Herbs

What Are Herbs?

Herbs are various kinds of herbaceous plants whose fresh or dried parts are used to season foods, provide fragrances, supply natural dyes, or make industrial or pharmaceutical products. Dried herbs, fruits, vegetables, flowers and even foliage are all pretty useful items to have around, both for practical and ornamental purposes.

Doing-it-yourself Medicinal Herbs

Such things are usually on the expensive side if you purchase them from stores and the range of available dried varieties is normally very narrow and limited indeed. It is extremely simple, worthwhile and rewarding to dry your own, particularly if you have first grown these things in your garden or in plant pots on a balcony or patio.

Dried Herbs Vs Fresh Herbs

Dried herbs are often more ‘powerful’ than their fresh counterparts as, when the moisture content is naturally evaporated during the drying process, the residual matter is highly condensed, thus making the inherent herbal properties many times stronger. A teaspoon of dried parsley for example is equivalent to approximately one large handful of the fresh plant.

Many herbs have both culinary and medicinal properties, other are purely medicinal. But as home made medicinal remedies should only be administered by a knowledgeable, preferably qualified, professional herbalist. I won’t go in detail about these as I do not want any of my readers to suffer adverse effects from misinterpreting the information.

Culinary Herbs

The most commonly used culinary herbs, sold at high prices for small quantities of imported, fancily packed dried material are parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano, marjoram, basil, mint and dill. I’ll discuss these home garden herbs in my next articles. All of these are easy to grow. Seeds should be autumn sown in hot areas and spring sown in cooler regions, with the exception of basil which should be spring sown and all grow well in 10-inch clay pots as well as in prepared beds directly in the garden.

When should be Harvested?

Herbs for drying are best picked before they begin to flower, at which stage the leaves tend to be rather tough with the exception of thyme. All varieties of thyme and there are many of them, should be harvested when the flowers being to open in order to obtain the best flavor possible.

How can you make it dry?

Culinary herbs can be hung up in small bunches in a shaded area which benefits from a thorough breeze, and a covered veranda can be ideal depending on the dryness of the climate. Any moisture in the air damages the herbs and prevents them from drying out properly and they can even go moldy and bad, wasting all of your time and effort.

Herbs dried in direct sunlight tend to lose much of their strength and aroma. In an air-conditioned home you can successfully dry herbs by hanging them on any convenient object in the house. A row of bunches suspended from a coat hanger for instance, or you may find that they dry faster when spread out thinly on pieces of newspaper, though you may end up with so many sheets of newspaper spread around that it will be difficult to maneuver from the kitchen to the dining room!

Herbs can also be dried by spreading them around in open-weave baskets which allow for easy air circulation, this being one of my own favorite methods.

Once the herbs are completely dry, test them by crumbling a few leaves in your fingers. If they crumble cleanly then fine, if they are still a little rubbery then they need more time. Store them in completely air-tight containers with a little sachet of silica for good measure as this will lengthen their storage life. Containers of dried herbs are best strode in a cool, dark place if possible.