Wednesday 20 May 2015

Mints

This morning I collected herbs from my herb garden (OK, it's really my Mostly Mint garden) to dry. Last year I planted 5 kinds of mint (peppermint, spearmint, chocolate mint, apple mint and lemon balm) in this area after mostly cleaning out the saplings and other things that were trying to take over this area.
Mostly Mint Garden

I also planted oregano, which I was happy to hear is part of the mint family, so it may have be able to hold its own among the mint and sage. I was a bit surprised that the sage stayed somewhat green over the winter.

My two oregano plants took off over the last couple weeks, so it was definitely time to harvest. The peppermint and spearmint (no surprise) were trying to spread far and wide. Thankfully they look different enough to be able to separate out.

Lemon Balm
The lemon balm has the largest leaves of my mints. Once you cut a leaf, the lemon smell is pretty obvious. When this plant was given to me, I was a bit skeptical of using it for tea, but now that I've smelled it, I'm looking forward to trying it.
Spearmint
OK the lemon balm and spearmint look much alike in these pictures, but the spearmint is a bit fuzzy. This makes it not fun to get clean as the little hairs want to hold on to the dirt. Research tells me that spearment can be anywhere from not fuzzy to fuzzy, so this must be a fuzzy variety. It looks like it could be apple mint, which is usually fuzzy. Making a drink from it, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't more minty. (See apple mint below)
Peppermint
OK the lemon balm and spearmint look much alike in these pictures, but the spearmint is a bit fuzzy. This makes it not fun to get clean as the little hairs want to hold on to the dirt. Research tells me that spearment can be anywhere from not fuzzy to fuzzy, so this must be a fuzzy variety. It looks like it could be apple mint, which is usually fuzzy. Making a drink from it, I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't more minty. (See apple mint below)
The peppermint has more deeply veined leaves. No fuzz, so it's easy to tell apart from the spearmint.


Apple mint
This looks like the peppermint in that it has no fuzz and relatively deeply veined leaves, but it has a dark stem. This has the best, most minty smell to the leaves in my opinion. I really need to try it for tea. I wonder a bit if this is actually the spearmint and I messed up the labels. I'm looking forward to trying this one as tea, but it's one of the smaller ones.

Chocolate mint

I saw chocolate mint at the store last year and couldn't resist. It has a dark stem like the apple mint, but it is smaller and has a darker tint to the leaves. The leaves do smell a bit chocolaty along with the mint.

blurry oregano

I need to replace this picture, but it's getting late. The oregano definitely looks like it is part of the mint family. No minty smell here though.

Oregano
I have two plants about this size of oregano. It really shot up over the past week or so, so I decided I needed to harvest some. I wanted to try drying it.

Dabbing gently
I cut the stems with kitchen scissors. Most of it needed at least a brief rinse to get any soil off. The spearmint needed more of a going over to get it clean. I put it on paper towel and dabbed it a bit with another piece to get the water off.

Bundled up
L-R peppermint, spearmint (top center), lemon balm (bottom center)
and four bundles of oregano on the right.
I bundled it up in 4-7 stem bunches. Two bundles have twist ties, the rest are tied with crochet cotton. I can see why they don't recommend hanging the mint to dry. The spearmint especially has thick stems. I can see them taking a while to dry.

Hanging to dry
I put loops of string around the supports of my drop ceiling in my basement craft room. There is a dehumidifier running in the room anyway, so I thought this might be a decent place to dry the herbs. A safety pin joins the tie of the bundle to the loop in the ceiling. 






1 comment:

  1. Looks festive! Glad the plants survived the tough winter.

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