A couple tips on Herb Gardening
Thursday, October 4th, 2007 by Tim Subscribe To Our Feed
If you’re already interested in herbal horticulture, then the next step is that you need to do is to make yourself as informed as possible to actually get yourself started; if you make yourself as versed on the subject of herb gardening as possible it will make it that much easier.
What you Need to Know About Herb Gardening
One of the first things that you need to know about herb gardening is to learn about how to dry herbs for winter, as this is a major part of herb gardening in general. In order to dry herbs properly for winter, what you need to do first is use the cut off tops of the leafy varieties in midsummer, and then you need to wash them off with cold water.
Then you need to hang them up just long enough so that the drops of water can evaporate, then you should tie the stems together and place them in a paper bag with the stem ends at the opening, next close the bag with a rubber band; you will need to use a paper clip as a sort of hook through the band and place the other hooked end over your line where you are going to hang the herbs to actually dry.
Next, what you need to do is wait for a couple of weeks, and after this, you remove them from the paper bags, and then crumble the leaves and place them on a shallow pan and dry them out in the oven – just make sure that the oven is not too hot, because you want to be carefull not to burn them..
If you are a true herb fancier, you always have another option, and that is to dry them instead by spreading them out on trays and placing them in a dry area; just remember that it is better to keep them fully in the sun for at least the first day because little insects, which may have been secreted in the heads, will then leave as the seeds dry out.
