Herb Drying for Winter Use

 

I love having access to home grown herbs for multiple reasons. We enjoy them fresh and dried in meals and one of my garden goals this year was to make sure we had plenty dried for winter.

So, from summer to about a few weeks ago I have been air drying a variety of herbs in addition to using them fresh. 

The herb bed was amazing and grew at a rate that was almost difficult to manage.  Keeping up with their growth was constant.

When the temperatures finally cooled in October, I did some drastic harvesting, propagating and transplanting. 

Now we have a very sparse herb bed with plenty of room for new growth over the next several months.  Perennial herbs in our zone continue growing because our temperatures are always all over the place.

What I am excited about is that we finally have a solid herb foundation of our favorites. So, adding another herb raised bed for additional perennial and annual herbs makes sense.

Air Drying Herbs from The Garden

Air drying herbs is very easy, and you can do this a couple of ways.  One with a dehydrator the other, which is my favorite, to air dry.  

I like the look of herbs drying in a room and they make an area smell earthy during the process.

• To begin wait to harvest when the plant is a bush and before it blooms.
• Use natural string, a paper clip and find a place to hang. 
  
• Clip an herb bundle, wash and air-dry outside.
• Remember to remove any bad material before gathering stems with string.
• Tightly tie a knot around the base of the bundled stems and leave string tails.
• Once you have your bundles together connect the tails with a loose knot and hang using a paperclip.
• You will have to undo the clip so it can hang from something; mine hang from a sliding door bar.
• It will take them about a week or two to completely dry.

When the herbs are dry remove the leaves onto parchment paper and then place in a small blender, like a magic bullet to bring them to a slightly textured powder. 

Blend to your liking is what I say then store in recycled glass jars and place a label on top. 

That is all you do and I retire the dried stems to the compost bin. 

Having an awesome inventory of dried herbs from the garden is the best and this year drying included a lot of basil, oregano, rosemary, tarragon, thyme and sage. 

I love this so much because food is just better when flavored with fresh and dried herbs.  Remember to bookmark this idea for next year when you are setting your garden goals.

Or you can simply get my book, Garden Up Green where I cover so many wonderful things about raised bed gardening.  There is an entire chapter about perennial, annual and biannual herbs. 

Next time we will be chatting about seed storage.  

Encouraging Goodness,

Carole West

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