Tips and advice for harvesting and drying herbs
Effectively harvesting and drying herbs is crucial in creating your own remedies. Each step significantly affects power and effectiveness. To unlock herbs’ full potential, they must be harvested and preserved with intention.
Whether you are an experienced herbalist or just starting out, learn how to unlock the true potential of nature’s gifts!
Below is an excerpt Energetic herbal medicine by Kat Maier. It has been adapted for employ on the Internet.
Collecting herbs
When deciding the best season to harvest a particular herb, just think about where the energy is located in the plant. During the winter, the roots remain dormant, which actually means they are storing energy for recent growth. In spring, as the leaves unfold, energy rises skyward, increasing leaf surface area and ensuring optimal photosynthesis. Creating flowers requires a huge amount of energy; flowers express sexuality and reproduction and are the creators of the seeds that will ensure the propagation of the species.
When to collect
Although harvest timing varies slightly by region, here are some general tips:
- If you want to harvest leafy medicines, it is best to harvest them before the flowers appear.
- When harvesting lower flowers, pick flowers just before or at full bloom.
- Collect the seeds when they turn from green to ripe, but don’t wait too long because the oils and medicines they contain may dissipate.
- For roots, harvest after the second frost. The first frost causes all above-ground parts of the plant to fall to the root for winter storage. After the second frost, most of the plant’s energy transferred to the root. If you live in a region where temperatures don’t drop below freezing, harvest the root when the plant is in its most dormant state.
For all above-ground plant parts, it is best to wait to harvest until 10 a.m. or after the dew has evaporated and before the intense heat of the day has wilted the plants. Harvesting after a series of sunlit days is ideal as it makes drying the harvested plant parts much easier.
How to droughty herbs after harvesting
Drying herbs is an art and a wonderful skill to learn. Start plain and miniature. The time-honored method is to hang herbs in bunches. It is essential to ensure good air flow; On moist days, set up a fan to keep the air flowing. One method I have used is to throw a sheet on the floor in the other room and place herbs on it. Once a day I shake the sheet to turn over the stems, flowers or leaves.
Plants that contain a lot of water, such as comfrey, are the most hard to droughty. If you see black spots on the leaves or the characteristic fuzzy growth, these are signs of mold. Just break off these parts of the leaves, the rest can still be used.
Where to droughty herbs
A heated attic is perfect for drying herbs. However, remember that too high a temperature causes the material to become brittle, which accelerates the destruction of the ingredients. Drying herbs in a food dehydrator works well, as does in an oven (the very low temperature provided by the pilot delicate works well for drying herbs).
Moving herbs to storage
There is nothing sadder than losing your harvest due to herbs being moved to storage too early. You want the leaves to fall apart when you rub them between your fingers, but you don’t want them to be too crunchy.
A proven way to check whether herbs are suitable for storage is to place a miniature amount of dried herbs in a jar and close the lid tightly. If there is still moisture in the herb, condensation will form on the walls of the jar in a day or two. If this happens, continue drying and test again.
Those lucky enough to have a greenhouse can try this very quick drying method described by experienced herb growers Andrea and Matthias Reisen of Healing Spirits Herb Farm in Novel York State: “We employ the high shelves for herbs with less water, nettles, red raspberries and alfalfa, and then the lower shelves, which have more shade than the upper shelves, for comfrey, mint, lemon balm, as well as roses and marigolds so that they do not lose any of their colors.
We turn the herbs throughout the day so that the bottom also dries faster. By drying this way, we can usually transfer the herbs within twenty-four to thirty-six hours. Roots, of course, last longer. Since we are in Western Novel York, we do not employ shade curtains as we do in areas where the sun is hotter.“