Gardening Lesson #2: Don't waste your $$ on store-bought herbs

The Clogston's first try at backyard gardening has proven to be pretty successful. So much so, that we needed to look for various ways to harvest our overabundant produce (cucumber lemonade with sweet pepper poppers has become the summer special). I remembered from my childhood when nana would dry batch after batch of fresh italian herbs in the oven. The aroma of sweet basil would fill the air and recycled bottles of freshly, dried herbs were stacked in the pantry.

After some over-the-phone consultation, followed by a surprising and very generous donation of a dehydrating machine - thanks nana!! - jclog and i attempted to dry our own herbs.

Here's how it went...

Step 1: Harvest herbs from garden
it is best to pick herbs in the morning or late evening - clip stems about 2/3 down, right above a set of leaves. Flowers on the plant supposedly affect the taste of the herb, but can be picked, dried, and used for next year's seeding.

in addition to drying the herbs, I keep a fresh batch in a vase of water on the kitchen counter - looks nice and smells great. I've
also made a frozen batch of chopped herbs in oil to be used in the future for a pesto or other sauce.

Step 2: Prepare herbs for drying
Remove from stems, gently wash and dry leaves

Step 3: Load the dehydrator
Make sure that each leaf has plenty of space - no overlapping. For herbs, it only takes a few hours to dry - good thing because the dehydrator is a wee bit noisy.

Step 4: Properly store dried herbs
Remove from trays, store in sealed container and keep in dry, dark space. To preserve the natural oils, it's best to keep the whole leaves in tact. Dried herbs are good for up to 1 year.



If the garden herbs continue to grow as profusely as they have and the drying process continues to be so simple and deliciously successful, we might have to go full-scale with this and gift others with the clogston herb mix.....any takers?