The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer, Revised Edition
How to Produce High-Quality Herbs on a Market Scale
By Jeff Carpenter
With Melanie Carpenter
Chelsea Green Publishing
September 7, 2023
In the first edition of The Organic Medicinal Herb Farmer, authors Jeff and Melanie Carpenter presented a comprehensive seed-to-bottle guide for aspiring and experienced growers alike, from basic business considerations to planting and propagation to creating value-added products. Now they’re back with a revised and updated edition, sharing the lessons they’ve learned throughout their twenty-five years of operating a medicinal herb farm that prizes quality over quantity.
The Carpenters offer their insights and tips on every aspect of herb farming, including:
Size and scale considerations
Data management for profit maximization
The herbal marketplace and choosing which herbs to grow
Field and bed preparation and planting, including building soil fertility
Plant-positive weed, pest, and disease control
Harvest and post-harvest processing, including scalable dryer construction
Value-added products and marketing
A new chapter on growing cannabis
And much more!
The Carpenters make the case that growing organic medicinal herbs is not only viable and profitable, but also an important step for improving the ecological health of farmland, taking pressure off of wild medicinal plant populations, and increasing biodiversity. While local foodways are more often the focus of attention, local medicine ways are equally critical and in need of restoration.
