Creative Ways to Use The Herbs Grown in Your Garden

When and How to Harvest Herbs

Whether you use them fresh or dry, there’s no hard and fast rule about when herbs should be harvested. But there are some general rules of thumb.
1.    Take into consideration the part of the plant you’re harvesting. Keep in mind that leaves aren’t the only part of herb plants that are used; flowers and seeds are useful as well.
2.    All herbs should be harvested in the early morning hours. Once the morning dew has dried, but before the heat of the day has set in, is the perfect time.
3.    Herb plants should be mature before they are harvested. If you start clipping away at the leaves and stems of a very young plant, there may not be enough of it left to sustain its life. Depending on the herb, it will need at least six weeks (usually longer) to become established and mature enough to handle a trimming.
4.    Always aim for harvesting no more than one-third of the plant at a time. Once your baby plant grows up, you can take up to one-third of it and then give it some weeks to regroup. This is a general rule, but not written in stone – there may be good reasons to harvest sooner than later (see below).
5.    There are some very good reasons for keeping specific herbs pruned on a regular basis – “bolting” is one of them. Bolting prompts a plant to suddenly flower all at once (often during high temperatures). As gardeners, we often want to keep them from blooming as long as possible, because flowers mean the end of the plant’s lifecycle. In vegetables, we encourage blooming because that’s when the fruit is produced. However, we are usually after the leaves of herbs, so we want to keep most of the blooming at bay.
6.    The best way to keep up leaf production is to pinch off anything that even resembles a flower. Many times it’s the annuals like cilantro and basil that you’ll want to keep your eye on. Harvesting them often will keep the plant in production longer. Woody, perennial herbs such as rosemary and thyme tend to flower and keep producing regardless of blooms.
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