Your Home Herb Garden and How to Harvest and Preserve Herbs
You’ve planted and started your home herb garden. The herbs have grown and flourished. And you’re aware how useful they are. But maybe you’re not really sure how to actually use them. Well, to unlock and begin using herbs from a home herb garden, there’s some necessary, but rewarding work that needs to be done.
First, of course, we have to pick, or harvest our herb garden plants. But we have to pick them at the right time. This is so important. We don’t want our herbs too dry, or too wet when we harvest. We want to choose a nice gentle day in the middle of summer when there’s not much wind and the heat of the day has not kicked in. The essential oils in the herbs, can be lost if we harvest when it is too hot, windy or too wet. So, we choose a time in the morning when the dew has dried, before the flowers have opened, but before the heat of the day has arrived.
Now, when harvesting the home herb garden, we’re not going to pick our plant right out of the ground. What we want is some of the growth to use without killing the whole plant by pulling it out by the roots. When harvesting herb garden plants, we never want to remove more than 30% of the leaves or foliage during a harvest. Plants, and certainly our herbs, need the rest of their foliage to keep thriving, so we can harvest from the same plant again and again. Note: Just before harvesting, check for bugs and insects and any damaged leaves they may have caused.
After we harvest we can save what we’ve picked to use later when we’re ready. The most common ways we can preserve our herbs are: freezing, drying or keeping and preserving them in things like salt or vinegar.
Drying Herbs
Gather a dozen or so stems and tie them together at the bottom with string. Remove the herb leaves where you tie the bundle. Now, lets hang our bundle in a nice cool spot, and not in the direct sun.
Another way to dry our herbs is to remove the leaves and spread the leaves on a screen. We’ll turn them regularly to dry them evenly. For other methods for drying herbs like drying herbs in the oven etc, see our other articles on our site as well as much more information in our free 10 part email mini course.
Preserving Our Herbs by Freezing
First we’ll dice the herbs into ¼ inch pieces. We have a cookie sheet ready and we have lined it with wax paper. Lets put our herb leaves on the sheet and put them in the freezer. When the leaves are frozen, we simply transfer them into a bag and pop them back in the freezer until we are ready to use them.
Preserving Our Herbs by Placing Them in a Medium
We can add basil, tarragon or mint leaves to vinegar and cover our herbs. Our herbs will stay fresh in this solution for quite a few months.
Preserving Our Herbs With Salt
We can “sandwich” layers of our herb leaves between multiple layers of salt. When the leaves turn brown, and are dry, remove them and we’ll have a lovely flavored salt.
Preparing Our Freshly Picked Herbs From Our Own Home Herb Garden
We’re going to wash our fresh herbs in a bowl of cool water or the kitchen sink. We’ll add approximately 2 tablespoons of salt to the water. This will remove any bugs and organisms, but our herbs won’t be damaged. Now we’ll take the herbs from the water and dry them in a salad spinner.
There are a vast variety of herbs with many many different uses. Make sure to take the time to learn each herb’s characteristics, it’s proper use, and how the herbs from your home herb garden can be used for your full benefit, enjoyment and your good health.
