that relationship free of charge, no plastic involved, can go right out to the garden, dig an onion and make an onion poultice, and open up somebody’s breathing with that. So many options there for us, so much empowerment, so much freedom, so inexpensive and so effective. That’s really the path that I like to help guide people on is to know more about the plants and how the plants teach them through their service to the plants, to live a more healthy lifestyle.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

That reminds me of a quote from you that I really like. I can only paraphrase it. It’s something like what the plants can do, but what they’ve really done is teach me why I’m useful or how I can be useful. I just love that you are speaking to this relationship that happens. It’s not just, “How can I use this plant?” but “What teachings does a plant have for me in guiding my own life?” is what I took away from the quote.

Richo Cech:

Respect. This morning, I was walking into the greenhouse. There was a plant on the ground. It was a weed that I had taken out of a pot the day before when I was repotting some succulents. I just dumped it and forgotten about it. I picked it up and it was still alive. I went, “What can I do for this little yellow dock plant?” It really doesn’t deserve to be thrown down on the ground. That’s not the message I want to give the plants. I found a dead pot and removed the mold from the surface of it, put in some new fresh dirt, dug in a little hole, replanted my yellow dock in there, firmed it all around, gave it a little water and then forgot about it. When I came back a couple of hours later, it was so happy, so vibrant! Really, when it comes down to it, yellow dock is a weed that a lot of people throw away and a lot of people will till under, and yet it has a lot of value. It has a gentle laxative influence. It contains a lot of iron, so it’s really good for women to take during their menses. Other iron supplements tend to be constipating, but yellow dock isn’t, and so it’s really two good medicines in one plant. It doesn’t deserve to be thrown down on the floor and forgotten about.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thanks for that lesson. I’m excited to hear about—actually, I want to go back. So, you’re an archaeologist, ethnobotanist. You started gathering seeds. I didn’t know that you are a part of all of the Herb Pharm experiments with all the medicine making. When people ask me, “How should I make a tincture of this plant?” I would say how I start is I go and look at the label at Herb Pharm and see what they did and go from there, because in terms of reinventing the wheel, might as well start there. That’s cool to know you’re a part of that. Now, you have this amazing company that supplies seeds and herbs to people all over.

Again, my garden is filled. I love that you said that your mission is to help people connect to the plants and you’ve definitely done that for me because I have connected with so many plants. I grow a lot of odd ball things because I can. Because I can get them from you and then I get to connect with those plants. I’ve learned so much from my Astragalus, from my tulsis. Last year, I grew all the different kinds as one of your kits. I’ve also grown Andrographis, which is a plant that you’re going to talk about today, which I’m super excited for. I feel like the people who know Andrographis love Andrographis, and then there are people who just don’t know Andrographis. I hope we can change that today.

Richo Cech:

We had COVID for Christmas and Andrographis and elecampane were my daily take. It took four days to get over the infection. Luckily, we had enough groceries in the house and we could go out and get chickweed out of the field. We made the Andrographis and elecampane on a dosage of about five times a day. I never did get a cough, but I coughed up a lot of stuff. I didn’t really cough it up, but it came up as it were. It made me feel like—I was almost nipping it in the bud. I should have had a cough, but I didn’t ever get one because I had the right herbs with me. Then there are these unpleasant gastric effects that go along with pandemic. Andrographis, as you know, is extremely bitter. It really astringes all those tissues. It prevents the uncomfortable gastric effects of the sickness, one of the things about an herb that’s so powerful.

You’re mentioning your ability to bring in some unusual herbs into the garden. On one hand, we mustn’t forget the comfreys, the calendulas and the arnicas because they’re at the very core of our experience of European or Western herbalism. On the other side, knowing something like Andrographis is extremely important. This is basically a tropical weed, more or less a tropical annual, although when you get into the tropics and you call something an “annual,” it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense because they don’t have the same kind of cold dormancy that we have here. A lot of times, the annual tropicals don’t really even get killed off and so they can live for several years.

The reason I chose that as a recipe was because with an herb like that, very useful to make a tincture, because if you make a tincture then you can very carefully dose it. Some people are allergic to Andrographis. A lot of times if you take too much, it’s unnecessary to take so much. You work with low doses, one drop to five drops in that region. If you try to make a tea and create that kind of dosage, it’s much more difficult. A teaspoon of herb in a cup of hot water, how did it extract? Andrographolide isn’t really water soluble anyway, so it’s better to use some alcohol in the mix to get that particular diterpenoic compound solubilized. The tincture becomes very, very useful in that way. Plus, also, you’re sick. You don’t want to be dinking around with a bunch of strainers and tea cups, and this and that. You’ve got just barely enough energy to drop a few drops out of a dropper into a glass of orange juice, quaff it down, and then go and lie down again.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I really get the sense you’re speaking from some near experience.

Richo Cech:

Tea is fine. Tea is very good. It’s very healthy. It’s a good healthy drink. You could certainly make some Andrographis tea and sip it throughout the day. I’m not saying that’s wrong. It would work pretty well. There are some flavonoids in there. They are very water soluble. They are quite useful anti-inflammatory also. Any herb you’ll look at is going to be a complex mix of elements that are soluble in different kinds of solvents, which may or may not lend themselves to different techniques – hot, cold, dried, fresh, succus, tincture, salve, ointment, what have you. That’s why I wrote the book, Making Plant Medicine, so that people could look at the herbs and see what are the most level-headed ways to prepare, when to harvest and things of this nature, beginning at the beginning and ending somewhere around the middle, and elevated only by one zone relationship with the plant that goes beyond anything that can be read or said.

The Andrographis tincture is a 1 to 2 on the fresh. On the fresh herb side of things, it’s 1 to 2, which means 1 gram of the herb or one part of the herb gets mixed with two parts or 2l of the solvent, the menstruum; 75% alcohol and 25% water will extract out the goodness. If you had 100 grams which is about 1/4 lb of fresh Andrographis, mix that with 200ml of liquid blended up in a blender. That 200ml of liquid would consist of 75% alcohol and 25% water mixed together.

A lot of times, you do get better extraction with dried herb. The dried herb formula is 1 to 5, that’s one part of the herb to five parts of the liquid, 50% alcohol and 50% water. When you dry down the herb, then the cell structure becomes very brittle. It can be broken apart through grinding vs. if it’s fresh and you put it in a blender. It looks like it’s a slurry, but really, if you looked at it under the microscope, you will see that a lot of that cell structure is still intact. It hasn’t released its goodness. If you dry it and you grind it, you don’t even have to have a coffee grinder to grind it. You can grind it through a fine screen on to a clean tabletop.

You mix that with the five parts of the menstruum. The water part of it dissolves out the water soluble constituents in the herb. The alcohol part of it dissolves out the alcohol soluble constituents. Macerate it for a couple of weeks, shake it, put your good thoughts into it and think about how it’s going to heal people. Keep an eye out on it to make sure that everything looks good. It’s not turning some weird color. First of all, it extracts out the chlorophyll. It’s nice and green and then after some time, that begins to oxidize and it turns brown. No reason to worry. That’s natural. It’s going to happen. Then you put it into a tincture press and press it out. You allow it to settle overnight and then pour it off through a coffee filter. It becomes very pure that way. You have your Andrographis tincture and you can put it in your little dropper bottle. Label it properly with the year. It’s going to last forever anyway. It’s so bitter. It never really changes. You keep that in your cupboard for when it’s really needed.

You can create your own little herbal apothecary that way. Different kinds of extracts. The alcoholic extracts made from dry herbs are going to last longest. The ones made from fresh herbs last less long and the oils are only good for about six months before they start to smell rancid. There are some various tricks around that to try to get them to last a bit longer. Put some Vitamin E oil in there, whatever.

Again, empowering. You have what’s needed when somebody comes by. We had an employee that was missing some days of work. She had such a terrible toothache and swollen gums and whatnot. Bless her heart, she’s working for me. She’s packaging seeds and shipping out seeds like there’s no tomorrow. Sometimes as many as 300 orders a day.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Wow.

Richo Cech:

All these little green bombs going off in different parts of the world. Boom, boom, boom! Just the kind of peace bomb that you need. Yet she’s suffering, so I gave her some Spilanthes and self-heal. I had her swish with that. The next day she came back and she’s like, “Wow! I was really amazed. The pain went away and the swelling is really down.” I’m like, “Yeah, herbs work! Now, you could send out your packages with a little more faith.”

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I always love hearing the success stories, Richo. Thanks for walking us through the Andrographis tincture both fresh and dried. For everyone listening, you can download your free handout for that above this transcript.

Richo Cech:

Fair enough.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

With the Andrographis tincture, do you tend to use it primarily for viral type infections? Do you use it also as a digestive aid?

Richo Cech:

I think it’s true that we don’t have enough bitters in our diet, and so on that level, it doesn’t probably make a lot of difference whether you’re taking Artemisia absinthium, the wormwood, or if you’re taking a small amount of Andrographis. I tend to—I like bitter greens in my diet when I’m well. Give me some chicory, a salad made with chicory and I feel great afterwards, but if I’m really sick, I’m not going to be chewing on some chicory. I’m getting down to Andrographis and take in a half a shot of Andrographis. It’s a question of dosage and a question of foods vs. medicine vs. medicinal foods. How does one really work with all of that?

We don’t have any bitters in our diet, so I encourage everybody to put more bitter. Appreciate all the tastes. That’s a way into herbalism – appreciate all those tastes. I’m sorry. On Facebook, you have to be so nice because you obviously don’t want to get any feedback about not having been nice, but you get the most stupid things people say. It’s so hard not to be nice but to do it anyway just because you know that you don’t want the pain.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Great life tips from Richo.

Richo Cech:

Anyway, somebody was like—I was encouraging ingestion of a small amount of Andrographis just to get a feel for it—and she said, “Yuck! That was so bitter! I had to spit it out.” I’m like, “Okay, learn to appreciate the different tastes. It’s going to be really good for you.” Or this one, the peppers. Honestly, for wellness, there’s really nothing much better you can do for yourself than to take some capsicum everyday. A lot of people will say, “I don’t like any hot stuff,” this and that. Take a little and get used to it and put it into your diet because it’s really, really good for your heart, for your vascular system and for your brain. It’s going to make you live, car accidents aside or falling off a cliff or whatever kind of things might happen, a stray bullet in Mexico or whatever. By golly, you’re going to live 10% longer. Put some capsicum in your diet.

We grow these in the greenhouse. This is an aji amarillo. This is the pepper of Peru in Peruvian cuisine. I eat peppers everyday. I feel great. I have some fat in my diet. It opens up my vascular system, so that that fat doesn’t really do me the harm that it would do otherwise. There’s a great statistical analysis done. It was a big surprise to everybody when they found out that people who eat peppers lived 20% longer than people who don’t eat peppers. Basic. Or your standard carminative herbs. If you come to my kitchen and you eat my cooking, you’re going to taste summer savory in almost everything.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Interesting!

Richo Cech:

The basic Mediterranean herbs, summer savory, rosemary, sage, thyme, all those things, that’s not just for the taste. It keeps your food from suppurating while it’s being digested. It means that you’re going to have more efficient digestion. A lot of the toxins that are in food are going to be neutralized by the spices that you eat. You were talking about the garden plan. I have a garden plan for next year. What I like to do is try to grow a lot of the stuff that’s either extremely helpful for people and put it in little bags and send it out to people who might not have grown it yet, or stuff that nobody else can seem to properly grow.

I’m just trying to prove that it can be done and it’s something that’s needed like the Andrographis or gotu kola or Lobelia or skullcap, Pulsatilla, stuff like that. I’m growing summer savory and orange thyme in a big scale next year to be able to send out to people and encourage them to use those things in their food on a daily basis because I love people and I want them to live longer. I mean, I love herbs more but I do love people. You get the two together and it’s just like love on love. Those basic carminative herbs are so important to us. You don’t have to grow something really unusual from a land faraway. You can grow rosemary bush right in your front yard and take a nip of that every day and remember to be healthy.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

One of my favorite things to do is get your seed catalog each year and the descriptions you have for the plants are so much fun. Sometimes it makes it hard to choose. I think last year I ordered eight different mints because they are all so fun, so I just had to try them all. I do grow summer savory, which I got from you. I just haven’t used it that much so I am now inspired to work with it more.

Richo Cech:

You could use thyme instead. It doesn’t really matter or winter savory.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thyme is my plant. I use a lot of thyme.

Richo Cech:

Thyme makes a great tea, doesn’t it?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes, it really does. For me, most of my soups—I can’t imagine the soup without chilis, without garlic and without thyme. I just don’t know if I could call it a soup.

Richo Cech:

Right. So, you use the chilis too?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes. I don’t think as much as you do. What I love is fermented chili sauce. That’s something that we use all the time. It’s straight out of the garden, ferment it.

Richo Cech:

Irreplaceable.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It’s so yummy.

Richo Cech:

Indeed.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Richo, I’m really excited to talk about your latest book, Growing Plant Medicine, Volume 1, with Volume 2 along the way. I have learned so much from your books along the years. I’ve had your previous plant growing book. This one came out. It was an easy “yes” to say that I definitely need that in my life. I have to say this book really surprise me. I don’t think it should have having known your other books, but growing plants could be a dry topic. It can be explanatory like “Do this, do that, do this,” and that is not your book. Your book is filled with lyricism, stories, poetry and incredible knowledge. Every plant entry, the amount of knowledge that’s in there about propagating the plant, getting to know the plant, all from that relationship perspective, it just feels like even if somebody wasn’t into gardening, they would want to read this book because of all of these tidbits of knowledge that are interspersed throughout it all, so I’m very excited about-

Richo Cech:

Thanks, Rosalee.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I couldn’t love it more. I read it when I first got it and then in preparation for this, I read a lot of it again.

Richo Cech:

Oh, sweet.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

The stories are—that’s how we love to learn and you have a way of telling stories, in a way of early interspersing a lot of knowledge through story.

Richo Cech:

Let me speak to that for just a second. A couple of things. One is the new catalogue is just now going out. It’s at the printer’s.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Oh, good.

Richo Cech:

That’s always a lot of fun. Can you see that?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes.

Richo Cech:

That’s one of the illustrations for the ongoing story. I got a whole earth catalog back in the days in the ‘60s. They had this little story on the bottom of the pages. You had to flip the page to view more things that you could buy, obviously, in order to read the story. It’s a story about Yippies and a boss, and so forth and so on. I was always impressed by that. I was like, “That’s some good marketing!” We have a story, Maudi and the Coconuts, in the new Strictly Medicinal Seed catalog that’s going out to people. You can go to our website at www.strictlymedicinalseeds.com to order a catalog if you don’t have one. If you have ordered from us in the past, you’ll be getting one at your door by the 15th of this month.

In any case, it’s one of those ongoing stories that has a lot of suspense. It’s like in the movies when the hero would be right at the edge of the cliff and just about ready to fall off, and then they’d be like, “Oh, we buy some popcorn!” and you can see the second part of the series. It’s going to cost you a quarter. It will be out in a month or whatever. Everybody will come back to find out what happened. That’s going on with the new catalog. We’re having a lot of fun with it. Of course, the illustrations are done by my daughter, Sena, who is a very accomplished botanical illustrator and also a good cartoonist. To her credit, she must have the plant in front of her to speak to the plant when she’s making a drawing of it.

Volume 2 of Growing Plant Medicine, quite frankly, is everything I know. I’m not going to produce anymore books. That’s enough. It has 2,500 names in the index. My wife and I have been moving through the index very slowly. We have another eight hours left of fine tuning to finish the index. I felt really super motivated to come out with Volume 2 because I finished Volume 1, and then everybody’s like, “When is Volume 2 coming out?” I’m like, “It’ll be out pretty soon,” and then I’m like, “God, I’d better freaking get on with writing it,” because so far, nothing has happened! There is no Volume 2! But this was a secret. I spent 190 days straight producing a monograph everyday without fail! Volume 2 was then written, but the rest of it like organizing all the plant names, creating the indexes. There’s a 500-herb index on seeds per gram. There’s a 250-herb index on dry down, which is all these—speaking of dry information, that’s how many pounds of Angelica root do you have to harvest fresh in order to produce 1lb of Angelica root dry. There’s a lot of info in there like that.

The Volume 2 is actually available for pre-order right now. You get five bucks off and we send it to you in the spring when it’s ready. You can have Volume 1 and Volume 2 and that’s everything I know! I don’t have to do anything else. I’m an old man. What do you expect? I’m going to write some fiction.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’d love that.

Richo Cech:

It’s only going to be about fun from here on out. Come on. Every day is—I hope I don’t forget to eat my peppers. That’s all I’m telling you.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Richo, what I loved about the book too is when you say it’s everything you know, I feel like there’s a lot of Richo philosophy in the book. For example, I love how you began. First, it begins with the story about your kids, this very opening thing, and then you formally begin Chapter One with your recommendation to walk and observe nature as a first step to gardening. I don’t know if you would talk about that a little bit, because I think a lot of people think, “I want to start a garden. What plant should I plant?” That’s kind of the one-two punch there, but you say, “Let’s walk and observe nature first.”

Richo Cech:

In a way, like everything, it starts with my archaeological education. Adrian Anderson who was the state archaeologist of Iowa, was one of my first teachers. He used to go and camp on the site for a night or two nights. He dug up the plow soil and then got down to the occupation levels. This helped him connect. What’s it really for? What’s it really about? What is this place like now? Is there any way that I could be open to a message from the past? It’s midwinter now in Southern Oregon. We cheated a little bit. It hardly ever freezes here. We have a Mediterranean climate – cold and wet in the winter, hot and dry in the summer, perfect for a seed company.

I go out and I walk. I observe and I see the chickweed is starting to come on. A month ago, there was no chickweed visible. Now, there’s quite a bit of nice patches of chickweed coming on. Of course, that’s good medicine right there. Those are saponins in chickweed. You eat that and it’s like soap. It cleans you out. It’s like, “Oh, my God! I had to talk to you. I’ve been looking at these herbs for all these years and I finally decided to take some. I had some chickweed in my salad and I’m pooping!” I’m like, “That’s what it’s supposed to do for you. It’s cleansing. What do you think a spring cleanse is? Comes out your ears? I mean, come on.”

Or the calendula plant. The Calendes. Calendes is named after the fact that the flower occurs at every month of the calendar. Calendes, calendula. There’s a calendula plant right out in front of the seed house. It’s on the south face and it’s next to the sidewalk where it’s warmed. It was just a seed that we swept off to the side. It bloomed vigorously on January 1st. Nice, big, fat yellow flower, and then the next day, part of it was gone. There was some creature that really needed that. You’re observing in nature. You’re watching the flower bloom. You’re seeing that something is eating the flower. Take a tip from nature. Maybe it’s time for you to have some before it’s all gone. When do the seeds germinate? What type of seeds are germinating when?

Last year, I noticed there are so many things you can learn. We grew a whole row of tobacco. We went in and we collected the tobacco seed. We don’t really like—we don’t smoke tobacco, but a lot of people like to grow it and stuff. We have to make a living. Anyways, we’re selling some tobacco seeds, so I’m shaking this tobacco seed in a bucket and then I’m tossing the capitula, the seed capsule, off to the side. About a month later, I’m noticing all these reprod underneath the tobacco. The tobacco seed is coming up, so what do I know? I know it’s a warm soil germinator. I know that there’s no need for cold stratification on that seed. It will just come up readily right away. It’s also really interesting this Nicotiana. It’s one of the few seeds that gains germinability. Germination percentage as you test it over the years just gets better and better and better. It’s like aged tobacco. That’s just an example of observing in nature and finding out something about a seed that you might not have known before by watching when it germinates and what kinds of environments it does well in.

Like the moonwort right outside the window here. It just seem like only yesterday I was picking those luminescent pods and pulling them apart. This is just a good year, a good herb for this year because we’re in ‘24. You add the 4 to 2 and you get 6. There are six stamina in the cruciferae. It’s a bright and sunny, golden year for us ahead. Last year was a pentamerous. It was a fiver, 23, 2 + 3 is 5, and that gave us things like mandrake and belladonna, all those dark and mysterious herbs. This year is bright and joyful. What I’m giving you is the sixes. This year is the sixes. Be happy. Be joyful. Serve the plants and the plants will serve you.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I’ll sign up for that, Richo. Hearing you talk about the seeds and observing them in nature—I grew up with a family that gardened. By the time my dad was “teaching” me to garden, his gardening was going to Home Depot and buying sprouts, coming home, putting Miracle-Gro on them, etc. When I got my garden, I wanted to do things differently, but I hadn’t been taught how to start any plant from seed. It seems like this overwhelming, big hurdle. The information that you have on your site, your catalog and your books, they basically taught me to be a gardener.

Richo Cech:

You’re so sweet.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It’s true.

Richo Cech:

We try. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Teaching me how to do things that sounded strange, that I didn’t understand, like how to scarify a seed, how to grow—put them in the freezer, the refrigerator to get them to germinate. All these things I would never have known. I could have probably tried to grow some of those plants and failed because I didn’t know the tips. That’s something I deeply appreciate you. It’s not just about set—you really dedicated that same success to people grow these plants as well.

Richo Cech:

Sometimes I’m surprised myself at how well some of that stuff works, like maral roots, Leuzea carthamoides. It’s just a thistle, but it has some adaptogenic properties. For years, we grew that and then it got so hot down here. It’s kind of a Siberian plant and so it’s burning out. We let it go and then there was still ongoing demand for it, so we got some seeds. It just makes sense. We planted it and left it outside in the cold rain and the snow for a few days. I was playing around with the seeds. I could see how they had softened up. It’s not just X number of days in cold conditions. It’s not like rote information. This nature you have oscillations of temperature and you have leaching rain that leaches out germination inhibiting compounds from these plants, seeds and so forth.

It’s not like you go on the internet and— I have to laugh at some of the specific information that’s put out there, “Give only one half cup of water everyday to your African violet.” What a bunch of bullshit! Talk to your African violet! Look at how moist it is underneath. See if there’s water coming out from underneath when you water it. Forget about it for awhile. Pluck off the dead heads and suddenly, it looks a lot better and you never even touched it for two weeks. It’s just a bunch of bullshit. Just go out there and look at the plants, examine that seed and see how it softened up. Okay, now it’s time to bring the flat in the greenhouse. Put the flat in the greenhouse. The seeds are germinating in three days. That’s completely different from if you had planted them and put them right in the greenhouse under the lights. You could wait there for weeks and most of them would just rot away. You need these natural treatments. Put them in the refrigerator in moist medium. It’s a good hit. A lot of times that is very useful, but it’s second best to natural techniques.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thanks for that tip.

Richo Cech:

Sure.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Richo, before I ask you the final question, I have one more question from your book. In Chapter Five, which is the chapter on Rules of the Green Thumb, one of the rules that you write about is that you say a few well-grown plants produce more than many poorly grown plants, which when I read that, it resonated with me. I grow over a hundred plants, different medicinal plants now, which is probably too many for me, but I definitely have been at the time growing more. I had that experience just in my own herbal enthusiasm. I wanted to grow all the plants ever. As I’ve had more years as a gardener, I’ve definitely come to step back and really focus on the ones that I want to see thrive. I really love that such practical advice for folks when they’re first starting out, start small. I wonder if you have any other tip that pops into your mind about somebody who’s thinking, “I want to start an herbal garden.” Is there any other piece of advice you’d hand them? My advice would be to get your book.

Richo Cech:

I think it does make sense to try to grow everything. As soon as you plant everything, then immediately, you’re going to lose 50% of it because it didn’t even come up or you couldn’t give it enough attention to bring it on to the next phase or whatever, so now 50% is gone. Beyond that, certain things are going to do well for you, something that you use and that you enjoy. Other things, they may grow well but you may not have any use for it or have any connection to it, so that gets sloughed off. Eventually, you come up with 2% of the totality that does well in your area that’s useful to you in your life, that you have some karmic connection with.

It’s true what you were saying about just growing a few vs. a lot. I wasn’t talking so much about diversity of species when I was talking about that. I was talking about grow six really good summer savory plants, compost them properly, keep them weeded, water when necessary and harvest on an ongoing basis. You can harvest a plant like that maybe three times during the summertime, dry it, rub it out and make it ready vs. growing 60 of them and letting them languish because you don’t have enough time to take care of 60 summer savory plants, and maybe miss the opportunity to weed them. Maybe it’s too much trouble to water them. You don’t have enough compost to compost them all. You know what I’m saying and then you end up with nothing! You went after 60 and you got nothing, but you did six and you really stayed on top of your game and you had plenty! That’s what that quote means.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I love that because that’s inspiring for those gardeners who think, “I don’t have a huge amount of space.” You don’t need a huge amount of space. You just need the care and attention and choosing the plant.

Richo Cech:

Yes. Somebody was talking just the other day like, “What do you do? What are your recommendations for people with not very much space?” First of all, you just grow one thing properly and bring it to fruition, collect the seeds, collect the herb and make the medicine. It’s a great start, just one thing. Just calendula. You made a calendula tincture so that you could put it on your owie when you had a roller skating accident. You made your calendula salve so you could put it on your broken thumb when it dried out because you were reading Harry Potter in the middle of the night. You had the joy of watching the calendula flower.

That’s kismet because I was just out there—and this happens all the time with questions. I was just thinking about this. I was out on the side of the house over here where there was one of these tortugas. We build these circles of stones and then we fill them with compost and then we plant our plants in there. I was just vibing on it’s about 6 feet long. It’s about 4 feet wide. We did mint tea out of that. We did elecampane tincture out of that. There was catnip for the cats. There was Egyptian onions for a stir fry in the morning with eggs and cheese and garlic. I started thinking about all the different things that came out of that one little, rich bed that was circled by stone so that it would bring in the solar energy that was easy to take care of, and so forth and so on.

I just thought that’s the answer right there – build a tortuga and you can have all kinds of things going on just with this small amount of space if you keep on top of your game. Let it go to shit and it’s shit. Stay on top of it and compost your shit before you put it down there, and you’re all good. It’s amazing. Why tune into your anxiety? It’s a negative emotion. Just take a deep breath and plant a seed and move on from there.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I love that, Richo, on so many levels. You mentioned calendula, so I want to give a big shout out to your calendula. I have in the past bought your super orange blossom calendula. It’s amazing. I’m honored to be a part of a community garden. For two years now, we planted an entire row of calendula. There are hundreds of plants there and I tend to that patch all through the growing season, harvesting the blooms, dead heading, etc. I have a whole special dryer system because it’s a lot of calendula, so I’m drying it all. We gather, all of us involved in the community garden, and we make calendula oil so that we can make face cream and salve and lip balm, which then becomes our gifts for the holidays and everything. It’s a great community endeavor. Shout out to Julie. I know she listens to the podcast. She does a lot to get it going too.

Anyway, it’s just a special gift to the calendula. I love those incredible orange blooms that you’ve selected for us. They’re just so resinous and so big and so beautiful. They turn the oils such an incredibly luscious orange color, which then makes it fun to make all sorts of gifts with. Your plants have just been such a blessing in my life in so many ways, so thank you so much.

Richo Cech:

It’s good that you’re growing a lot of it if you’re saving seed because it’s an Asteraceae, so they’re an outcrosser. In order to preserve genetic diversity, you need to grow a lot of them and have them share their pollen. That’s good. You’re going in the right direction to grow a couple of rows of it. That’s good. A couple thousand plants is really kind of a minimum for us in terms of a calendula grow outs, so that we avoid inbreeding depression. Who needs inbreeding depression?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

No.

Richo Cech:

That puts us right with the herbal antiseptic, doesn’t it?

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Yes.

Richo Cech:

Because we’re going to talk about that.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Let’s do that now. My last question for you, Richo, is what would you include in your herbal first aid kit?

Richo Cech:

Around about midsummer—again, the plants talk to you instead of you talking to the plants and telling them what to do. They talk to you. The St. John’s wort is flowering. The calendula is flowering and the yarrow is flowering all at the same time. I used to pick everything in season, dry it and set it aside, use just the right menstruum, so forth and so on. After awhile, I don’t really have time for that, so I just go out at the peak of flowering and I pick all these flowers fresh. St. John’s wort is this tonic nervine, so it drives the ingredients deeper into the body when you use it externally. It drives the ingredients deeper and it nourishes the nerves. One of the old herbalists called it “arnica for the nerves.” The calendula has those resins that are antiseptic, antiseptic resins. When you pick calendula flowers, you get that. Don’t wash your hands. Wash your hands in alcohol and use that because that’s the antiseptic aspect of the plant. It also has the orange color that you mentioned. Those are the flavonoids. Those are anti-inflammatory. You get those two different aspects of healing in one plant. The yarrow—I’ve seen miracles with yarrow. It’s styptic. It stops the release of blood, so that’s very good to have in a antiseptic tincture.

I take all three of those and I just gather as many of them as I can. I put them in my giant blender. I add enough pure alcohol so that it will blend, which is about a 1 to 2. I blend it all up and then I macerate that for a couple of weeks and press it out in my Strictly Medicinal tincture press which gives me so much more yield. It presses out all of the active constituents all the way down to a little tiny, flat bit of mark. I bottle that up and I put it the medicine cabinet there. If anybody presents with an issue, they can just use it freely.

Like I was saying, fall down on the cement from your roller skates and skin your knees. “Mommy, mommy, mommy, what do I do?” Put this really stingy stuff on there. It’s going to make it worse for a minute and then it’s going to feel a lot better. There’s that and there’s also somebody came from L.A. and unbeknownst to me, they had a lot of internal issues from having lived on the street in L.A. including some sexually transmitted diseases. This sort of thing came up to me after a few days and they were like, “Man, this stuff is really good!” I’m like, “You’re not taking it internally, are you?” They’re like, “You bet I am!” So, I guess the herbs find their use wherever they are most needed. Sometimes it’s beyond what you were thinking.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I love the all-purpose blends because there’s something to be said for just having that blend that’s just magic for so many different things. That’s a good one – yarrow, St. John’s wort, calendula.

Richo Cech:

Also, just spontaneously. I was weeding the Genovese basil, I remember. Isn’t that great how the herbs will help us remember different times? Sometimes the past is just a blur, but if you’ve got these little anchors. I was weeding the basil underneath the apple tree. My dog was right next to me and I had my bare feet. A squirrel ran by and so she took off. When she took off, her claw went right into a vein in my foot. It was one of these things where it was like (makes sounds) really bad, really deep. I kind of crab walked over to the side and found some yarrow growing there, chewed that up and splattered it on my heel and stopped up that bleeding right away. If I hadn’t known how to do that, I could have just bled to death like an idiot. A little bit of herbal wisdom goes a long way towards longevity. 

Rosalee de la Forêt:

I got a couple of tips from you. Know your yarrow. I always tell people on my herb walks, I’m like, “Even if you don’t want to become an herbalist but you go hike, learn yarrow. It can save your life.” So, longevity, yarrow and then the chili. Great tips. Richo, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us.

Richo Cech:

My pleasure.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

It’s been great to hear about your journey and about so many different plants including Andrographis, so thank you very  much.

Richo Cech:

Okay. Sweet peppers on your head.

Rosalee de la Forêt:

Thank you.

Thanks for being here. Don’t forget to download your beautifully illustrated recipe card above this transcript. Also sign up for my weekly newsletter, which is the best way to stay in touch with me. The best way to check out Richo’s offerings is at strictlymedicinalseeds.com. If you’re a gardener or if you want to be a gardener, then I highly recommend not only his books, but also his seed catalog. 

If you’d like more herbal episodes to come your way, then one of the best ways to support this podcast is by subscribing on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. I’d also love to hear your comments about this episode. What’s your biggest takeaways?

I deeply believe that this world needs more herbalists and plant-centered folks and I’m so glad that you’re here as part of this herbal community.

Also, a big round of thanks to the people all over the world who make this podcast happen week to week. Nicole Paull is the Project Manager who oversees the whole operation from guest outreach, to writing show notes, to actually uploading each episode and so many other things I don’t even know. She really holds this whole thing together.

Francesca is our fabulous video and audio editor. She not only makes listening more pleasant. She also adds beauty to the YouTube videos with plant images and video overlays. Tatiana Rusakova is the botanical illustrator who creates gorgeous plant and recipe illustrations for us. I love them. I know that you do too. Kristy edits the recipe cards and then Jenny creates them as well as the thumbnail images for YouTube. Alex is the tech wizard behind the scenes and Karin is our Student Services Coordinator and Customer Support. For those of you who like to read along, Jennifer is who creates the transcripts each week. Xavier, my handsome French husband, is the cameraman and website IT guy. It takes an herbal village to make it all happen including you.

Okay, you have lasted to the very end of the show, which means you get your very own gold star and this herbal tidbit:

After hearing from Richo about the benefits of Andrographis, I was curious about what studies have been done with this plant. While Andrographis might be new to some of you, this is a celebrated herb throughout Asia including Thailand and India. Researchers have been busy studying it, so here’s a quick rundown of a few interesting studies I found:

A 2019 study showed that Andrographis had benefits for patients with Type 2 diabetes. A preliminary study showed that Andrographis could be a useful natural complement in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Researchers are increasingly interested in its ability to modulate inflammation in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted on extracts of Andrographis and found that it was safe and effective in reducing pain in individuals with mild to moderate knee osteoarthritis. A 2015 randomized control trial showed that Andrographis could reduce triglycerides as well as a pharmaceutical treatment. Yay! A 2023 trial showed that both Andrographis and my favorite, chamomile, as a spray worked to relieve the pain and symptoms of a viral-caused sore throat. The Andrographis did have slightly better effects than the chamomile.

There are several studies looking at Andrographis and cancer treatment. A study in 2016 showed that it’s safe and effective palliative treatment for patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus. In this trial, those taking the Andrographis lived significantly longer. Lastly, a 12-month double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot study showed that Andrographis significantly reduces fatigue in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis by as much as 44%. That’s a big amount.

This is a really big variety of studies that are out there. I just chose a few of the ones that sparked my interest. I’ll include a list of all of these below for those of you who would like to take your closer look.

Until next time. Enjoy your herbs.  

Studies Cited for Benefits of Andrographis:

• Widjajakusuma, Elisabeth Catherina, et al. “Phytochemical Screening and Preliminary Clinical Trials of the Aqueous Extract Mixture of Andrographis Paniculata (Burm. f.) Wall. Ex Nees and Syzygium Polyanthum (Wight.) Walp Leaves in Metformin Treated Patients with Type 2 Diabetes.” Phytomedicine: International Journal of Phytotherapy and Phytopharmacology, vol. 55, Mar. 2019, pp. 137–47. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phymed.2018.07.002.
• Burgos, R. A., et al. “Efficacy of an Andrographis Paniculata Composition for the Relief of Rheumatoid Arthritis Symptoms: A Prospective Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial.” Clinical Rheumatology, vol. 28, no. 8, Aug. 2009, pp. 931–46. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10067-009-1180-5.
• Hancke, Juan L., et al. “A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Study to Assess the Efficacy of Andrographis Paniculata Standardized Extract (ParActin®) on Pain Reduction in Subjects with Knee Osteoarthritis.” Phytotherapy Research: PTR, vol. 33, no. 5, May 2019, pp. 1469–79. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.1002/ptr.6339.
• Phunikhom, Kutcharin, et al. “Effect of Andrographis Paniculata Extract on Triglyceride Levels of the Patients with Hypertriglyceridemia: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand = Chotmaihet Thangphaet, vol. 98 Suppl 6, July 2015, pp. S41-47.
• Okonogi, Risa, et al. “Efficacy of Andrographis Paniculata Spray in Acute Pharyngitis: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Drug Discoveries & Therapeutics, vol. 17, no. 5, Nov. 2023, pp. 340–45. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.5582/ddt.2023.01053.
• Chiu, Philip Wai-Yan, et al. “The Effect of Andrographis Paniculata Water Extract on Palliative Management of Metastatic Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma-A Phase II Clinical Trial.” Phytotherapy Research: PTR, vol. 37, no. 8, Aug. 2023, pp. 3438–52. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.1002/ptr.7815.