Lavender: Culinary and Aromatic Herb

Lavender is one of my favorite herbs, both for gardens and containers. It is typically considered an aromatic herb, since it simply smells fantastic. But it also has several culinary uses. The flowers from your lavender plant can be used as a seasoning for desserts and frozen in ice cubes for use in beverages. Lavender can also be used with roasted meats and a variety of other dishes. The leaves have a stronger favor than the flowers, but can be used in similar ways with smaller quantities. Even if you never use lavender for any of its practical or tasty uses, it is a beautiful addition to any garden.

Lavender is easiest to grow from a started plant. Simply set out the young plants in spring when the weather has warmed up. Lavender needs good drainage and significant sunlight. While lavender tends to prefer an alkaline soil, without too much nitrogen with can make the plants more susceptible to winterkill and disease, I have never had lavender fail to thrive. Avoid using any soggy mulches, a simple layer of evergreen boughs laid over the plants in the winter is really the only protection that lavender needs. Watering is only necessary when the weather has been quite dry or hot, otherwise you can pretty much ignore lavender and let it grow on its own. Perhaps this is why I love lavender and have had such good luck in growing it. Since moving, I have left most of my lavender behind, and am now growing it in hanging baskets with peppermint in one basket, and with spearmint in another. Not only to these baskets smell and look wonderful, but the plants all take very little care while making my iced teas and culinary adventures that much more interesting.

While lavender is technically an evergreen shrub, the plant does generally suffer some dieback in cold weather. To help the plat continue a healthy life it is best to prune back any deadwood, avoiding the older woody stems as much as possible, as new growth appears. Deadheading the flower spikes after the blooms begin to fade, or harvesting the flowers for use prior to fading, will help the lavender plant keep a neat and tidy shape.

To harvest lavender for aromatic or culinary use, simply snip flowers and leaves as needed on a warm sunny day prior to blooming. To use the flowers, it is best to strip the tiny petals from the flower head, leaving only the tougher calyxes behind. In order to dry the leaves, it is best to harvest entire stems. When choosing flowers to harvest for drying, you should select flowers that have around a third of the blooms on the spike open. I have been known to freeze flowers or leaves in ice cubes for later use, or for a cooling accent in beverages.