Harvesting your lavender plants at home
We love lavender, the smell is wonderfully intoxicating isn’t it. And you can’t beat those fields of purple spreading across Provence as far as the eye can see. We use lavender in our cooking, in beauty products and craft work. Over the next few weeks we will bring you ideas of how you can use your lavender at home and give you a bit more information about different types of lavender.
Today though, we are looking at how you harvest your lavender at home.
The best time to harvest your lavender is when there are buds on the plant but the flowers have not yet opened. This is because the flowers will come off the stems more easily when they are dry. When the buds are closed your lavender will also retain its fragrance and colour for longer.
To harvest your lavender, gather a small clump of long flower stems. You need to leave behind at least two-to-four sets of leaves on the green part of the stem. If you cut all the way back to the woody part of the stem, that stem will not regrow. Keep going until you have a good size bunch and secure with twine. You can continue until the plant is fully harvested.
To dry your lavender bunches hang them in a dry and warm place but out of direct sunlight. We hang ours on a old clothes horse in the garage.
The lavender should take 2-4 weeks to fully dry. You should be able to gently rub the lavender buds from the stems. Store your lavender in a lidded jar until you are ready to use it.
Learn more about the benefits of Lavender Oil in our blog post, How to use Lavender Oil
