Lavender Harvest, Growing and Drying

Lavender is my favorite herb. I fell in love with its scent in my early teens and have yet to grow tired of it. I have tons of lavender scented bath and body products, room sprays, candles even fabric softener around our home. But I'm particular...it has to be true lavender, that sort of musky, herb scent. I love lavender so much that our down stairs bathroom is lavender themed. I have lavender towels, lavender art and many bouquets, swags and wreaths of dried lavender.

I compost my lavender in the spring with composted goat manure and I mulch heavily in the fall. I also cut the entire plant back by a third to stop woodiness and shrub-like tendencies. When a plant gets about 18 inches wide, I divide it.

I simply dig up the root ball and cut the roots it in half with a serrated kitchen knife. Then replant the two halves.

Some of the varieties that we grow are Munstead (the lighter, bluer shade on left ) and Hidcote (The darker more purple-y shade on right) We also grow Phenomenal and Grosso, which is one of the most fragrant lavenders.

I pick lavender with scissors, grabbing a handful of stems and chopping just above the bushy-leafy part of the plant. It reminds me of giving the plant a haircut.

To dry the lavender I cut 5 inch lengths of thin elastic. You can also use rubber bands or hair ties. Anything with an elastic property works well because as the lavender dries, the stems shrink. The elastic will cinch up as the stems become smaller. I've tried tying the stems with twine or string and as the bunches shrink, the stems slip out of the loop and fall on the ground.

After they were tied, I strung a bit of yarn across a corner on our front porch and used clothespins to hang the bunches. Ideally, a less window-y spot would be best, but we don't really have a room like that in our house. These windows aren't really sunny because of the large Hickory and Maple trees we have on the front lawn.

Photo Friday

It's been a busy week for us. We built a new manger for the goats with a shelf to catch fallen hay. Once hay hits the ground they won't eat it. We also reinforced the structure in every way we could so it will last. It holds a whole bale of hay, and then some so it's convenient and doesn't have to be filled everyday. A bale lasts the goats a few days. Now that we've seen this one in action, we're going to build two more for the fiber goats and the boys. 

Stacey came over the other day and we made a batch of soap. Lemon Balm, Lavender and Tea Tree. It is so creamy and luxurious!

We also dehydrated a bunch of garlic to make seasoning blends. I had pulled our seed garlic last fall and planted a new variety. The basket of garlic cloves was sitting in the backroom, so we decided to put it to good use.

We found that a great way to "shell" a lot of garlic at once is to rub the cloves between two Silpat sheets. It works similarly to those rubber garlic rollers but on a larger scale.

Zach got me a mushroom farm for Valentines Day. I'll show progress as it comes along.

And the girls are laying again! It's so nice to have a supply of fresh eggs coming in from the coop!

Magnet Chalkboard Spice Tins

This system of spice tins is one of my favorite things right now. Have you ever had something, whether you bought it, or made it, that just really changes the way you do something for the better? I love to cook, but rifling through our top drawer of our pantry, looking for spices was always something that drove me crazy. The spice jars were too little to be sharing the same space as large bottles of olive oil, vinegars and other random things. They'd get knocked over and lost among the rubble.

These tins have solved that problem for me and I love it. I also find myself using more of a variety of herbs in our meals because I see them, and think..."hmmm, that would be a good addition."

These tins are being stored on the side of our refrigerator, a space that otherwise wouldn't hold much of anything. I'm not a big fan of tons of stuff on my fridge, it gives me anxiety...that's the anal retentive side of me coming out. The magnets we do have are uniform and well thought out. We have magnet poetry on the front, which is alphabetized, and is uniformly black and white. We also have a few acorn and bee magnets which fit our personality.

These tins pass the refrigerator test because they are all uniform and create organization in themselves.

I have them alphabetized so that I can always find the spice I'm looking for, and putting them away after a meal is a snap...I just look for the empty spots. The 8 oz. tin holds a lot of spice. Which is nice for when I dehydrate home grown herbs in large quantities.

They can be re-arranged to allow for new spices, for example I just started cooking with savory for the first time. I simply made a "savory" tin and fit it in alphabetically.

The chalkboard labels can be wiped with a damp cloth and re-labeled.

Here is where you can order the supplies:

8 oz metal tins
2.5" chalkboard labels
chalkboard marker
3"round magnets

Wild Chamomile Tea

I have a goal this year to use my dehydrator more. I have a beautiful dehydrator and all I've managed to make with it before this summer is mucky fruit leather and strawberries that were so crispy I had to pry them off the tray with a knife...bit by bit.

Before we hayed the field, the wild chamomile was in bloom. I wanted to gather some blossoms for tea before we cut and baled. So my friend Stacey and I went out with our baskets in tow and picked a whole bunch!

When we came back in, we washed the blossoms 4 times in a colander under running water. Aphids seem to be drawn to chamomile so we double checked for those. 

We pressed as much water out of the blossoms as we could in a folded, clean towel. 

When the blossoms were clean, we laid them out on the dhydrater trays in a single layer.

I set the dehydrater for 95 degrees, for 12 hours.

When I checked them the next day, the centers were still a bit damp, so I put them on for an additional 12 hours.

When they were done they looked like this.

And filled a half gallon mason jar.

I don't care for the flavor of chamomile tea by itself, so I've been adding a few of the blossoms to pots of other herbal tea. I've since dehydrated some mint varieties from the garden, raspberry leaves and lemon rinds. I enjoy throwing handfuls of this and that into the tea pot and coming up with interesting flavors. 

Growing Lavender From Seed GRIT Magazine

Lavender is notoriously difficult to germinate from seed. But with a few simple steps you can successfully start your own lavender sets and plant a garden’s worth of this fragrant and beautiful herb. Check out my latest post over at Grit Magazine to learn how! Growing Lavender from Seed.