Ten Tips for Harvesting Herbs

I'm deep into harvest time.

Usually we think of late summer and fall as the harvest season around here.  That's when tomatoes are ripe on the vine and if you're into that sort of thing, the canning jars and dehydrators come out for the preserving of produce for the winter.

violets

But we often forget that there are other harvests to be had when you are talking about herbs.  So far I've harvested violet blossoms for tea and incense.  Motherwort was just beginning to send up flower stalks, which signaled to me that it was time for that to be cut and dried as well.  The comfrey is looking ready for harvesting too.

Jury-rigged Solar Dehydrator with Motherwort

In many northern European traditions Midsummer is the height of the herb harvest seasons.  There are many stories about the magical properties of the herbs harvested on the night before or that day. That's because the potency of many herbs is at its height just before they flower which often happens in June or July. From my own experience here a couple of rules of thumb about harvesting herbs:

1. Harvest leaves before the plant flowers. (watch for plants getting tall and leggy or flower buds)
2. Harvest flowers when they smell fragrant.
3. Harvest roots after a frost in the fall.
4. Always make sure that you have properly identified your plant.
5. Never harvest all of the plants unless you plan to replant it or you grew it yourself.
6. Dry flowers with a low temperature, in a warm oven or in the sun.
7. Leaves can be dried at a higher temperature like an oven at 250 degrees.
8. For oil extraction use canola oil, it's cheap and won't go rancid.
9. Try to time your harvest so that you have all the time you need to process and store the herb right after you harvest it.
10. Label what you harvest. It's surprisingly hard to tell one green leafed dried thing from another.

And just for fun, I wanted to share this cool video about a community in Italy where they've discovered how to let plants sing!