Hi everyone!
Although we have several different places we grow herbs for our herb business, we still have a lot of beautiful healthy herbs right here at home that we use for our personal use.
And those herbs are blooming left and right. This is another thing why we like to plant more herbs than flowers. They are beautiful and bloom but, they are also edible. Double duty plants! Oh, and let’s not forget the amazing smell right after a rain when the sun hits them! Heavenly!!
We have two boxes built in the front of our patio that are filled with wonderful herbs.
Beautiful blooms. What you are looking at is Feverfew (small white snowball looking blooms), cilantro (small lacy white flowers), Yarrow ( little white flowers) and Borage (purple flowers) on this side. Thankfully when the Cilantro bolted, it gave us a bunch of baby plants that are so tasty!
The other side has lemon balm, Italian parsley (the white flowers), Lemon Verbena and Orange Thyme
In the larger bed that runs about 8 feet along our walkway is blooming French Thyme.
And Lemon Thyme.
Sage. This so needs to be harvested ASAP!
I did manage to harvest one small area of our three areas of chives.
All those at the bottom of this picture are chives. We have the same on the other side.
Definitely looking wild and out of control!
I had time to plop my tush down and harvest and clean out one side.
Half way done with this side.
They are just so sweet.
Yay! all done on that side.
After sitting there cutting all the chives, I plucked out all the bad ones and the weeds.
After a cleaning rinse, I will cut them roughly in half and then just spread them out on the cookie sheet and put them on the dash of one of our trucks. Yup, that is the best way we have found for drying our herbs naturally. We have tried the oven method, the dehydrator method, the hanging in bundles and the paper bag method. We have found this works the very best for us. They will stay in the truck for the next several days. Once dry, they get chopped and stored.
So, this is also my Tip of the week. Even if you grow just a little bit of herbs but, have no idea how to preserve them. Just clip off some, rinse and spread them on a cookie sheet and put in your car to dry. You would not believe how amazing your car smells! Once they are completely dry, just crunch them up and put into a air tight jar. See, it is really no big deal to dry your own herbs!
We add no drying agents or any chemicals what so ever to our herbs. We don’t use any type of chemical for any reason in growing or harvesting our herbs. Our soil is composted from all natural items. This is absolutely a number one factor in our herb business. Our little Princess has sensitive skin especailly with harsh chemicals and she is one of the main reasons we started this business. She can go out and pluck any herb at any time and eat if she wants. We created a lot of all natural lotions and ointments just for her and now all of us use them. Isn’t that they way things start, out of necessity?
I hope you enjoyed the little tour with me today. Have a wonderful day!
No comments:
Post a Comment