Microwave Herb Drying - An Easy Way To Dry Herbs Yourself
June 16th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
There’s a feeling of loss that comes with the beginning of fall and the end of the summer vegetable and herb growing season. The sun sets early, and nights grow cooler. As leaves begin to change color, every gardener knows it’s time to put their crops to bed. Green tomatoes get picked and pickled; beans get harvested, corn is picked, and cornstalks are pulled up and set aside until Halloween, when they will be arranged on the front porch with pumpkins and other decorations.
Microwave Herb Drying
Late summer and early fall is the perfect time to preserve summer herbs, dried in your microwave oven. When herbs dry in a microwave, the essential oils of the herbs are absorbed and stored in the leaves that result from the drying process.
Just as dried tomatoes, dried grapes (raisins) and dried plums (prunes) have a more concentrated flavor than the fresh fruits, dried herbs are many times more potent than fresh herbs. If you harvest fresh herbs from your garden at the end of the summer growing season and use microwave herb drying to preserve them, you can preserve enough concentrated herbs to meet your cooking needs for the entire winter.
How to Practice Microwave Herb Drying
Microwave herb drying starts with the harvest process. Herbs that are going to be dried should be harvested before they flower. When any plant flowers, it concentrates its energy into creating a flower, robbing the leaves of the essence of the plant. By harvesting the herbs before the flower starts to form, you collect the essential oils while they are still in the leaves of the plant.
Always cut herbs in the morning, before the heat of the day begins to radiate, and use sharp clippers or shears. Cut stems low on the plant. Gently shake the cut leaves to remove loose dirt or bugs. Taking just a few stems of the herb at a time, wrap a small bundle of herbs in a kitchen towel and place it in the microwave oven. Put a glass measuring cup full of water in the microwave to protect the towel and herbs from burning.
Heat the herbs for 30 seconds on high. After the timer goes off, remove the herbs from the oven. Do not unwrap the towel until it has cooled completely. Remove the dried leaves from the stems of the herbs and store them in a cool, dark area in a glass jar or plastic container. Dried herbs tend to look alike, so be sure to mark the container with the name of the herb inside.
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The Rosemary Herb - A Versatile Addition To Your Herb Garden (Part 2)
May 13th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
Starting a Rosemary Herb Plant
If given the correct start to life, this herb can handle a lack of attention. You just need to know a few fundamentals when it comes to growing the rosemary herb, and you can be assured of a bountiful harvest for the remainder of the growing season.
Getting a rosemary herb plant started is generally the most challenging part of growing this plant. Starting from seed is no easy task, but if you decide to give it a whirl, soak your seeds for a few hours before planting to increase your odds of success. Most gardeners will choose to start rosemary from a cutting, which will generally yield more positive results. However, you can also pick up a rosemary herb plant or two from your local nursery in the spring and plant them directly outdoors for best results.
Once it is successfully established, rosemary herb plants require very little care and watering to thrive. They tend to like a lot of sun and good drainage, and rarely require fertilizer. However, you can choose to feed your plants once in the spring with a fish/kelp emulsion for best growing results. The rosemary herb is a delightful, aromatic addition to any garden that can also be used to enhance your recipes all year long!
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The Rosemary Herb – A Versatile Addition To Your Herb Garden (Part 1)
May 6th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
The rosemary herb plant is such a versatile plant and so easy to grow that I dare say that it is almost a must have for every herb garden. A triple treat for gardeners, it is ornamental, smells fantastic and can also be used to flavor many dishes! In this two part post on the rosemary herb, we will be exploring the uses of this plant and the best way to grow it.
Climates For The Rosemary Herb
The rosemary herb plant prefers warmer climates where it can grow all year round. In colder areas, this herb needs to be brought indoors during the frosty months of winter or grown as an annual. It is much more challenging to keep the rosemary herb happy indoors during the winter months than it is outdoors during the summer, which is why many gardeners will choose to grow it as an annual.
Ornamental Rosemary
As an ornamental plant, the rosemary herb is an evergreen shrub that can thrive in any type of soil and prefers full sunlight to partial shade. Larger rosemary shrubs can be used in garden topiary, making it a wonderfully fragrant and attractive addition to the landscape. The rosemary herb plants dense growth also means that it can be grown as a garden hedge.
Culinary Uses
As a culinary herb, rosemary can be used to season many of your favorite recipes, 
especially meat dishes like roasts. Another way of utilizing this herb is by infusing rosemary sprigs in bottles of oil to create rosemary flavored oil which is great for cooking or for giving away as gifts. Rosemary herb that is grown over the summer can be harvested and dried to enjoy throughout the rest of the year.
Our next post will tell you how to give your rosemary herb plant the best head start in life so that you will have a happy, healthy and bountiful rosemary plant! Want to be kept updated? then why not subscribe to our RSS feeds? If not, you can always add us to your favourites and check back with us next time. In the mean time, happy herb gardening!
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Choosing Herbs for Your Herb Garden
May 1st, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
Don’t know what herbs to plant in your herb garden? Watch the following video to get a better idea.
Choosing Which Herbs to Plant in Your Herb Garden
How to Build Indoor Herb Gardens
April 28th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
Building indoor herb gardens can be really easy to do once you have the right information and supplies. They not only make your favorite herbs easily available to you, but are also a great way to perfume your kitchen! So if you want to know how to build an indoor herb garden, then please continue reading!
Steps on How to Build Indoor Herb Garden
Step one is to locate information on the types of herbs that you would like to grow in your indoor herb garden. Having this information before you start the process of creating the indoor herb garden is important, because not only will it tell you how much space is needed for the plants but also it will tell you where they need to be placed based on lighting conditions.
Once you know how much space is going to be taken up by the mature herb plants and the lighting conditions which they require in order to grow, the next step is to create the actual garden.
There are a couple of ways to do this, the fastest way is to gather supplies such as a container, soil, and already mature plants and transplant the plants into the container. The second fastest way is to use indoor herb garden growing kits.
Herb garden growing kits are great, especially if you are new to herb gardening, because they are very convenient and take the hassle out of gathering all your own supplies. Herb garden growing kits are available online and through most retailers. In the following weeks we will be reviewing some of the best indoor herb garden growing kits which are available over the internet so you might want to check back regularly with this site!
Finally, the last way to grow an indoor herb garden is to grow the garden from herb seeds. This is not usually, except in the case of growing kits, the quickest or most effective way to grow an herb garden. Seeds often require a bit of extra care and attention so that they will sprout, and also they take some time to develop into mature plants that you can harvest. However if this is the way you would like to go, do have a look on our section on herb seeds for more information.
So now that you’ve read our article on know how to build an indoor herb garden, I hope you have a better idea of where to start. The internet is a really good place to find information on this topic and we will soon be adding a page with links to more resources on this subject.
In the meantime, happy herb gardening!
Indoor Herb Gardens
April 28th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
Love to cook? Then you will know what a joy it is to reinvent the dishes that you cook on a regular basis. Sometimes even a minor change in ingredients can make a vast difference to the final dish, so it’s worth experimenting each time you cook. And what better way to add extra flavor than by adding some herbs!
Using herbs is a great way to flavor dishes and creating an indoor herb garden is one of the best ways of making sure everything you use is as fresh as it could possibly be! What’s more, it also means you won’t have to throw a whole bunch of herbs in the compost bin because you can just pluck the herbs that you want from your garden, as opposed to buying a whole bunch from the grocer only to use a few leaves!
So Where do You Begin?
To begin with, think about where you could put your indoor herb garden. In general, you want to put your herb garden in a position that will get as much sun as possible as most herbs just LOVE the sun. (Having said that, do remember to read the instructions that come with the herbs that you buy as certain varieties might be a tad sun-shy.) Another factor you might want to consider is accessibility; you want to be able to easily reach your herbs. Most people put one on their kitchen windowsill as this is usually a place that is both well lit and easily accessible.
You can buy an indoor herb garden which is ready made and easy to use, but it’s just as easy to create your own if you start with the right container. All you need to do is fill it with compost and a mixture of herbs that you like, and water it regularly.
You have two choices when it comes to a container – you can either use one long trough style container, which means your herbs may start to mix in with each other, or a number of separate pots which all stand on a long oblong shaped saucer. Either version looks great when you are creating your own indoor herb garden.
The Benefits of Having an Indoor Herb Garden
There are plenty of benefits – not least the fact that you can harvest your herbs as soon as they are growing plentifully. This gives you herbs that are at their freshest, which are ideal for cooking and much better than anything you could buy anywhere else. The herbs from your indoor herb garden will also help to perfume your kitchen!
An indoor herb garden also makes a great addition to any windowsill, and can be a little more unusual than using a plant or flowers to decorate your kitchen. If you really start to enjoy using them, you could even consider starting to dry some herbs to see whether you get better or different results in your cooking from using that method.
Lots of people find that an indoor herb garden is the easiest and most rewarding way to grow herbs at their home. An outdoor one works well, but you won’t want to go outside to fetch some if the weather is bad!
In the weeks to come, we will be updating this site with more information on indoor herb gardens so make sure you bookmark us and check back regularly or you could subscribe to our RSS feeds. In the meantime, happy herb gardening!
