How to gather your own lavender and use it for crafts and cooking.

I've been re-posting some ideas from my old blog to bring to my new audience and I thought this one is appropriate today as I stepped outside to see my lavender in full bloom, bees buzzing around it and ready to harvest. If you too have a lavender bush in your garden, then take advantage of this fragrant plant and gather some of it to create some goodies, which you will find on our FB page this week...

The time to gather can vary with what you read, but I prefer to gather mine in the morning as early as possible and before the sun fully dries the buds. What is most important is that the plant is dry and the sun is not intense. This is when the fragrance is at its strongest.

Cut the lavender long to hang and dry for buds and flowers suitable for lavender bags, or short stems to dry laid out in a warm dry place (sun drying is fine) to use for food.

Counter dry your flowers heads, spaced out

The short stems will only need a couple of hours to dry, but the long stems will need to dry for two or more weeks.