Weekly update - August 11 Preserving Herbs

This week in the garden we were weeding and harvesting herbs.  There were some other vegetables, but with cooler nights they are growing more slowly, while the herbs were enjoying the extra rain and some previous trimming to sprout out with lots of new growth.

You can see how the herbs have spread and grown together.  In a couple of cases you have to move one plant aside to see another.

The tomatoes are still producing, but not has fast or as much as we would like.

The sunflower blooms have finally begun to open. and the Zinnias are blooming in a riot.

These are a dwarf variety that stands no more than 3 feet tall, so you look down at, rather than up at the blooms.




The calendula I planted from seed late in the spring is reaching blooming stage.  The first flower appeared this week.  Considering I kneeled on them and raked them when they were seedlings, forgetting I planted them along the front edge of the garden, they are doing rather well.

We needed to tie up the grape and cherry tomatoes as the branches have outgrown the first two sets of ties.

The Kohlrabi is moving beyond leafy branches to producing a bulb at the base.  They should be ready to harvest in late September.  They generally only need 8 weeks of growth to be able to harvest so we might actually be able to dig them sooner.

The broccoli rabe is still producing.  And we got one large zucchini this week to add the mountain of them from last week.

After surveying the garden I decided that while hubby watered I could get most of the herbs  harvested which would set the plants up for even better harvest in the next few weeks.

Once I cut herbs and brought them home I found that there were stowaways on the fennel.  This Swallowtail butterfly caterpillar came home with me.  I gave him the fennel and we will see if he becomes a butterfly!

Harvesting  / Preserving Herbs

Here is the harvesting basket this week.  The tomatoes and zucchini are on the bottom and then I filled in over them with herbs.  Since next week I will cut a few sunflowers, I thought this week I would cutthe zinnias for the vase int eh kitchen.

The dill went to seed weeks ago, due to the heat spell we had.  I did not do what I normally do with dill which is seed a row every two weeks to give me a continuous crop of dill weed.  I have that in the regualr herb garden so i just planted one plant here and decided I would harvest the seeds for pickling as they ripened.

Here is a photo identifying most of  the herbs in the basket.

I took the savory, mints and lemon balm and bundled them and hung them to dry.  You just pull of the leaves off the bottom of the stems, then bind the stems with a rubberband.  Then I loop the band over the arms or base of a hanger and hang them out of the sun in a place with good air circulation.

Always remember to label your herbs, because one plants looks the same as another once they are dry. (The herbs in front are lemon balm)

Here are the herbs after a week of drying (this is spearmint.)


I also dry herbs on trays of plates.  I have a plate stand (the kind you use for confections and tea service.  I place old plates on it and line them with paper towel.  I spread out the smaller herbs or loose leaves on those to dry.

Thyme with its tiny, thin stems cannot be bundled.  But it drys very easily, so I toss the thyme into a brown paper lunch bag with the variety of thyme written on the outside and stack them, open ends out to the room, on a shelf.  In a week the thyme is dry and I can transfer it to a jar and refill the paper bags.

Once you have dried the herbs until they crumble in your hand,  can take two weeks or more if it is humid, less if it is not. The you are ready to strip them from the stems and place them in storage jars.

fresh cut savory spread on towels on a plate

Dried savory ready to be stripped

stripped and ready for storage

In addition to drying the herbs for later use.  I also made some herbal vinegar.  This is one of the simplest and best ways to preserve the fresh herb flavors. There was not much tarragon, so I decided the best way to capture it was to craft a vinegar.  Tarragon is a great complement to wine vinegar.  With other herbs I use a plain distilled white vinegar.

tarragon in white wine vinegar

For details on how to make herbal vinegar, check out this how to post.

We also used some of the herbs fresh.  Here is a fruit salad with mojito mint ribbons.

Here is the herb garden and some of the other garden after we finished harvesting and weeding.  You can see how much more tame the herbs are now.