Gardeners’ hands go through a lot. It’s not just the dirt-caked beneath fingernails, but also the callouses from digging and wedding, and the dry and cracked skin from the sun.
Gardening gloves can help to protect the skin, but to treat your hands well, you may want to go DIY and whip up your homemade hand salve for gardeners.
Homemade Hand Salve for Gardeners
This Gardeners’ Healing Salve Recipe comes from LovelyGreens.
The herbs in this homemade salve come straight from the garden. Although, you can borrow from a friend’s garden or a plant nursery if you need to.
Ingredients
You only need a few instruments to complete this recipe:
- A digital scale.
- Two stainless steel pans, one smaller than the other (or a double boiler).
- Rubber spatula.
- Clean, dry, sterilized containers such as tins or glass jars.
- ⅓ cup dried calendula.
- ⅓ cup dried plantain.
- ⅓ cup dried comfrey.
- 1-ounce beeswax.
- ½ teaspoon rose essential oil.
- Sweet almost oil to fill the jar.
Directions – Making The Oil Infusion
- First, you need to make an oil infusion of your three herbs – if harvested fresh and at the peak of the season, make sure there is no moisture in the grasses as this will lower the shelf-life of the salve.
- Add the herbs to the jar (it should fill ⅔ of the jar) and pour sweet almond oil over the herbs until it is around ¼-inch from the top.
- Seal and shake the jar, then place in a warm location out of direct sunlight.
- Shake daily for three to six weeks.
- Strain through a cheesecloth and pour into sealable sterilized containers.
Directions – Making The Salve
- Fill the larger of the stainless steel pan with ¼ or more of water and bring to boil.
- In the smaller pan, add the beeswax, then place this pan into the pot of boiling water so that it floats – never melt beeswax over direct heat!
- When the beeswax melts, pour in the oil.
- Stir until the oils start to emulsify.
- Remove the smaller pan from the boiling water and set on a potholder.
- Add an essential oil of choice to the cooling mixture,
- Pour the final concoction into small, uncovered containers and allow four hours to cool.
- Cover with lids once cool to ensure no condensation will form on the inside of the container.
- Use the salve as needed – it has a shelf-life of around one year.
Based on what you have in your garden, you can experiment with some additional scents, such as adding 1 teaspoon of dried yarrow flowers, dried rosemary leaf, or dried lavender.
If you want to supplement your homemade hand salve for gardeners or need another quick and easy product to keep your hands feeling soft and smooth, give your well-worn gardening hands the relief they need, and try these soothing products from Qtica and Weleda.
Qtica
Qtica produces great natural products for your cuticles, nails, and more. After gardening, help keep your hands soft with Overnight Intense Hand Repair Balm. It’s a rich, thick balm that soothes severely dry, irritated and cracked hands with an intense formula of honey, beeswax, essential oil, and vitamins A, C, and E.
Weleda
With its commitment to sustainable ingredients suitable for the whole family, Weleda is a trusted brand in natural skincare. If yard and garden work has done a number on your skin, then reach for Skin Food for Dry & Rough Skin from Weleda. Weleda Skin Food is a unique, ultra-rich whole-body cream that deeply hydrates, restores, and protects skin with nourishing plant oils and extracts.
What’s your favorite homemade hand salve for gardeners?