Cut and dry herby crops

Evening Post; Bristol (UK), Jul 24, 2010

Whether you are an allotmenter, or garden in the space of just one sunny windowsill, herbs must be some of the most satisfying and best value things to grow.
Freshly picked herbs make such a difference to cooking, and are expensive to buy but very cheap to grow.
For their wildlife value alone, it’s worth having a few herbs in a veg patch, especially since many of them can thrive in exposed areas on poor soil that would struggle to sustain most other edible plants.
Many aromatic herbs are much loved by bees, moths and butterflies, and a host of beneficial insects that will help to keep aphids in check.
On an allotment scale, there’s room to fit in all sorts of herbs, including those that demand plenty of elbow room.
Lovage is one lesser known herb that loves to grow tall, and has all sorts of culinary uses. My favourite is lovage soup, which tastes quite like a herby celery and potato combination. You can also use it sparingly in the bath to ease aching muscles; too generous a strewing means that you, too, will smell of the soup once you emerge!
Rosemary, sage, and other “woody” herbs that are happy to grow into large shrubs can be pruned for cuttings this month, and many of the smaller herbs, like thyme, oregano, mint, tarragon and basil, are really leafing up, and producing enough foliage for regular harvests.
The more you cut, the more will grow, so it’s good to make this one of the regular gardening tasks of mid-summer. As well as using the leaves fresh in salads, you can dry them, of course, or just chop them into useful portion sizes, and pop them straight in the freezer. This is one of the best gardening tips I’ve ever had, since it allows you to have the taste of fresh herbs in your winter cooking as well.
Drying herbs is easy, although opinions differ on the best ways of doing so. Some people pick and remove the stems then chop up the leaves immediately. Others prefer to leave the stems intact, leaving the whole lot to dry completely, before rubbing the leaves from the stems and crumbling them by hand.
Picking them on a dry day is definitely a good idea, and making sure that they have properly dried before storing them is also important, otherwise they will tend to moulder.
They will take several days to dry out properly, and by this time they should be dry enough to crumble if you rub them. If there is any flexibility left in them, they need to dry out a bit longer.
I used to pick mine into a sieve, and leave them in a sunny place to dry, but really needed a stacking tray system.
The best I came up with was a bamboo steamer – not that there is any steaming involved; simply that the two compartments allow me to dry two different sorts of herbs in one go.

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