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Lavender Harvest Has BegunJul 28, 2008 - Right on the heels of the Lavender Festival, we began harvesting our lavender last week. Our angustifolia, or commonly called English lavender, was ready to be harvested. We worked for several hours on Wednesday and Thursday to harvest about 350 plants. The lavender is now hanging to dry in our waterwheel house and garage, where it will take about a week to be ready to process. Processing for us involves debudding some of the lavender so that it can be used for culinary purposes or for sachet buds. Because many of the angustifolia have beautiful dark purple flowers, I will also save some for use in flower arrangements and wreaths. I particularly like L. angustifolia v. Hidcote for dried floral. It has a nice tight flower spike and is one of the darkest lavenders around.We did save sections of angustifolia for U-pick and many of our visitors have been picking gorgeous bouquets. We will have lots of lavender for our U-pick customers for several weeks. My current plan is to process what is drying now over the weekend and to begin harvesting our L. X Intermedia v. Grosso plants at the beginning of next week. Of course, it's all weather dependent on when the lavender will dry and when the Grosso will bloom. It's almost ready, but not quite. Stay tuned. |