Tag Archives: thyme

Dried Thyme Yield for Spring 2011

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.

8 plants yielded 2 lbs 4 oz fresh thyme

2 lbs (approx.) fresh thyme yielded 6 oz dried thyme