Why Buy when you can Dry
Its been a whole year since I have reported on my herbs. And now it’s almost drying time again! We got sidetracked with designing our new and vastly improved site. We hope you like it. Now, I can catch you up on the next step on the journey of growing your own herbs. I took a boatload of pictures last year. So I am going to focus my efforts on writing, and show you those pictures. I have taken some random shots of this year’s crop, but I will share those another time.
This is where we left off. It was haircut day for my herbs. These are all the perennial herbs.
The herb in the little tea cup basket in front is tarragon. The herb in the lighter basket on the left was harvested from the lemon thyme plant. The dark basket on the right, has oregano, rosemary and some Greek thyme (from front to back in the basket). You will be seeing a lot more of them.
And I showed you some sage. This picture shows how sage looks, fresh and dried.
All my perennial herbs were very young when I got them. Like any other perennial plant they are slower to grow than annuals. Perennial means the plant will lay dormant through the cold months and come back with the warmth of spring. Annual means it is a one season plant. It will grow like crazy all summer long, but that’s all its got. Basil is an annual plant.
And this is where we left off on haircut day; with a basket of basil. Later I will show you how little dried basil all of these leaves will reap. The good news is that the drying condenses all the magnificent oil into the dried leave.
With the bounty harvested, I am ready to get the herbs prepared for drying to a greater or lesser extent. I will show you what I mean.
All the basil leaves need to come off the stem. Basil has a pretty thick stem, so the leaves take a long time to dry if they are left on. The leaves have a lot of moisture in them too, so if they are big leaves, cut them in half or thirds.
A display of homegrown herbs, fresh and dried: On the table, oregano, rosemary, tarragon and thyme. I keep some oregano, thyme and rosemary leaves on the stem until I am ready to use them. It seems to me that the leaves retain more concentrated flavor when they are allowed to dry, and then be stored on the stem, and it is easier to leave them that way. I take some leaves off to dry; they dry faster when off the stem.
At the top, in the jar, is last year’s dried oregano leaves. All around the jar are freshly cut oregano leaves and branches. On the white plate (right front) is a stem of fresh rosemary, in the middle is a dried stem of rosemary, and on the left some rosemary leaves taken off the stem. In the glass dish (bottom left) is fresh tarragon leaves with a stem of fresh tarragon laying by the duck basket. In the duck basket is fresh thyme on the stem. As I sit and pull the leaves from the stems, the aroma of the oils in all the different herbs permeate the air, and my hands. It’s so intensely fragrant.
As day has become night, I have been sorting and snipping my bounty. With all that done, I poured myself a glass of wine and called it a day. As I glanced down at the table, it looked like a picture. I couldn’t resist. The thyme, which was left on the stems to dry, is sticking out of the light colored round basket. The oregano stems are in the basket lined with burlap. And the little basket in front, next to my wine, is rosemary.
During the growing season, whether I am going to use them fresh or not, I will cut stems of oregano, thyme and basil. Throughout the growing season, you need to trim the most mature stems from the top, but not all the way down to the bottom. If you don’t trim the plants, the stems will start to flower. That tells the plant that it is time to seed and hibernate. If you want maximum yield, trim. When I cut off the tops, I end up with a handful of stems. Left on the stem, they have good air flow just as they are. They need no tending. Thyme with it’s thin stems, when clumped together, looks like tumbleweed when it dries. Drying leaves off the stem, while fresh, is a different story. When drying loose leaves, you need to use baskets with a large weave for good air circulation. Or if you have a spare colander or spin spin basket, that works too. Spread the leaves out with as few layers as possible. The moisture in the leaves, when they are first cut off the stem, can get soggy from laying on top of each other, so just toss them around once or twice a day to fluff them up in the basket. That is particularly important with basil. Basil stems and leaves hold quite a bit of moisture, so the leaves should be cut from the stem when it is time to start drying. Drying basil on the stem takes forever, has no advantages and some drawbacks. Large basil leaves should be cut in half or thirds before being added to the basket.
During the growing season and into late autumn, random baskets with herbs drying are on my kitchen table, in the light from the window. Drying herbs at my house isn’t a fancy, time consuming process. Mother nature is overseeing the drying. I just need to help a little. One day during harvest time, I was at the sink and glanced in the direction of my kitchen table. I had been clearing some blue dishes from my hutch to make room for fall colors and they were in a pile there, along with the baskets. It looked so serenely autumn that I couldn’t resist taking a picture so I could capture and preserve the scene. It was a hodge podge assortment of things, and a bit of a mess, but it looked like home to me.
Lots of baskets are scattered about. Our feature picture is a closer look at the herbs on the table. The large light colored basket in the bottom right corner has the basil leaves from the annual harvest. The leaves have been drying. When first picked, the basil stems filled a good portion of the basket. Now, as the drying has been going on, they barely cover the bottom, as pictured below.
Look what happens to all that basil when the leaves are cut off the stem and mother nature has started drying them.
On the road to changing to fall colors, I went out and cut some ornamental grass for vases.
There’s nothing left to do, but let it dry. By Halloween, my herbs will be ready to get bottled for storage. Get a close up look at my dried herbs in our next herb post.