Harvesting Your Herbs

Reaping your bountiful herb harvest is a very simple process, but a few tips can improve your harvest and preserve the health of your plants.

1. Give young, recent transplants time to adjust to their new home in the garden, and sufficient time to grow before the first harvest.
2. When harvesting herbs for cooking, harvest them the same day you are going to use them to preserve freshness.
3. Never cut off more than one-third of a plant at a time, and give young plants time to re-grow before harvesting from them again.
4. Use sharp scissors and make a clean cut on the stem, taking care not to cut any leaves. Never pull leaves off of a plant.
5. When harvesting culinary herbs for drying, harvest just before the plant produces blooms to ensure the highest oil content in the leaves.
6. When harvesting plants for bloom (i.e. lavender), cut the blooms just before the earliest blooms on the stem start to wither.
7. On annual herbs, always harvest from the growing tips of the stems, like ‘pinching back’ the plant. This will make the plant produce more leaves, reduce flowering, and lengthen the life of the plant.
8. On perennials, always consider the shape of the plant, and make sure that your cutting does not misshape the plant. Think of this harvesting as a ‘mini pruning’.
9. When harvesting chives, always cut spears at the base of the plant. This will encourage new growth.