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Autumn is an excellent time of year to harvest burdock root.

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Aside from being an excellent vegetable (called Gobo in Japan), burdock root is used medicinally to cleanse the blood.

Some reasons that blood may need to be “cleansed” include:

• parasites
• toxins from cigarette smoke or pollution
• toxins from alcohol or junk food
• bacteria or viruses, including chronic viruses from things such as Lyme’s disease
• heavy metal exposure, like mercury, lead, or arsenic

This time of year you’ll find burdock, a biennial plant, in both phases: one being the brown dead plant covered with burrs that stick to your clothes (do not harvest these roots, they are dead - pictured below), and a plant with a rosette of green leaves, still close to the ground, with no flower or seed stalk. This is the first year plant, and it is from this plant you want to harvest the roots (shown above).

We harvested some burdock root the other day, and prepared it three ways:

• dried for use as a tea


Sliced Burdock Root Drying on a Dehydrator Tray

• tinctured in alcohol


Sliced Burdock Root Steeping in 100 Proof Vodka, Before Blending

• fermented with cabbage in cultured vegetables (also known as sauerkraut.)


Shredded Burdock Root, Cabbage, and Seaweed Fermenting on the Counter

Over the next few days, I’ll post step-by-step pictorials of how I made the above remedies. The sauerkraut is absolutely delicious! The recipe is in our free e-book, so please sign up (green box to the right) if you haven’t yet!

Happy Harvesting!

~ Melissa