HOW TO HARVEST AND DRY HERBS

For discerning cooks, packaged herbs from the grocery store don’t always cut it. Judging from their flavor and aroma, it seems they were picked by greasy, diesel-powered machine harvesters in some third-world country about 10 years ago. (This might be a slight exaggeration. Just slight.)

But this is exactly why you grow fresh herbs outside your kitchen door. The quality is incomparable. Preserving that quality for the upcoming dormant season is easy—find just a half-hour one morning before the first frost to stock your herb rack for the winter.

When to Pick Herbs

The flavor and aroma of herbs comes from the essential oils contained in the leaves, which varies depending on the time of day and the stage of the plant’s life cycle. The best-quality dried herbs are picked when the essential oil content is at its peak, which is when the plant is producing only leaves, not flowers or seeds.

You’ve probably harvested your herbs repeatedly throughout the summer, in which case you’ve noticed that they send out new shoots each time they’re cut. If left uncut long enough, they start to flower and set seed, so try to time the harvest for when there is plenty of lush green growth but when flowers haven’t yet formed. It’s best to do this in early fall; as the days get shorter, most herbs enter the flowering stage more quickly in an effort to set seed before the end of growing season.

The heat of the sun causes essential oils to vaporize and fill with air with their aroma. For this reason, it’s best to harvest herbs in the morning while the leaves are still saturated with flavor. Not too early, however, because they won’t dry as easily when they’re covered with dew. Aim for the brief window when the sun has just hit them and the dew has dissipated.

How to Pick Herbs

Use scissors to clip off the stems, cutting only the fresh new top growth, not the older leaves lower down. To avoid depleting the plant, harvest no more than one-third of the growth at any given time. Most culinary herbs are perennials, but with annual herbs (like basil, cilantro, and dill), it’s fine to harvest all of the fresh healthy leaf material in the fall since the plants will die with the first frost.

How to Dry Herbs

The classic way to dry herbs is to hang them from the ceiling of your kitchen. This fills the house with wonderful fragrances, creating a warm and soothing harvest ambiance for the harvest season. Simply bundle five to 10 herb stalks with a piece of twine, and hang them up upside down. You may want to run twine from the one side of the ceiling to the other and tie each bundle to it. You can put the herb bundles in any room that’s warm and dry. Sunlight degrades herb quality, so bundle the herbs inside paper bags if they will receive direct sun exposure while drying. Poke holes in the paper bags to aid with air circulation.

Best quality herbs are those that dry slowly. However, there is a fine line between drying slowly and becoming moldy. Herbs with high water content (such as basil, chives, cilantro, parsley, and mint) may dry too slowly if they are bundled and hung, rotting before they are fully dry. As an alternative, spread them out flat on a window screen that is suspended off the ground so that air can circulate beneath it. Put this in a dry, shady place with good air circulation. Leaving a fan on low in the room will speed the process and help prevent mold.

If your herbs are getting moldy because the humidity level in your home is too high—or if you’re in hurry— you can dry herbs quickly in a food dehydrator, or even in the oven. If using an oven, spread the herbs out on cookie sheets and set it to the lowest possible temperature. The flavor is degraded if the temperature goes above 100 degrees, so you may have to keep the door of the oven open to create the right environment.

How to Store Dry Herbs

Herbs are ready to store as soon as they become crisp and crumbly to the touch. It’s best not to over dry them, so check regularly to see when they are ready for storage. Bundled herbs take several weeks to dry, while herbs laid out on drying screens may be ready in a week or less. The oven method produces dry herbs in as little as two or three hours.

Always store dried herbs in glass containers in a cool, dark place. If pantry space is an issue, remove the leaves from the stalks and crumble them before storing. However, the ideal method—preferred by the most discriminating cooks—is to leave them on the stalk and crumble them the moment they’re added to a meal.

HOW TO MAKE A MEDICINAL TINCTURE

Harvesting herbs for tea is the simplest way to make use of medicinal plants, but for more potent medicine, botanical extracts (commonly referred to as tinctures) are a better choice. Besides the herbs, you need little more than a Mason jar, dropper bottles, and some high-proof liquor (we recommend 100-proof vodka).

Infusing plants in boiling water can extract some of the medicinal compounds, but to get all the good stuff, you need a more powerful solvent: namely, alcohol. Alcohol also preserves the medicinal compounds for 5 years or more. Before you start thinking that you’re going to feel better after taking tinctures just because of the alcohol content, rather than the medicinal action of the herbs, realize that the typical tincture dosage is equivalent to roughly one-hundredth of a shot of booze. Nobody gets drunk from using tinctures, but they are a time-tested way to keep the cold and flu bugs away, and are effective in treating a variety of other ailments. A one-ounce tincture costs anywhere from $10 to $20 or more in a store, but you can make a lifetime supply of your own with a few dollar’s worth of alcohol.

Note: Some herbs can cause adverse reactions, especially in larger doses. Never use herbs that you are unfamiliar with without first consulting a qualified herbalist or medical professional. Children, pregnant and nursing women, and individuals taking prescription medication should consult with a health professional before taking any herbal product.

What to Tincture (And What Not To)

Next time you’re in a natural foods store or other establishment with a large selection of tinctures, take a look at the names on the shelf—you may be shocked at how many come from plants that you can find in your neighborhood. Dandelion, yellow dock, cleavers, nettles, chickweed, and plantain are but a few of the common weeds that are used in tinctures. In your garden, you may have mint, thyme, artichokes, cayenne peppers, comfrey, garlic, raspberry leaf, and rosemary, all of which are commonly, too. Common flowering plants to tincture include echinacea (also known as coneflower), yarrow, bee balm, passion flower, and red clover. Many common shrubs and trees yield medicinal compounds as well, such as gingko, white willow, vitex, hawthorn, and black walnut. If you venture into nearby natural areas, you may have access to ginseng, black cohosh, goldenseal, sarsaparilla, saw palmetto, and scores of other medicinal plants.

While it’s exciting to realize how many medicinal plants there are in any backyard or park, there are a few very important things to keep in mind before you start harvesting:

Only harvest plants that you can identify with 100-percent confidence. Numerous plants commonly found in backyards, parks, and natural areas are lethal, or will cause great discomfort, if ingested in tincture form. Take a class on medicinal plant identification in your area if you are a beginner.

• Only certain parts of each plant are suitable for medicinal use. Occasionally the entire plant may be used, but in most cases it’s either the root, the leaves, the flowers, or the bark that is recommended for use. In some cases, using the wrong part can have grave consequences. (For example, yew berries are edible, but the rest of the plant is lethally toxic, including the small seed inside the berry).
• Never harvest plants if you have any reason to believe they could have been exposed to pesticides or herbicides (which are commonly used on public land in urban areas).
• Never harvest plants from private property without asking permission. Harvesting from protected natural areas is often prohibited, so check with the appropriate authorities first.
• The safest places to harvest medicinal plants are from your own backyard or natural areas.

It’s also important to note that the ornamental varieties of medicinal plants found in most nurseries may not have the same concentration of medicinal compounds as their wild relatives. Yarrow, for example, has been bred into many colorful varieties, but it’s best to avoid those and stick with the plain white yarrow for medicinal purposes. If you are unable to find the plants that you want to tincture, you can always purchase dried herbs in bulk from a natural foods store, herb shop, or online supplier.
How to Tincture

Identifying a suitable source of plant material is sometimes a little tricky, but tincturing is easy. The ratio of alcohol to herbs varies depending on whether you are using fresh herbs or dried herbs. Use 100-proof vodka for best results.

1. Chop the plant material into chunks that are a half-inch in size or smaller. For roots and barks, it’s best to chop up the material as fine as possible. Other than roots that are caked with soil, there is no need to clean the herbs; you will only wash off the aromatic oils.
2. Weigh the herbs. Multiply the weight of the herbs (in ounces) by two if you’re using fresh herbs, or by five if you’re using dried herbs. Add this quantity of alcohol (in fluid ounces) to a Mason jar and then add the herbs. The plant material should be completely covered by the alcohol.
3. Screw the lids onto the jars, shake them vigorously for a few seconds, and leave them in a cool dark place for at least two weeks. Try to shake the jars once a day.
4. Open the jars and pour the tincture through cheesecloth into another container to strain out the herbs.
5. Fill glass dropper bottles (use the ones with dark, amber-colored glass so UV rays don’t degrade the product over time, which are often sold in herb shops) using a tiny funnel.
6. Label the jars with the name of the herb and date.

Fifteen to 30 drops taken 3 times a day is a typical dosage rate, but it’s always best to consult with an herbal remedy reference book for advice on using specific herbs.