Havesting Herbs - Tips to Take

Apart from eating herbs the most rewarding facet is the harvesting of you home-grown produce. Picking a bunch of fresh herbs to use for cooking is a pleasure everyone can enjoy. With this there is a danger that when this is done, you don't ruin further growth and sustainability of the herb plant.

The secret is to use a little at a time. A few leaves added to a salad or a marinade is fine. Al that needs to be done is pinch the leaves off with your fingers. Don't tug and pull, the whole stem may well come off if you do. Apart from battering the herb plant it will leave enough leaves in place for the plant to continue growing unaffected and provide more produce later after a further period.

If the season is now at an end you may want to harvest the whole plant and preserve it use out of season. This is where the whole plant can either be dug up or cut down from the base of the main stem. This can then be prepared for freezing, dried or used as it is as an ingredient to other preserves such as vinegar or dressings.

Try to pick a dry day to harvest your herbs late morning onwards is good when all the morning moisture from the dew has evaporated. Make sure you harvest before the plants have flowered. The oil content in the herbs' leaves are at their peak just before flowering starts. Deadhead the flowers from the herb for it to keep producing as many leaves as possible.

Try to plan your harvest on the same day you intend to use them. This way there will be no lost of flavour or freshness.

You need a little patience to wait until the herb plants have fully developed into adult plants that will be robust enough to take a picking or two and recover with ease. And then you should never cut more than a third of the plant in one picking. The plant will need time to recover and regain its grow after this.

If you have no nails to pinch the leave off use a sharp pair of scissors and try to make sure it is done is a clean and clinical way.

Most herbs that are annual, such as basil and parsley should be topped off when harvesting. Only take leaves from the growing tips of the plants, the herb will then go on to produce more leaves and fewer flowers. In essence you are providing the herb with an extended life of production by doing this.

After harvesting, the herbs should be rinsed in clean cold water, which will give then the signal, just like rain does to keep their flavour and colour closed in.

Harvesting is one of the most enjoyable aspects of growing herbs. With this advice you should not spoilt or kill and crops you have taken the time and effort to grow.

Finally, make sure the children are part of the harvest help; this will ensure that there will be another generation who carry this wonderful pastime. A child’s memory of a harvest will be remembered for a lifetime.

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Clove Herb - Not just for Christmas

The clove herb is a funny looking thing and you will find it in many a kitchen hardly touched for years and used mainly at Christmas. It is another underrated herb with many uses.

It was used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all used cloves and in China to freshen the breath.

The clove tree needs a humid, warm tropical climate with lots of water all year round. It is native to the Island of Moluccas, in Eastern Indonesia.

The clove trees are small, bushy and evergreen. They have shiny, leathery, spike-like and fragrant leaves. In fact, all parts of the tree are highly aromatic. The tree produces light pink flowers that drop off when opening and the yellow stamens are developed in late summer subsequently purple berries appear.

In cultivating the clove herb, the buds are picked and dried just before blooming; this is the time when the clove oil is extracted. Clove oil has powerful elements that numbs pain and kills bacteria and fungi. The antibacterial elements are used to treat colds, mouth abscesses, gum disease, earache and arthritis illnesses.

You will see many aromatherapy air fresheners with cloves as a base and for good reason as the smell reminds us of joy and celebration. No doubt from the reminder of Christmas, albeit that cloves only came about during Christmas since Victorian times.

If you have a toothache, rub a little clove oil directly on where it hurts, but don't swallow. It will kill bacteria and fungi,

Clove oil being pure eugenol oil can relieve nausea and indigestion and will relieve most causes of diarrhoea.

In food circles it is well know that cloves match well with many other foods but especially, apples, game, ham, lamb, pumpkin, sausage, tea, tomatoes, walnuts and wine

A mulled wine recipe is give here

Mulled Spiced Wine

Ingredients:

2 bottles red wine (merlot's good here)
10 cloves
juice of 2 oranges and the zest of one
100g. sugar,
1 cup water
2 tsp mixed spice
2 sticks cinnamon

(You may add a 1/4 cup of brandy or rakia if you wish)

One Step Method

Place everything in a saucepan and gently heat for around 10 minutes. (IMPORTANT - Don't boil) That's it!

Serve and enjoy the wonderful taste and fragrance, and not just at Christmas.

Another favourite use of cloves of mine is to insert as many as you can into an orange and leave it on the shelf. It acts as a natural air freshener and gives off a wonderful scent for up to two weeks.

Finally, as mentioned at the start, many people just use cloves once a year and the freshness lost as the years go by. You really need to keep the stock fresh by either buying a fresh batch each year or do as I do. I put my cloves in a small plastic airtight container and keep them in the freezer. You need to freeze them all individually on a tray initially before storing them in bulk. This way they won't end up as a 'frozen lump'. The freshness is kept alive this way and takes up no space at all in the freezer.

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The Use of Dried Herbs

Wherever you are in the world, fresh herbs cannot be grown fresh locally unless they are imported. Provisions for this are made by using dried herbs, never really as good as the fresh but still makes a major difference in the taste factor in foods. Added to this they still retain many of the compounds that benefit our health and body.

Using dried herbs is common with many home keeping supplies in their larders, in fact many don't even use fresh even when in season. Dried herbs are freely available at most food shops and at every supermarket so access to dried herbs is never a problem. The recipes that require fresh herbs nearly always have an option to include dried herbs therefore can be made the whole year round.

Being dried, herbs loose all of the liquid content and they become more concentrated than the fresh produce. With this you need to use less to create the same power of flavour.

There is a rule of thumb that says the conversion rates recommended is quite simply to substitute one teaspoons of dried for every tablespoon of fresh herbs.

Most recipes can cater for dried herbs as a substitute but there are other than can't especially if the herb is the major ingredient to the recipe, i.e. pesto.

In some cases dried herbs are actually better than fresh, When I make my own bread I have experimented with both and the dried herbs wins hands down. So they do have their benefits.

In stews and sauces dried herbs are used often with bay leaves being used extensively and more effectively dried and also ground up in Asian dishes

Salads aren't as successful with dried herbs but a salad dressing can be quite effective adding the herb element in a disguised fashion.

The dried herb production is essential for all year access to herb based recipes and it is the most practical thing to do with the surplus herbs during their cropping season. Don't feel it is cheating using dried herbs, it's not, it is just using natures way off preserving, no chemicals involved don't forget!



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