🌿How to harvest & dry herbs🌿
⚠️This is just my personal approach based on research, mentors and my own experience, please do your own research too ⚠️
These are all recommended for both uses, magical and medicinal, but particularly for plant material you’ll want to give medicinal use.
Always harvest ~10 meters away from contamination sources (roads and cars, railroads, constructions, factories, etc. Even more serious stuff like landfills and heavy metals) Plants can absorb toxic chemical compounds from any these sources, so if you plan to ingest them or apply on your skin etc, avoid contamination sources. Examine your area to find where it’s safest to harvest plant material from.
Only take up to 30% of plant material, preferably less (leaves, flowers, berries, roots) this is to allow for healthy regrow.
Don’t take material with visible harm, illness or bugs, such as yellowed or bug bitten / holey leaves, etc. Educate yourself to recognize different possible bugs or parasites or plant illnesses that may affect your local flora to avoid these.
Sometimes you’ll have better results with fresh materials, you don’t always need to dry them. Know when to use what, depending on your goal and what compounds you want to extract, and how it’s best to extract them.
If you prefer fresh, you can keep fresh herbs in a vase with water for up to a week, more or less.
Clean the branches & leaves by soaking them or washing them in saltwater to scare away little critters, and dry them stem-up, making small bundles with stems fairly separated so everything is well aireated, and always away from sunlight. Do not clean with alcohol, detergent, or any other substances. Just water or salty water will do.
Roots, flowers, berries and bark can be dried in drying racks or basquets. Separate them from each other, specially flower petals, to dry them thoroughly and keep in a dark place until they’re fully dried (you’ll know if they crack when handling them and don’t feel soft anywhere anymore). For roots, bark and berries, move and rotate every so often to make sure they dry evenly, or just dry them in the oven if you’re brave! (be careful not to burn them)
Aromatic herbs should be harvested before they bloom, when you see the fully formed buds and their smell (and taste!) is strongest.
When cutting the stems, cut at an angle to allow for healthy regrow.
Always make sure you’re harvesting what you think you’re harvesting. Learn to identify plant species properly, and always, always research about lookalikes it may have, as they could be toxic or poisonous or harmful in some way. This is necessary for safety reasons.
Store everything in glass jars or paper bags, away from humidity, to prevent mold. I don’t recommend plastic bags or containers as they can more easily retain humidity but that’s me. Check on your stuff often too!! Different things will last more or less time on the shelf.
⚠️Extra reminder to always check which part of the plant is medicinal, check if any other parts could be toxic or harmful, check for dosages, contraindications, possible allergies, and possible interactions with anything else you’re taking!!!!!!!!
For specific plant parts:
Flowers: Harvest as soon as they’ve fully bloomed, during the full moon.
Berries and fruits: Harvest right after the first frost, generally in autumn. Look for deep color and tight, glowy skin. I like to harvest these under a waning moon.
Seeds and pods: Collect these when all flowers are gone, usually in late summer, under a waning moon.
Leaves: Ideally, collect these from bright green and flexible limbs, the first warm days of spring when there’s new sap and no flowers yet, but for many species you can take some leaves all year round. Under a waxing or full moon does it for me.
Bark: Harvest during the first warm days of spring, when the sap rises. You’ll find newly formed bark easier to peel off. Rather than peeling the trunk directly, cut off a branch or limb and peel it off completely, it’ll cause less harm to the tree or bush. Under a waxing moon it is.
Roots, rhizomes, tubers: Harvest after all the leaves are gone, around late autumn, but before all the good stuff stored in them is used during the winter. Under a waning or new moon.
These are more specifically for the magical properties of the plant.
Some folks say you shouldn’t harvest plant material with iron scissors or other iron tools, as iron scares away the spirit of the plant, and thus, the potency of whatever your working on will be less.
For some plants, you’ll find specific prayers, chants or charms, more or less complicated rituals, to harvest specific parts at specific dates. This is, again, for the spiritual properties rather than medicinal. I am the type to believe proper harvest makes both the work and the medicine stronger, but it’s up to you to decide how to go about harvesting certain plants considered “sacred”, and even what plants are considered “sacred” will also change depending on your own practice, culture, tradition, region and more, so do your research!
It’s common belief to not speak while you’re going to harvest the herb, and neither when coming back, as to not alert the spirit your intentions and out of respect for what it gave you or what it’s doing for you.
But while you’re there, after harvesting, let the plant spirit know why you’re in need of it’s aid and leave some kind of offering in return (again, do your own research on specific plants and their folklore, but some general things such as water, sugar or eggshells, and more traditional things like a certain number of coins, will likely work just fine)
With some plant species, particularly the poisonous kind, or some associated with the devil in folklore, you’ll likely find ways to protect yourself from the spirit’s anger upon being unearthed or cut. These range from giving praise to the spirit in the form of poems, songs, or offerings before getting to harvesting, to drawing circles in the dirt around it with holy water, a knife, or your own hand, and may even be having to cut the branches or unearth the plant in a specific manner (some say backwards, some say away from you) to prevent it from harming you. Sometimes simply carrying protective charms will do. Learn the folklore of each species you work with!
