Final Harvest Season is Starting

I harvest herbs all year.  I judge a year by how soon I can take my first harvest.  This year it was not until mid May and that, to me, is late.  I lost at least two possible harvests in the spring.  Come mid summer I need to harvest regularly to get the plants more bushy and larger for improved and better harvests.
                               

By September I am doing what I call the final harvests.  Once the days get shorter I can no longer be as ruthless on my plants. During the height of the growing season I will cut between 2/3 and 3/4 of the height of a plant without fear that it will return with new growth.  That was evidenced by my harvest of lemon balm this year.  I kept cutting it back to 3 inches in height and I kept getting plants this big.

Lemon Balm, new growth after harvesting

Today I was harvesting Apple Mint to use in a program in a couple weeks at Schaumburg Library.  We will be using it in a tea blend.

My general rule with harvesting is cut the herbs, bundle the stems anywhere between 10 and 12 stems minimum and hang them.  I don't do anything special except line up the bases of the stems and wrap with a rubber band.

However, when harvesting mint, especially a large leaf mint like apple mint, I change my technique just a bit. Here is the Apple Mint haul.

The plants are large 3 to 4 feet tall, the leaves can get 2 to 3 inches in length and are thick and filled with moisture. Yes, I do say cut your herbs before they flower, but that rule never applies to Mint.  If the flowering is reducing the flavor or scent, I can't tell which means I can let these mature undisturbed until I am ready to harvest.

I cut the branches about 1 foot from the ground and stack them on a table out of direct sun to wilt for a while.  An hour or two depending on how busy I am.  The wilting gives me a better feel for how thick and large the stems are before I bundle them.  I want them to dry quickly so a smaller bundle is preferred.

With mints the leaves have a lot of moisture as do the larger square stems.  As a result I do two things while prepping the mints to dry.  I strip off the leaves at the base of the stem.

And I only use 6 to 8 stems, never the 10 to 12 average I use with other herbs.

I bundle them with a rubber band.  Sure you can use string, but as the stems shrink in drying, the herbs will fall and I dislike cleaning up that mess.

Then stretch the band over the arm of a hanger and suspend the herbs.  In my herb drying shed I use the same technique over dowel rod arms on a large frame where the dowels are 12 inches apart.

Sometimes I dry on two racks hung over one another, but with a bundle as long as this I only dry on one rack.

The time it takes for the herbs to dry varies depending on heat and humidity.  Right now humidity is low, but temps are cool, so the drying time I expect to be 2 weeks.  Just in time for the program on September 12.

I saved the leaves I stripped off and stems.

Then sorted through them.  Those that were in good shape, I saved and laid out on a paper towel on the kitchen counter.  I do this often and have a small collection of drying leaves most days.  You can lay them very close together, because in a couple days they will shrink leaving plenty of space between the leaves.

Dried branches of lemon balm show what I mean.

Once the herbs are dry, they should be stored in a glass jar so they do not re-absorb water from the environment.  You know they are completely dry when they crumble easily in your hand when you scrunch the tips of the leaves.