2024 Herb notes

This was an interesting year for herb experimentation. I love to cook, so there is no such thing as “too many” herbs, but this year we grew a LOT of herbs. During the ongoing winter research, I kept reading about planting herbs amongst your vegetables to attract good bugs and discourage bad ones. Win-win both for the garden and for us, right? Cheers to that. 

As you can see, it was a bunch of herbs, but overkill paid off big time. For one thing, we were able to have enough that it didn’t matter when we experienced a few issues. For instance, when we were putting out the spring garden, it was still a bit cool, the herb starts were still young and fragile so we lost several. I also had a bunch of seeds fail entirely. I learned that I will never buy seeds from a box store. The fall garden has been mostly planted from seeds purchased at the local nursery and everything seems to be thriving. (We didn’t use any starts for the fall. In fact, I’m not sure it would have been an option. I kept an eye out if I went into a garden center or nursery, but didn’t see any fall garden starts for sale in my area. I do feel like maybe if someone is on a mission to find some, they could call around and maybe get referred somewhere. 

After really enjoying having plentiful variety of herbs at my fingertips all season, I still have a tremendous amount thriving in both pots and the raised beds. A few years ago, I tried drying some rosemary and it didn’t work out. Looking back, I think I just wasn’t patient enough to get it completely dry before putting sealing it in a container and it ended up getting moldy. From then on, I just chose to enjoy our herbs until winter set in and killed them. This year, a friend has started drying hers, so I thought I would give it a shot. 

It’s eye opening to see how much waste there would be if I hadn’t started this process. Herbs at the store are not cheap and I use a lot of them. I’ve hardly scratched the surface on harvesting herbs for drying and am amazed at how many herb containers I’m starting to fill. 

The picture below was an experiment that I feel is working. I started the drying process in a dehydrator and realized it would take FOREVER with the thing running 24/7 for me to dry what I need. I decided to try drying in a box where I could move it out during the day and into the garage at night. It’s working like a charm for both bird house gourds as well as our excess herbs. 

We are drying herbs in phases is to ensure there are enough fresh herbs to get through the rest of the warm season. As an extra measure, we are leaving the containers open on the counter to ensure all of the moisture is able to escape before putting tops on the containers. So far, so good!