Harvesting an Out of Control Herb Garden

A couple of weeks ago, I had a look at my herb garden and it was legit, pretty out of control. It was thyme to do something about it! (See what I did there? I’m ore-gano show myself out…). I guess one of the beginner steps to being self sufficient is drying your own herbs – I’ve had another win! 

The aforementioned well loved, but out of control herb garden:

 

So step one of my drying herbs escapade, was to harvest some herbs and bunch them together using rubber bands, like so:

 

I harvested some oregano, thyme, rosemary, mint and parsley for my first attempt at drying. Once I had all the herbs bunched together (fairly loosely to allow to air movement) I hung the bunches is separate paper bags. This was to keep the dust off the leaves as they dried.

 

So apparently, you’re meant to give the herbs about a week to dry but I gave them a couple of weeks – I don’t think it really matters how long they’re hung up for as long as the moisture is completely out of the leaves. Once the leaves are dry and crumbly, I stripped them from the stems and threw the stems away.

 

Most of the herbs dried really well and smell great. Because I dried them inside, the leaves retained their colour, so they’re a nice dark green. The parsley didn’t dry so well so I didn’t keep any of that – I’d rather use parsley fresh anyway! From left to right on the photo below: Mint, Oregano, Thyme, Ginger and Rosemary. I’ve tried planting some ginger so I’ll put up a post with planting and drying it once I’ve got some results!