I harvested over 2 lbs of thyme from a total of 8 thyme plants and yielded 6 oz of dried thyme. I had wanted this report to be more accurate but I had a minor setback because I dried batch after batch of tyme but failed to dry the final (much smaller) batch. I should have weighed what was left but I didn’t. Instead I let it sit in the fridge in a paper bag. For a week. I made a curious discovery by doing this:
Thyme kept in a paper bag in the fridge for a week will dry itself.
However, not to my satisfaction. I would have kept it if I’d been desperate for dried thyme and that was all I had, but it was dry yet still slightly supple making it hard to remove leaves from the stems. I could have put it in the dehydrator to dry it out more thoroughly, but I was lazy, and threw it out.
Please don’t throw rotten potatoes at me!
The amount that was left I estimate to be approximately 4 ounces. Even though my numbers, this time, might not be precise I think it’s still useful information. This is the first harvest of 2011 and there will be at least one more this year. I have more than 8 thyme plants but at least 2 of them are dying and need replacing. What I love about growing and drying my own thyme is that the quality is superior and though it isn’t particularly expensive to buy dried thyme, it is a fraction of the cost to do it yourself. My thyme plants are two years old and have given me at least 6 big harvests already. If you keep harvesting them regularly you keep them from becoming too woody. Plus they look nice in the garden if you do a nice job trimming them.
Although I use a pretty wide variety of herbs and spices in my food, thyme is the one I use the most. I especially like it in a French style lentil soup.
I love the way my hands smell after handling herbs. Nice harvest!
I have a question about your ginger decoction. I was given about 6lbs of ginger and I wanted to make the ginger syrup. Can I water bath can a few bottles to safely keep on my pantry shelf for cold and flu season? I have been searching for over a week for recommendations and can’t find anything other than keep it in the fridge for up to a month. I am thinking like most any other syrup 10 minutes per quart in a water bath canner? Any guidance would be appreciated.
Smelling the herbs while processing is wonderful. My whole kitchen and my hands smell like thyme and it’s heavenly.
If you’re going to use sugar instead of raw honey I’d say no problem with the canning and 10 minutes is fine. But as you know, cooking the honey makes it lose some of its best qualities so I hesitate to suggest making the syrup with raw honey and then canning. I’m thinking you could halve the sugar/honey amount before canning and then when opening a jar to use you could warm up the jar and add the other half of the amount in raw honey. Those are just my thoughts. Of course you can go ahead and use the honey and can it- flavor wise it will still be really good and the ginger won’t lose its medicinal qualities for being canned, and so it will still be a good syrup and help with colds and upset stomachs. Those are my thoughts. I haven’t canned any myself yet but I did think about trying that both with the ginger and the elderberry syrups.
I had another thought- what about freezing the syrup? I have just been trying to find information on whether freezing honey kills the enzymes (beneficial to us) and it seems that only high heat does that. So that might be a good alternative to canning while preserving the highest medicinal quality.
I was thinking of making it as a light syrup (like I would use over fruit when canning) and then water bath can it. Then when I need to use it for medicinal reasons I could heat the ginger syrup and add my own raw honey from our hives. I am trying to not put things in the freezer except ‘have-to’ items – mostly fresh pastured meats when we have to take them to market for processing. I have a large hand of ginger I am considering shaving and make into pickled ginger as well. My kitchen is alive today with several projects. I have several vinegar mothers to strain and bottle and working my way to bottom of the pile of ginger. Thanks for your help!
pls cann anyone tell me how to process fresh thyme to dried thyme
I strongly recommend using a dehydrator to dry herbs in. If you don’t have one of those the most common way to dry any herbs is to tie them in bundles (not too big) and hang them in a dry airy place out of direct sunlight. When thyme is dried you can remove the leaves by gently rubbing the branches between your hands. You’ll have to pick out the stems but it’s worth it in my opinion.