How to harvest and preserve your herbs

Most herbs harvested for their leaves are at their best just before they flower, although some such as thyme are best when in flower especially for herbal tea making.

Flowers are best harvested once they have just opened. Seeds when they have just changed from green to brown.

For decorative use in cards etc, the stage at which the plant is at is not as important. For Lavender wands or weaving the stems should be cut then used as soon as possible otherwise they get dry and break more easily.

Whatever the use, the best time of day to pick is in the morning of a dry, sunny day after the dew has evaporated.

However roots should be dug in the Autumn when the top growth has stopped. Lift the whole root carefully, wash soil off thoroughly and cut off the top growth and peel/cut off any fine fibrous sections. To dry the roots, slice thinly and dry in an oven set to 50 or 60 degrees centrigrade making sure you turn them regularly.

Drying and Preserving Herbs

Herbs can be dried or preserved in various ways: air drying, on a flat suspended piece of muslin on a frame, microwave drying, tied in bunches of 6 to 8 stems in a dry, dark airy room, using a dehydrator, in ice cubes, loose in freezer bags.

The main aim of drying herbs is to preserve their essential oils but get rid of the water content in as short a space of time as possible. The time taken varies from herb to herb and depends on weather conditions as well, the herb should be crisp and crumble easily. If they are soft or spongy there is too much moisture still in them.

Make sure you keep the herbs to be dried separate from each other to avoid the stronger scented ones from transferring their scent onto other plants. They should be placed somewhere where there it is dry and there is good ventilation, darkness and warmth eg an airing cupboard or an unused room.

Once dried, the herbs should be stored in dark glass jars with a tight fitting lid (non metallic) or in a glass jar in a cool, dry, dark cupboard. (Their colour and flavour is reduced if exposed to light). Dried herbs if correctly stored should last approximately 1 year.

A rough guide to using dried herbs is that 1 teaspoon is equivalent to a tablespoon of the fresh herb i.e. the dried herbs are much more concentrated and you therefore do not need to add as much when cooking.

Freezing herbs is quick and easy and very handy for culinary use. It suits the softer leaved herbs that aren't always worth drying eg basil, chives, dill, fennel, parsley, tarragon. Just pick the herbs, rinse, pat dry with kitchen towel and cut finely. Put them into an ice cube tray and add water. Alternatively, pick the herbs, rinse, pat dry and put enough herb for one dish in labelled freezer bags in some kind of container in the freezer (so they don't get lost at the back of the freezer!). The cubes or bagged herbs can be added straight to your dishes from the freezer.