All that lavender hanging to dry in the garage was starting to drop a rain of fragrant bits every time I opened the garage door (purple rain?). It was past time to finish processing, so last night I spent all evening stripping the dried "buds" off the bundled stalks. By the end of the evening I had clogged sinuses, crunchy flooring, and most of a bucket full of soft purple lavender "buds". They are not really buds in a botanical sense - more like dried calyces (plural of calyx), but who's counting?
This picture is from before I finished sifting out leaves, etc.
Tonight I divided it up into paper lunch sacks. I didn't want to use plastic in case there is any residual humidity that could cause them to mold.
Like any good farmer, I did a careful weighing of my harvest. All told, I ended up with 34.9 oz. That may not seem like much, but it is way more than I expected. Plus I also have lots of bundled stalks to use as fire starters.
4 comments:
I love that smell!! Makes me want to run my hands through the buds-not-buds.
Please what are the herbs that your father makes? I have a couple of prolific lavender plants.
I do stick them in the drawer of "food junk" (taco mix envelopes, granola bars, etc.) to discourage bugs--lavender and rosemary twigs. These past few years, the main lavender project has been honey bee help (they say honey bees are disappearing but not around my lavender plant!
Barbara
Search "herbes de Provence" on Google and you will get lots of recipes. Traditional blends include lavender and rosemary for their strong aromatic oils. All summer my lavender plants were humming with bees - both bumble bees and European honey bees.
Hmmm that's a neat description/mental picture in your opening line ... how the dropping bits of lavender were kind of like purple rain ... sounds like a song reference or something. I like it :)
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