- Hi, thanks for joining us for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Herbs add great flavor to food.

Today, we are harvesting and preserving them.

That's just ahead on the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South is provided by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to the Family Plot, I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Dr. Lelia Kelly.

Dr. Kelly is a retired horticulture professor at Mississippi State University.

Always good to see you, Dr. Kelly.

- Yeah, always good to see you, Chris.

- Yeah, this is gonna be fun, it's gonna be fun.

So you're gonna teach us how to harvest certain herbs.

- That's right, that's right.

Well, this is the time of year when your herbs are definitely ready to harvest.

Of course, you can harvest them all through the summer, some of 'em, but now we're gonna wind it up.

- Let's wind it up.

- So show how the different types of herbs we're gonna use that are good for cooking, and then we're going to also show the different techniques for preservation.

- Okay, and I think we're gonna start with basil.

- Yeah.

- All right.

- Sounds good.

- Let's do it.

[upbeat country music] - Okay, here's the basil plant that we're going to demonstrate how to harvest.

This is mid-summer, late summer, so we're not gonna take the whole plant, but because basil is an annual, at the end of the growing season you do need to take the whole plant or you can, and hang it up in a dark, kind of hot place to dry, but right now, we're just going to come down here and cut it a little bit above where it's got some growth that can come on back out.

Okay, that's one.

We're gonna get a couple here more.

Find me a good branch here.

There's a good one.

Okay, and we're gonna do that one, and then we're gonna do one more.

Think I'm gonna get right back here.

Okay, now when you get that done, you can pull these leaves off if you want to, and put those on a piece of newspaper or something to dry them individually, but this is the best way for me to do it.

Now, I have me a rubber band to go around the end of the stems, and rubber bands are excellent for this because as the stems dry, they kind of contract, so you don't 'em all falling down in your attic or wherever you have it drying.

So when you get this done then, you're ready to put it in a dark, hot, dry place.

In the attic, hanging on a nail from a rafter or something like that.

After several days in a hot, dry, dark place, our basil bunch that we gathered from the garden is ready to be removed from the stems and put in a nice little container.

You can recycle your old spice jars and herb jars like we've done here, or you can use something really nice like this.

So what we do is we pull off a stem, and you might want to do this outside or on a porch because you're gonna make a mess.

But see, we just go down the stem, pull the leaves off, and now what you want to do is leave them whole if you can, because that preserves the flavor, and you crumble 'em right before you put 'em in whatever you're cooking.

So we're gonna just strip these off, get most of it anyway.

See, I told you we're gonna make a mess, but boy you're gonna smell good.

We have a nice little group of dried basil here.

Oh, look at that!

We could put some in this one too 'cause I think we're gonna fill this little jar up.

But you gotta store these in a dark, cool place, you don't wanna put them in the sunlight, and that should stay at least for a year and have a lot of flavor.

I put the year and the name of the herb on the jar.

[upbeat country music] We have a really nice thyme plant here that I'm fixin' to demonstrate how to harvest, and it's really, really compact and really nice, and it doesn't hurt to trim back quite a bit at this time of year, but what I want to do is come in here and cut a little handful.

And because thyme has such tiny, tiny little aggravating leaves, the way I do it, you could put it off on newspaper and dry the branches individually like that, but it's really hard to pull all these leaves off and dry 'em individually.

It's a lot easier to get 'em dry and then crunch 'em off.

So what we're gonna do is just get a little bundle of this, and then we're gonna get a rubber band and put it around the stems.

Rubber bands are excellent for this, better than string or rope or something, because as the herbs dry, these stems are gonna contract and the band will contract with 'em and you won't have 'em falling down.

So now, you're ready to put this in a dark, hot, dry place so that it can dry in your attic or in a dark room or something like, or a closet, and then in a few weeks or less, depending on how hot your room is, you'll be ready to go to the next step.

Our thyme is good and dry now, so it's time to do something with the thyme.

And we have had it up on a little rubber band holding it like in a little bundle up in a hot, dry place.

So now we're ready to remove these tiny little leaves as best we can, which is a lot easier when this stuff is dry than trying to do it when it's fresh.

Oh yeah, see?

That's working really good.

You get all these tiny little leaves and they're really, really aromatic.

Try to keep 'em whole best you can, which they look like they're coming off pretty good.

And one thing you can do, that I like to do with my little branches, when I get 'em all off, I put 'em, like if we're outside with a fire late in the fall, throw the little branches on your little fire, and it really smells good.

So keep all of your old herb branches once you've taken all the leaves off.

So try to keep 'em whole like I say, and then when you get ready to use them in your cooking, you can crunch 'em up real fine then, and they'll keep their flavor better if you can do that.

So all right, we have got quite a little bit here.

Nice little jar you can put 'em in, you can recycle your herb or spice jars or little fruit jars or little jelly jars, but just make sure it's got a tight fitting lid and store it in a cool and dark place away from heat and away from the light.

[upbeat country music] All right, we have a really nice sage plant here, and sage has such large leaves, it's one of the only herbs that have these really large, fleshy, thick leaves.

So we're gonna dry it a little bit differently than some of the other herbs that you can bundle together with a rubber band.

So because it has such thick leaves, we're gonna get a branch and we're going to, and of course this is dirty, so we need to probably wash those off.

So I'm gonna, all in my pan, I'm gonna use some of these upper leaves for what we're wanting to demonstrate.

So you take the individual leaves, pinch them off, and then put 'em in a cookie sheet with a paper towel or some kind of newspaper or some other absorbent paper, and this works really, really well for sage because it is so very thick.

So then you can put your tray in a hot, dark room or closet or up in the attic or somewhere, you need a bigger cookie tray probably [laughs] than this one, but this works really well for sage.

After a few days in a hot, dry, and dark place, these sage leaves are ready to go to the next step and get 'em stored.

Now, I brought some sage leaves that I had from last year and they're still very pungent, and the trick is that you don't crumble the leaves.

You keep them whole, and I'm gonna pinch these stems off because they just take up space that could be used for the leaves.

So I just put 'em in a little jar, a little decorative jar of some sort, and then I usually label them with the name of the herb and the year so that I know after a while I need to start eating 'em up pretty quick 'cause I would say a year for most of these, some of 'em last longer.

Sage will keep its flavor for a long, long time.

So there we go, nice little jar.

Keep it airtight, put it in a place out of the sun, and preferably cool and dark.

[upbeat country music] We have this really nice parsley plant here, but I'm tell gonna ya, parsley does not dry and keep its flavor really well.

So the way that we are gonna preserve this is freezing.

Cilantro is another herb that's better frozen than dried, so it keeps its flavor better, and chives is that way as well.

So we're gonna cut a few leaves, and then we're gonna freeze 'em.

Now, one thing that I probably should mention is sometimes your herbs are dirty.

So if they are, you probably need to wash them off before they're dried or frozen, but always make sure they're good and dry.

All the moisture is gone, they're good and air dried before you either freeze 'em or dry 'em.

So okay, we're ready.

We've got our parsley ready to freeze.

When you get ready to use it, you pull it out while it's still frozen, take some of the stems off if you've got some big stems, and then while it's frozen, you just chop it up, and you see with it being frozen, it chops up really easily.

So that's the way you do parsley, and it holds its color as you can see.

So it looks like fresh parsley.

So there you're gonna fool all of your friends and neighbors, and they're gonna say how did you have fresh parsley in the winter time?

[upbeat country music] We have a really nice rosemary plant here, and I'm going to harvest some of this to dry, but actually, rosemary is one of the few herbs that stays evergreen year round.

So you can harvest fresh rosemary any time of year, but if you don't want to have to run out to the garden in the snow or the cold, you can dry this.

And the way we're gonna do it is we're just gonna cut a few sprigs, and then we're going to bundle 'em together like this and get a rubber band.

Rubber bands are good because they contract as the stems contract when they dry.

Otherwise, you're gonna have little falling branches all over everywhere.

And then you're gonna hang this up in an attic or a dark closet.

The trick is to do it in a hot, dry place, and then it will, in a few weeks or less, it will be ready to go to the next step.

Because rosemary is such an aromatic herb, it holds its flavor really well when it's dried.

So we have some big stems here and we're gonna do 'em opposite the way they're on the stem.

See how they'll come off real easy that way?

Keep 'em whole as much as you can.

Of course you're gonna crumble 'em up really good before you put 'em in whatever you're cooking, because if you don't, it's gonna feel like you got a mouthful of pine needles 'cause they're really, really coarse and tough.

So you wanna chop 'em up really good.

Oh yeah, it smells real good.

I love rosemary, it's got a really, really strong smell.

It's good in bread.

It's good to put it on tenderloin when you bake it, or make some dipping oil, flavored oil.

All kinds of wonderful things you can do with rosemary.

It's a great bee plant.

So here we go, we've got quite a bit.

So we're gonna keep the little leaves and the needles whole, and put it in a nice little jar with a tight fitting lid, and keep it in a dark, dry place.

[upbeat country music] Here we have two types of oregano.

The one on my right is not flowering, it's more prostate and easily harvested in this type of situation.

But this one on my left is already blooming, and so you're thinking well, can I harvest that?

Well yeah, you definitely can.

It's a little bit challenging because you probably don't want dried flowers in your dried leaves when you get to that point.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut some of these off, and then I'm gonna cut the flowers off, so you won't have to deal with that later when they're dry.

Oregano's a great plant.

It smells so good, it's good in pizza and all kinds of wonderful dishes.

Okay, here we go.

Ooh, it smells good.

Well, we got these and you see I've got a bunch.

Well actually, if I cut all the flowers off, I'm not gonna have any foliage.

So maybe I need to get a few more here.

Yeah, that's a little better.

So we'll have some to dry.

So okay, I'm gonna cut these big ol' flower heads off, and let's see what we got left.

Scissors sometimes work better than these nippers.

There we go.

Now there we got a good little bunch of oregano, and we're gonna have a good little pile of dried leaves when we get to that point.

Then I'm going to take a rubber band and pull it around the stems to hold them real secure as they dry, so the stems won't fall out of the rubber band.

If you did that with a string or some rope or something, they might fall down as the stems shrink.

So now you're ready to hang this up in a dark, hot place, and before long, you'll be ready to get your little dry leaves and start cooking.

Our oregano is ready to be taken off the stem and put in a container for storage.

It's good and dry.

It's been in a hot, dry, and dark place, and we removed the blooms when we took it out of the garden.

This one was blooming, so we went ahead and cut those blooms off.

So now we're ready to just strip the leaves off the stems, and it's really easy to do when it's good crispy dry, and try not to mash up the leaves too much because if you notice, it smells really good, and when you're crushing 'em up, you're releasing all of those volatile oils into the atmosphere, and they're not in the leaves anymore.

So try to keep the leaves fairly intact when you strip 'em off.

So we just keep pulling the leaves off, and in milder climates, oregano can stay fairly evergreen through the winter.

I think it's classified more like a semi-evergreen depending on what climatic zone you're in.

Here where we live, it can look sort of bad in the winter time, but you probably could still do a little harvesting.

So here we go, we've got a good little bunch of leaves here.

And I'm doing pretty good trying to keep 'em fairly intact.

Now we're gonna use a nice little pretty decorative jar, you can use old herb or spice jars, whatever you have, just make sure it's got a real tight fitting lid, and then you're ready to cook some spaghetti or whatever.

Pizza.

So here we go, needs to be air tight, good tight lid, and a dry place, a cool place out of the sun.

[upbeat country music] - All right, doc, so you showed us different ways to harvest and dry your herbs.

So now let's talk about using a dehydrator to do that.

- Yeah, we didn't talk about that, did we?

We talked about just tying 'em up in bundles or putting 'em in trays on paper towels or something, but if you have a dehydrator, it is a great way to dry small batches of herbs.

And it comes, in this one I have, has got several trays.

It's got two, four, five trays.

The heating element's down here so you have to swap the trays out as the day goes on, but it's a great way to dry things real quickly inside, and you don't have to worry about getting up in the attic or anything like that.

Small batches is good.

- Small batches, okay.

- Yeah.

And of course, you can always use fresh herbs, always during the growing season.

So you could just bundle 'em up like this, and there's ways to keep 'em fresh inside, and you can put 'em, what I do is I go out and I'll gather some herbs that I think I'm gonna be using for cooking in the next week, and I'll put 'em in like a vase.

Like make a bouquet, and then I just keep 'em on my kitchen counter, and they'll stay fresh pretty much all week, and then that way, you've got 'em right there, real handy when you're cooking and fresh.

So you don't have to go back to the back garden to get 'em, you don't walk all that far, and there's other ways to preserve them.

You can put 'em in oil, and they need to be dry if you do that.

You don't want to put green herbs in oil.

- Okay, so what kind of oil are we talking about?

- Well, whatever you want.

Canola, olive, whatever kind of oil you cook with.

I just use canola.

I like olive oil too, but again, don't put 'em in there fresh 'cause there may be some bacteria and other things.

Or you can do herbal vinegars, and they can be fresh in herbal vinegar because it's so acidic, it's going to kill whatever's in there, so there's no problem with that.

- Okay, now how much oil are we talking about?

How much of the vinegar are we talking about?

Just a small amount?

- Well [laughs], that's a whole other subject.

[laughs] - Oh okay, whole other subject, okay.

- It depends on the herb, it depends on what you're gonna use it for.

So I like to just experiment, and that's what I'd recommend to cooks is just try things and experiment because herbs are a lot of fun.

- Okay, got it.

- A lot of different textures and a lot of different flavors.

So you could do it that way.

Let's say you can do the oil and the vinegar.

Freeze them, you can freeze some of the herbs.

Mostly people dry them, and when you use them fresh, if you're like me, I tend to cut my fingers.

[Chris laughing] So I just chopped the end of my thumb off about three weeks ago, but I found this little do and it's called an herb mill, and I like it because you can do it left handed.

This little gizmo will swap when you pop it open, switch left or right handed, so that works good for me.

So I like it for the bigger kind of leaves.

The smaller leaves want to just fall through, so you have to be careful chopping those fresh ones up with your knife 'cause you will cut your fingers off.

- Yeah, you gotta be careful.

- All right, so you poke her down in there, and I just do it right over what I'm cooking.

If I'm cooking spaghetti or whatever, I think I got too many.

- Get it working in there, yeah.

- I know I got too much in there, I think I choked it up.

- It's coming out a little bit.

- Oh yeah, here we go.

- There it goes, there it goes.

- Yeah, there we go, that shreds it up, and then you're not gonna cut your fingers.

There we go.

- Right, there it is.

- Yeah, and you go backwards and then forwards again.

See that?

- That worked pretty good [indistinct].

- Yeah, so I like this little thing, and you can order it online probably, what's called an herb mill, and I'm sure there's other kinds out there that you could use.

- And you do this right over the food?

- I do, yeah.

- That's good.

- If I'm doing spaghetti.

Basil will go with anything that's got tomatoes in it.

- Definitely love basil.

- Really good, yeah.

- This has been so good.

It smells so good in here!

- It does!

- Yeah.

- I wish the audience could smell it, you know?

'Cause they'd just be all [gasps] - Yeah, this has been so good.

So thank you so much.

We appreciate that much.

- You're welcome, it's been fun as always.

[laughs] - Yes, as always.

[upbeat country music] - I'm gonna deadhead this little floribunda bush.

Got spent bloom on the top.

Mother Nature will kinda tell you where to deadhead or prune.

Here, there's a black spot and it's died, so there's not a lot of growth in this area, but right under it, there's a leaf that's got a little red beginning of another bloom and another cane, so I'm gonna prune about a quarter of an inch above that.

And then once this blooms, that new cane's gonna go the same way the leaf's pointing, and it's gonna go outside of the bush.

When these finish out, I would typically take that whole cluster off.

And here again, there's a little spot under this leaf that's trying to start, and I cut a quarter inch above that.

If you see any rose hips, I'll just finger prune that.

You want to get rid of the rose hips because it's creating seeds and the rose will go dormant.

So cut or pinch those off.

Always wear gloves because these things will bite ya.

Over here, if you want to take this little stuff off, you can or it'll fall off, and it just dresses your bush up and it'll help promote new growth.

[upbeat country music] - All right, here's Q&A segment, you ready?

These are some great questions, all right?

So here's our first viewer email.

"My flowers were all in one patch.

"I moved them so they are not all next to each other.

"Now they look like this.

I am watering them, what else should I do?"

And this is Charlie from Banbury, United Kingdom.

- I know I saw that.

- Did you see it?

[laughs] - I saw his picture and I'm just like I want to cry!

Because I thought bless his heart, they're just too big to move.

They look like they were pretty tall plants, and I think the only thing he can do now is maybe cut 'em back.

Just cut 'em back some and keep 'em not flooded with water, but don't let 'em get dry, obviously, 'cause they've got to regenerate more roots and root in good.

But if there are some that could be cut back, I'd cut 'em back.

- So you'd cut 'em back?

- I would.

I think I'd cut 'em back because they're pretty floppy.

They look like they have wilted and flopped just from being transplanted at the wrong time, bless his heart.

If you want to transplant- - So yeah, what's the best time?

- Well, early when they're small.

The smaller, if you can handle 'em, the smaller the better so the transplant shock is not so bad, and it's early in the season and the sun's not so intense, and you don't get such bad weather.

But in the United Kingdom, I wonder where Banbury is, did you look that up?

- Banbury, United Kingdom.

Yeah, we need to look that up next time.

- Is that on a coast or something?

- Yeah, we can look it up next time.

- But that's interesting.

Yeah, I saw 'em and I just thought oh my goodness, maybe they'll recover.

- I hope they will.

- Yeah, I do too.

- And I also wonder too, they look kind of wet to me.

- Yeah, they did.

- A little too wet?

- Maybe flopped 'em over with the water hose or something.

Maybe they're gonna stand up, so just keep an eye on 'em.

- Keep an eye on 'em, Mr. Charlie.

we appreciate that question, all right?

- Yup.

- So thank you much.

Good luck to you.

All right, here's our next viewer email.

"Do you have any idea what I could do "to encourage this brown turkey fig tree "to produce figs that will get ripe?

"It produces hundreds of them, but only 10% ever get ripe."

And this is Sammy.

So what you think about that?

About the old fig, the brown turkey fig, which is a popular- - Yeah, it's been around, gosh, a long time, but when I saw the picture, before I read the question, I thought he's asking about the winter kill, because it looks like my figs all got killed flat to the ground and I'm in zone seven in North Mississippi.

So they're coming out but I'm not gonna have any figs because the little stems are just not big enough to bear.

But I think his problem may be, if this is an ongoing problem, it may be just a stress, because we've had irregular watering, raining, and we've had high temperatures with high humidity.

Now where is Sammy?

He doesn't say, does he?

- We don't know where Sammy is but yeah, all those risk factors.

He's probably somewhere down in this area with this brown turkey.

- Yeah, he's probably in the South if it's a brown turkey 'cause he couldn't be up North, couldn't grow it.

But anyway, I think they're susceptible to stress.

Stress being lack of water or irregular watering, dry spells and wet spells, and then also high humidity, and what I would say is to irrigate and mulch them.

- That's what I was thinking.

- Yeah, I always mulch my figs because I know they're shallow rooted, number one.

They have very shallow roots.

So when you have dry weather, they're gonna get stressed out if they're not watered.

- I would agree with that, that's good stuff.

Mr. John, do you want to add to that?

- No, I know people who pull the figs off before they're really ripe because they don't want to give them to the birds essentially, but he says they never ripen at all, that's a different sort of thing.

- Right, only 10% ever get ripe and that's due to some type of stress.

- That's stress.

I would think it's a stress situation.

- I would think that as well.

- So if he can get his handle on the water.

He can't do anything about the humidity.

- Yeah, can't do anything about that, and mulch, I think that's the most important.

- Mm-hmm, and then just regular fertilizing.

- I think that'll work.

- Maybe that'll help.

- All right, maybe that'll help, Mr. Sammy, thank you for that question, we appreciate that much.

All right, so Dr. Kelly, Mr. John, we out of time, thank you much.

- Yup.

- Thank you.

- Been fun.

- All right, it's been fun.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or letter.

The email address is familyplot@wkno.org, and the mailing address is Family Plot, 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee, 38016, or you can go online to familyplotgarden.com.

That's all we have time for today, thanks for watching.

If you want to learn more about the herbs we picked today or watch us plant the herb garden, head on over to familyplotgarden.com.

Be sure to join us next week for the Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]