Oh, Summer, How I Love Thee! And with Summer’s bounty comes lavender!
If your garden is anything like mine, the lavender has been blooming like there is no tomorrow. In addition to enjoying the fragrance along the path and the beautiful purple hues of the blooms, there are so many wonderful ways to enjoy lavender. Since I am also harvesting some honey, I wanted to combine it with a lavender harvest. What could be more perfect than lavender and honey, right?
You can use lavender for culinary purposes, sachets, lavender wands, soaps, and tea. Let’s get into how to harvest, dry, and use your lavender harvest!
Why grow lavender?
It's easy to grow and adds a wonderful scent and pop of color to any garden. It's also a pollinator plant, so it’s great for the bees!
What’s the best time to harvest lavender?
The ideal time to harvest lavender is just when the buds have blossomed fully and smells the most fragrant. The newly opened blossoms and fragrance means it has a strong concentration of the essential oils and freshness you want to preserve. If the blossoms stay longer, the potency of the fragrance starts to decline.
To harvest lavender, it’s best to do this in the morning once any dew or moisture has had a chance to evaporate – or in the early evening when the lavender has had a chance to recover from the day’s heat.
How to Harvest
When you are ready to harvest your lavender:
Use a pair of sturdy scissors or secateurs.
Cut just above the leaves, with a good long stem so that you have enough stalk for drying.
Avoid cutting any woody stems, you will want to cut 2”-3” above where the green stem starts to grow. You can choose to harvest all of the stalks all at once, giving your lavender plant a nice trim that will encourage new stalks to form – or just harvest what you need and leave the rest for you and the bees to enjoy in your garden.
Preparing the lavender stalks for drying:
You don’t need any fancy equipment to dry your lavender. All you need is some string or rubber bands, and a dark, dry place to hang your lavender bundles to dry.
Gather a handful of stalks (roughly 2-3 dozen) and firmly tie with string. If you are using a rubber band, the tension of the rubber band will adapt to the shrinkage of the stalks. If you are using string, you will need to tie it tightly to allow for the shrinkage so your bundles do not come apart. Hang your bundles, allowing enough room between the bundles for sufficient air circulation to optimize drying.
Drying the lavender bundles:
With your lavender bundles all tied, you are ready to hang for drying. You can hang your bundles from a rack, dowel, clothes line – pretty much anything will do! Allow enough room between the bundles for sufficient air circulation to optimize drying. Where you hang your bundles is just as important as how. Be sure to hang in a dark, dry place so your bundles can dry property and without any incidents of mold.
Check your lavender bunches every few days. The stalks will shrink a little as they dry, and you may need to tighten the string or rubber bands. Drying time can vary, but on average it should take 3-4 weeks for your bunches to be completely dried.
How to store your lavender:
You can store the bunches as-is in paper bag. Or if you are only using the flowers, you can snip off the flowers and store in an air tight jar or container.
If you are using the flowers for cooking, tea, potpourri, or lavender bags, gently run your fingers along the stalks to remove the dried flowers. You can store the flowers in a box, paper bag, or jar.
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