My Valerian plant has just gone totally bonkers with flowers this season, and I wanted very much to make use of them, but wasn’t sure how. Enter trusty Google search, where I learned that Valerian flowers can be tinctured and used much in the same way as the root. Valerian is employed as a relaxant and sedative, especially for those folks who have trouble falling and/or staying asleep. (A word of caution: a percentage of people actually respond the exact OPPOSITE to Valerian, and find that it makes them jumpy and excitable.) Valerian flowers are considered effective, but milder than the root. We are mostly use California Poppy before bed in our house, but it’s nice to have a back-up plant and to mix it up now and again.
For our home remedies, I tincture almost exclusively in the folk method. I fill a jar (not jammed but nice and full) with fresh plant matter, and then cover with 80 proof vodka and seal the lid. It’s a no-fuss method but very effective. I store the jar away in the pantry, give it a shake every now and again, and then sample the medicine after waiting at least 2 weeks. (I consider 2 weeks to be the bare minimum to wait, in order to give the plant matter enough time to give itself over to the alcohol. I usually wait a month or two before using a tincture. Opinions on this vary and I’m simply offering my experience.)
This is the method I used to tincture the Valerian flowers, although this time I filled one jar with vodka and another with brandy. Using brandy is new to me, but I’ve been experimenting with making flower essences, which primarily use brandy. (The flower essences are often taken directly under the tongue, and brandy goes down a bit smoother than vodka, in my experience.) So now I have two differnt tinctures of Valerian flower to experiment with, one make with vodka and the other with brandy.
Wildest Horse on the Ranch 