Harvest is in full swing

Herb harvest, that is. It is time to start putting away those beautiful and fragrant herbs for my various experimental projects later this year.

First order of business - pick out and buy the jars. I decided on clear jars (vs my original idea of amber) because 1) apparently real amber glass is no longer a thing in the bottle world, and anything that claims to be amber is just a painted on film, yuck. and 2) I like being able to see the herbs, so they aren’t hidden behind some mysterious apothecary label. But - I do have to keep the jars away from the sun, which is fine as I am storing them in a covered container in the garage

First up for processing was lavender, which is a big one, both because I had a lot and also because I need a lot. I definitely should have Googled the best process for this, because boy, did I make a mess on my front porch! At least it was a fragrant mess. I had visions of a romantic, Provincial experience, gently coaxing the flower buds off their stems. But I had made the crucial mistake of not bundling the stems as I harvested them and then keeping them bundled during the bud stripping process. So I ended up with a jumbled 5-gallon bucket of flower heads, broken stems, and a million buds, making the next step a LOT more difficult than it needed to be. By the time I had sorted and sifted and hand-removed endless stems, the project romance had somewhat faded. But aside from a very messy porch, the result was the perfect amount of flower heads and buds and many lessons learned for next year!

Still a few errant stems, but overall, not too bad. This is a fairly giant jar.

There has to be a better way, and it turns out there is! #nextyear

The other plants require much less processing. I had already freeze dried the calendula, chamomile, rose petals, and borage flowers. So they just needed to be put in jars.

The leafy herbs, like lemon balm, mullein, plantain, and thyme just needed to be crumbled a bit before jarring them up.