Fall is quickly approaching, and it is time to harvest the beautiful roots at the farm that provide valuable medicine. One of those special roots is Ashwagandha.  So, let's focus on how to grow ashwagandha if you want this special root in your garden too.

She is the queen of roots.

Ashwagandha-Quite Strength

One of the things I love most about this plant is its resilience, growing with such quiet strength. It doesn't demand much—just sunlight, warm soil, and time.

We start our seeds inside 10 weeks before our frost date.  It grows similarly to eggplants and peppers.  It likes warmth and light.  Our goal is to plant robust plants in our garden soil so that they can withstand our wet springs and sometimes colder-than-expected temperatures.

After the frost date, we plant about eight plants in 8-by-4-foot raised beds so that they have room to grow in the lightly packed soil.  The plants can become very bushy and tall.  In our zone 6, they generally reach about 3 to 4 feet high and 2 feet wide.

You may need to cover it when it is small, as flea beetles tend to eat them.   I typically remove the covers about the same time I remove the covers of my eggplants.  The plants need to be strong enough to withstand the flea beetle damage.

But with a bit of care, it offers strong, deep roots (literally) and the kind of presence that feels grounding just by being nearby.

Walking past the ashwagandha bed, I often find myself enveloped in a sense of deep peace. In return, it offers strong, deep roots (literally) and a calming presence that feels grounding just by being nearby. 

Fall Harvest 

A key sign that the plant is nearing harvest is the appearance of its beautiful red berries. We prefer to wait until the berries are ripe before digging up the deep roots, allowing us to collect the seeds for next season's planting carefully. However, given our short season, sometimes the berries do not ripen in time.

When fall arrives, we carefully dig up the roots and clean them. Given our shorter growing season with a frost date in October, our roots are medium in length and skinny.  

The hard work then begins.

We prefer to tincture the roots because the taste is off-putting, and the smell is very unpleasant. Tincturing allows us to extract all the beautiful constituents that this plant offers.  We will be discussing more in-depth the tincture benefits in part two of our love affair with Ashwagandha.

Preparing the Ashwagandha Tincture

To ensure our tinctures achieve maximum potency, we chop the roots by hand into small pieces, allowing the alcohol to extract the beneficial compounds effectively. This chopping process can be labor-intensive since the roots are tough, and we do not have a root chopper machine.

Chop the roots as soon as you clean them.  Otherwise, it is harder to chop them without a machine.  As they start to dry, they become very hard. I use a garden snipping tool to chop them up into small pieces, and then my Blendtec to grate them into smaller pieces.  (Any high-powered blender will shred them.  You still need to chop them into smaller pieces first.)   

The benefits of hand-chopping the roots include inspecting each one before including it in our tinctures. Sometimes, slow and steady is the best way to make a tincture.

We add the roots to our Calm Tincture, a blend designed to promote relaxation and reduce stress, and our single-sourced Ashwagandha Tincture, which contains only ingredients sourced from our farm, ensuring the highest quality and purity.

Beyond the Root: A Look at the Whole Plant

While we focus on the root for our tinctures because it's the part traditionally known for its powerful adaptogenic properties, other communities used parts of the plant for healing.

The Leaves: 

In traditional Ayurvedic and folk medicine, herbalists used the leaves of Ashwagandha for their medicinal properties. They are known to be bitter and have been historically used to treat fevers and reduce swelling. 1 In some parts of India, they use a teaspoon of leaf paste added to cow's milk to treat asthma. 2

The Berries: 

The small, orange-red berries, often referred to as "winter cherry," have also been used, though less frequently than the root. Traditionally, communities believed the flowers to have diuretic and astringent properties.3 They used the seeds inside the berries as a deworming agent and, when combined with other ingredients, to treat white spots on the cornea.4

These are old-time traditions, and while many modern herbalists focus solely on the root, these historical uses highlight the rich history of the ashwagandha plant and reinforce our focus on the deep roots that give this plant its strength and name.

Why is Ashwagandha so Special?

But what makes Ashwagandha so special? Let's explore further in part two of our journey.

Sources:  

1, 2 Paul, S., Chakraborty, S., Anand, U., Dey, S., Nandy, S., Ghorai, M., Saha, S. C., Patil, M. T., Kandimalla, R., Proćków, J., & Dey, A. (2021). Withania somnifera (L.) Dunal (Ashwagandha): A comprehensive review on ethnopharmacology, pharmacotherapeutics, biomedicinal and toxicological aspects. Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy, 143, 112175. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopha.2021.112175

3, 4 Singh, N., Bhalla, M., de Jager, P., & Gilca, M. (2011). An Overview on Ashwagandha: A Rasayana (Rejuvenator) of Ayurveda. African Journal of Traditional, Complementary, and Alternative Medicines, 8(5 Suppl), 208–213. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3252722/