Harvesting Herbs

One of the MANY things that my mother has taught me how to do over the years is how to harvest herbs. She and I truly believe that we were born in the wrong time period. We truly do enjoy the simple things in life. There’s nothing better for my soul then to turn off all of the electronics, all the noise of the world,  go outside, really “be” outside, and work. We have a lot of herbs in our garden and I’m truly blessed that Mitch likes to get his hands dirty too and garden. He also is big on fruit trees and bushes, which someday, we hope to have a ton of fruit baring trees and bushes…be it apple, pear, raspberry or blackberry. I want an orchard. Like an honest to God orchard. I have just the spot in my mind where I want to start my orchard too. Someday it will be glorious and quite the sight to see. But, we were talking about herbs not trees. Trees will come later.

In our garden we grow all sorts of herbs. We grow Basil, Thyme, Rosemary and Chives …. I also have a chocolate mint plant that we transplanted to the side of the house last year and that thing is growing like crazy! I swear the first time we bought it I was shocked at how small it was, but we were assured that mint will grow like gangbusters when you put it in the ground. So far, they weren’t kidding. We thought we killed it the first year because we cut it back so far, but it came back twice as big the next year. It hasn’t stopped taking up real estate since! Our mint is planted right next to our raspberries. Our raspberries also have grown by leaps and bounds and we have a lot of volunteer plants that have taken up root as well. Maybe someday we’ll have enough to put in a salad or use as toppings for my chocolate raspberry cookies that I make every year. A girl can dream right?

Herbs are so great to have in your gardens, they help keep away certain pests and they make great companion plants for tomatoes, green beans and other great veggies that you might want to serve to your family. Mitch is now starting to rotate out the summer garden for the fall one. We are going to try Broccoli, lettuce, spinach and I’m truly hoping for some carrots. Last year our carrots didn’t turn out so hot, but we had JUST enough to put into our tomato sauce that we can in the fall.  This year is going to be a big year for our tomato sauce! We’ve got a TON of tomatoes and we aren’t afraid to can them!

If you are interested in companion planting with herbs here’s a quick link to a whole entire list.

Companion Herb Listing

So for today’s herb harvesting we decided that our Basil was getting way out of hand and that it was time to harvest some and get it ready for our tomato sauce. A couple of years ago we went and bought a dehydrator from Rural King. God, we love that thing! Mitch uses it to make deer jerky too. We become dehydrating fools around this time of year. We decided that our five trays were not enough for our dehydrating needs so a trip was made back to the IL side to the Rural King in Waterloo to get more dehydrator trays. Seven trays really have to be enough you’d think to dehydrate the herbs in our garden…I think seven was the lucky number. 

Mitch and I harvest herbs a little differently. As I type this I’m laughing. He goes and just yanks them out of the ground, and I go out with a nice basket and some scissors and I cut them down at the bottom. He pulls them straight out of the ground by their roots and brings them in and puts them in the sink. At the end of the day the end result is the same, but the whole Mars vs. Venus really comes into play when we are talking about harvesting herbs at our house. He did a great job helping with harvesting the dill that I plucked out of the Kenner Plaza Garden. Drying dill, in my humble opinion, is a two person job anyway, at least in the beginning. I guess you can do it with one, if you are in a pinch, but it’s MUCH easier and quicker with four hands instead of two. We used all that dill when we pickled last month. It was a lot. Good to know how much we might need next year when we want to pickle again.

Basil

This year, Mitch had things to do and places to go with the two oldest so that meant that Claire and I had a couple of hours to ourselves to harvest our Basil. She was a great help even though she was still not feeling well. She was a good sport. I’ll take her help anytime. My thought on that is start them when they are young, young enough to still want to help, and still want to learn. That when they are older, they will have these skills along with the knowledge, and that can never be taken away from them. I truly want to raise my girls in a household where dirt is a good thing, where food is grown in the garden as much as possible and not merely gathered at the grocery store, where things are handmade with love, and attention to detail is always appreciated.

 

This is the kind that we use

Littlest Minion helping here mama out.

One huge bowl of Basil

This is what it should look like when you are spacing out the basil

You want to set it on the lowest setting. It took about 36 hours +/-

Before picture

After picture

Helping mom

AFTER helping mom!

So you can see that we’ve had a grand ol’ time. This will be used for a lot of different dishes throughout the year. A lot of this will go in our sauce. I will have to go get the mint here soon out of the side bed. It really makes some great tea! Roo loves it and asks for it constantly. Talk about a fresh cup of hot tea! Walk out the back door, make a right around the corner and you’ve got chocolate mint for tea at your fingertips. The next time you see me, ask me to bring you some from home. I’ll be more than happy to share!