PROFITABLE HERB GROWING
(Page 4 of 9)
March/April 1971
By the Mother Earth News editors
HOW TO HARVEST HERBS
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Cut the plants with a sufficiently long stem so that the herbs can be tied in bunches and hung to dry. If you prefer to dry them on canvas sheets or screens, be sure to stir the material frequently in order to prevent it from molding.
THE PROPER PLACE TO DRY HERBS
Drying herbs should be exposed to a good circulation of air and protected from the direct rays of the sun. A drying temperature of around 70 degrees seems to give the best results. With good air circulation and dry weather where the humidity is low, most herbs will be sufficiently dry for processing in 7 or 8 days. Avoid drying herbs in a place of excessive heat; when the temperature rises above 100 degrees the herbs will begin to lose some of their essential oils.
PROCESSING THE DRIED HERBS
After the leaves have thoroughly dried, they are easily stripped from the stems. To remove broken stems and other foreign material, sift the mixture through a coarse screen. If not thoroughly cleaned by the first screening, give the plants a second screening. This should leave nothing but the herb leaves which should be placed in tightly sealed glass jars and stored in a dark place away from the direct rays of the sun.
METHOD OF HANDLING HERB PLANTS GROWN FOR SEED
The most popular herbs grown for their seeds are dill, anise, caraway, cumin, sesame, and sometimes mustard. Unlike herb plants grown for foliage, these herbs must thoroughly ripen. Test the plants by gently tapping them. If the seeds start to fall they are ready to harvest.
HOW TO HARVEST HERB SEEDS
To prevent too great a loss of seeds through shattering, cut the flower heads gently and carefully tip them into a bucket. The entire harvest should be placed on tight cloths, spread out on an even grass surface. Over the cloth holding the flower heads, spread another cloth of equal size. Now take a flail and gently beat the herb flower heads so that they release the seeds without injuring them. Light flat sticks can be used as flails. After the seeds have been threshed from the plant material, they are sifted through a fine screen. The small chaff that will go through the screen with the seeds can be winnowed out by pouring the seeds from one container to another on a breezy day. Seeds should not be stored until thoroughly dried because the slightest moisture present will cause them to mold. Store in tightly sealed containers in a dark place, away from sunlight.
DRIED CULINARY HERBS
This is one of the most important phases of the herb business and offers good opportunities for the beginner. The herbs that are dried and packaged are numerous, but for the beginner we recommend starting with the most popular varieties. They are summer savory, rosemary, sage, French thyme and, to a lesser extent, the mints and French tarragon.
MARKETING DRIED CULINARY HERBS
Under this heading will come both the dried seeds and foliage. This field is immense and wide open for the enterprising small acreage owner. The business is so profitable that many of the large food wholesale concerns have gone into it on a large scale. Through powerful, well-financed national advertising, these large distributing companies have created considerable interest in herbs and have increased their consumption many times. This of course gives the small grower a free ride with his product. He does not have to embark on the expensive business of educating the public. The big outfits have done it for him, and all he has to do now is to get in there and produce for a waiting market As an example of the profits that exist in this business, we recently found that a 25¢ package of sweet basil, selling in supermarkets contained approximately 1/4 ounce of this herb. One single basil plant will produce four times this amount of dried leaf material and 15,000 plants can be grown on an acre.
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