How to Harvest Homegrown Herbs

Learning how to harvest your own herbs, both for you and your homestead flock, is an essential modern pioneer life skill. It is a simple skill that you can easily learn no matter where you are at in your modern pioneer journey! For natural chicken keepers, harvesting, drying, and storing herbs will allow you to have some healthy remedies on hand for your flock. Pioneers have been harvesting herbs for many years, and I love practicing this ancient tradition! There are several methods for harvesting, drying, and storing herbs that make it very fun and easy!

Harvesting Herbs

Harvesting herbs can begin as soon as your plants are healthy and flourishing. For regular use, just trim off what you need for your flock or for your recipes! To harvest herbs for preserving, there are a few tips and tricks you should know about.

I begin harvesting my herbs for preserving any time during the summer and continue right up until the first frost. Some hardier, annual herbs can be transplanted into pots to bring inside during the winter so you can continue to harvest the fresh herbs all year! Here are a few tips for harvesting herbs to preserve them:

Tips for Harvesting Herbs:

• Trim your herbs throughout their growing season. You can use the fresh trimmings right away or save them for later by using some of the storing methods discussed later in this post.
• Harvest your herbs before they begin to flower. Honestly, I have harvested a lot of my herbs even after they have flowered, but harvesting before they flower makes the herbs have a better taste and nutritional value.
• Note: You can trim or snip off buds before the plant flowers to encourage it to continue to grow and fill out.
• Never trim back more than 1/3 of your herb plant. This will allow the plant to continue to grow even after multiple harvests.
• Harvesting your herbs after the morning dew has dried or after a recent rain may provide you with clean herbs that do not have to be washed before you store them!
• I use scissors most of the time for harvesting my herbs but some herbs can be hand picked as well.
• I also like to use a wicker basket for putting my harvested herbs in for easy transportation.

Trimming your herb plants throughout their growing season will give you lots of fresh herb trimmings to use in cooking, baking, or for your flock! Fresh herbs always taste good in scrambled eggs, garnishing a crock pot chicken, or baked into herbed cheese rolls!

As far as offering fresh herbs to your chickens goes, check out my post on How to Use Herbs for Backyard Chickens!

Preserving Herbs

Once you have a basket full of herb trimmings, you can then decide which method you want to use in order to store and preserve your herbs for year-round use. While dried and preserved herbs won’t have quite the same bold flavor that fresh herbs do, they are convenient for offering to your flock or using in recipes during the non-growing season.

You can also make homemade seasoning blends, herbal teas, and other herbal recipes with stored herbs! The main method used for preserving herbs is by drying them.

Drying herbs is a great way to have a supply of herbs handy year round. Dried herbs are quite expensive at the regular grocery store, so drying them yourself is a great way to save money and spruce up your flock’s diet and yours too! I have dried my herbs using two methods: air drying and oven drying.

Method 1. Air Drying Herbs

Air drying your herbs is a quick, easy, and simple way to dry your herbs. Start off by harvesting bundles of trimmings from your herb plants (remember, never trim back more than 1/3 of the plant at one time!). You can combine different herbs into different bundles or keep the same herb in one bundle.

One thing to keep in mind though is that different size leaves dry at different rates. Tie string or twine around the bundled stems. Hang the bundles upside down in a cool, dry place with good ventilation and air flow. Your herbs are dried when the leaves can be crumbled with your fingers.

I like to hang herbs for the chickens in their coop where they can’t reach them. The herb bundles dry and make the coop smell really good! For baking and cooking, I hang my drying herbs in a more clean location, like a basement.

Tip: Here is a tip I use to dry my herbs faster! Take the partly dried herb bundles and separate the stalks. Dehydrate them using the method below for a short amount of time (2-5 minutes). Now the herbs are all dried and you can free up herb hanging space!

Another way to air dry herbs without tying them into bundles is by laying them on wire cooling racks. Really, any object that allows air flow above and below the herbs will work. Place the cooling racks in a dry place that gets good ventilation. I have found that keeping a rack full of herbs beside my oven dries the herbs out quickly. The warm air from the oven works to remove the moisture from the herbs and dries them out.

Once the herbs are dry enough to be crumbled, I move them into glass storage containers.

Method 2. Dehydrating Herbs

Another fast and easy way to dry herbs is by using a dehydrator or a convection oven. I use a convection oven to dehydrate my herbs. 

Take your harvested herbs and lay them out on cookie sheets. Large leaves can be picked from the stem and laid on the sheet and small leaves can be left on the stem.  Pre-heat your oven to 170° F.

Place the cookie sheets in the oven and use a small block of wood to keep the oven door open a crack. My small block measured 3/4 x 1 x 5 inches. Turn on the convection oven.

Different herbs will require different amounts of drying time. Here are a few guidelines:

• Thyme, rosemary, lavender, oregano: 8-10 minutes
• Basil, sage: 10-15 minutes (if the leaves are not drying fast enough, you may want to increase the temperature to 200° F)

Smaller leaves will need less time than larger leaves. When in doubt, go with a low number, than you can always add time as needed. The herbs are dried when the leaves can be crumbled with your fingers.

Storing Dried Herbs

Once your herbs are dry, there are several ways that you can store them depending on the method you chose to dry the herbs.

Storing Air-Dried Herbs

Air dried herbs can be stored just as they are, hung upside down in a cool, dry place with good ventilation. You can even place cheesecloth over the bundles to keep dust from settling on them. If you don’t have enough space to store your bundles of air-dried herbs, you may consider dehydrating them slightly and then storing them in an airtight container.

Storing Dehydrated Herbs

Dehydrated herbs need to be stored in an air-tight container in a cool dark place, such as a pantry or basement. Preferably the container should be glass. Remove any stalks or stems and place each herb in a container.

If you know you will use a certain combination of herbs you can store those herbs in the same container. Try to minimize the amount of crumbling you do to the leaves. Whole leaves retain their nutritional value longer than crumbled leaves.

Dried herbs will usually last about a year before their nutritional value lessens and their taste diminishes.

Freezing Herbs

Besides drying fresh herbs, you can also freeze fresh herbs as a way of preserving them. Freezing herbs is a great way to store fresh herbs without having to dry them. There are two main methods that I use for freezing fresh herbs:

Method 1.

Lay the herb leaves on a cookie sheet and place them in the freezer. Once they are frozen you can move them into freezer bags or containers. Make sure you mark the bag or container with the name of the herb and the date that they were frozen. Take the frozen herbs out before you need to use them so that they have time to unthaw.

Note: Some herbs freeze better than other herbs. Basil will turn brown when you freeze it.

Method 2.

You can also freeze herbs in ice cube trays! Place the desired herb leaves or sprigs into each ice cube spot and fill the tray with either water, olive oil, or coconut oil. Freeze the trays and once the cubes are frozen, you can pop them out and place them in freezer bags or containers for later use (don’t forget tothe bags!)

The herbs frozen in oil can be used for cooking or baking! The herbs frozen in water can be added to your flock’s water in the summer or unthawed and made into lukewarm tea in the winter for your flock. You can also drain the melted water from the herbs, let them dry, and use them in recipes or give them to your chickens!

Herbs are a great source of nutrition and finding ways to dry and store them for later comes in handy! With these useful tips, you should hopefully be able to use herbs in your cooking or baking and for your chickens all year round! I love being able to pull out some stored herbs to add to my recipe or sprinkle in my flock’s nesting boxes during the winter. I also love making seasoning blends and spice blends with my dried herbs to use for soups, roasts, and cooked veggies. Fresh, dried, or frozen, herbs are an essential part of the modern pioneer homestead!

If you are wondering what herbs are beneficial for your flock, check out my post 8 Beneficial Herbs for Chickens. And don’t miss any other modern pioneer life skills when you join our weekly modern pioneer newsletter community! Feel free to reach out with any questions you may have!

by Alexa