← Medicinal and culinary herbs H16-05 · Module 5 of 7 · Pages: 22 · Worksheets: 6

Drying and storing herbs

From picking to the jar: when to pick for drying, at what temperature to dry leaves, flowers, roots and fruit, how to tell it is dry and how long it keeps

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Drying and storing herbs

In short

  • Pick for drying in the morning once the dew has dried, in dry weather, and start drying the same day.
  • Aromatic herbs (mint, lemon balm, chamomile, lavender) dry in the shade, at no more than 35 °C (95 °F). Roots up to 50 °C (122 °F), fruit up to 60 °C (140 °F).
  • Herbs are dry when the leaves rustle and crumble and the stems snap rather than bend.
  • 5 kg of fresh leaves gives roughly 1 kg dried.
  • Store herbs whole, in a dark jar, somewhere dry and cool. Leaves and flowers keep for about a year, roots 2–3 years.

What's inside

Chapters

  1. What happens when herbs dry
  2. Picking for drying
  3. Preparing herbs before drying
  4. Ways of drying
  5. Temperature and time
  6. How to tell that herbs are dry
  7. Fresh to dried ratio
  8. Packing and storing
  9. Checking for spoilage
  10. Freezing and other methods
  11. Common mistakes
  12. Printable checklist

Worksheets

  • Drying calculators
  • Drying log
  • Stock inventory
  • Drying and checking calendar
  • Sketch of the drying space
  • Jar labels

Fields and checkboxes can be filled in with Adobe Acrobat Reader (desktop and mobile), and the calculator adds up by itself. Filling in may not work in some browsers. A print version comes with the screen PDF.

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