Vinegar is a great medium to use to extract vitamins and minerals from herbs. A long, cold infusion, known as a maceration, is used to get maximum phytochemical extraction from the plants. 

Vinegar extracts are also a great method to use when dealing with fresh plants as the high acidity and low oxygen does not allow for pathogenic fungi or yeasts to grow. 

When making a herbal medicine with vinegar, or in this case a mineral food supplement, I choose to use apple cider vinegar because it already has a whole host of beautiful benefits of its own, including being antioxidant, improving gut health, being anti-inflammatory, and good for heart and circulation health.

For this vinegar I chose weeds that were growing well in and around my garden and orchard. While there’s a lot of interest in eating weeds these days and wild foraging of edibles, many weeds are not the most palatable to include in your diet on a daily basis, even if they are packed with good-for-you nutrients. An easy way to extract some of this goodness is by infusing mineral rich weeds in vinegar and enjoying that as a supplement, or in salad dressings, marinades and other meal add-ons.