There are three ways of getting a steady supply of herbs: preserving, keeping them going and successional sowing of annuals.
For the first of the three methods herbs have traditionally been dried. An old farmhouse kitchen springs to mind, bunches of fragrant herbs hanging from the rafters above the range, all within easy reach of the cook’s grasp.
If you’re keen and have time, drying works well with leathery-leaved herbs such as bay, thyme, rosemary, savory and hyssop. With a high content of volatile oils and relatively little water, they retain more fragrant oils than juicy-leaved plants such as mint and basil.
Midsummer is the age-old time for doing this. Do as our forebears did and choose a dry day for harvesting. Start collecting once the dew has lifted, but before lunch when the strong sun partially evaporates the volatile oils. Only use leaves in good condition. When drying, keep the herbs in a warm but not hot environment, well away from direct sunlight. And make sure there’s good air circulation to ward off any fust. Place the sprigs on kitchen towel or, even better, a cake cooling rack. When the leaves are dry and crumbly, strip off the stalks and store the leaves in glass jars. The less herbs are exposed to air, the more they keep their flavour, so small jars are best.
For quicker results you could use a dehydrator or a microwave to extract water. Although you can dry juicy-leaved herbs including basil or celery, you lose much of the flavoursome oils as it takes longer to remove the larger water content. Alternatively, preserve them in oil or, with celery, dry it in salt. You could also freeze the leaves but you’ll lose a lot of the flavour.
Most folk don’t have time for this palaver, so the most practical solution is to keep the plants going as long as possible. Some herbs respond well to cutting back. Removing flower heads stimulates them into producing a fresh flush of leaves. You’ll be rewarded by cutting sorrel flower stalks to ground level. And removing faded thyme and sage flowers earlier in the summer has the same effect.
A slightly different technique guarantees a steady supply of chives. When they start flowering, cut half the clump to within 5cm of ground level, then keep using the other half while the first lot start growing again. Once they’re ready for use, cut the first lot back, and repeat until growth stops.
Cutting back some of a clump can also work with herbs that produce woody stalks – mint or lemon verbena, for example. As with chives, cut some stalks to 5cm to encourage new growth from low down.
These methods don’t really work with annual herbs. You can keep dill, chervil, coriander and rocket productive for a wee while but, however hard you pick, they start to flower. When leaf production stops, rip up and compost the plants. Unless, of course, you want them to self-seed.
For a steady succession of these annuals, you should have monthly sowings till about now. Later sowings can be protected with fleece in autumn to keep them going. Or sow in large pots and bring into the greenhouse when the weather gets cold.
If you have a greenhouse bed, even a September sowing works. I sow between my tomatoes, getting good germination since the lower stems of the tomatoes are bare by then. And, when removing the tomato vines, I cut the base of the stems so as not to disturb the young herbs.
This pays dividends, giving us dill, rocket and coriander for most of the winter.
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