The final post in my series republishing The Folklore of Herbs (1946), a book by Katherine Oldmeadow, who was a significant figure in the British pagan revival.

CHAPTER XII.

THE HARVEST OF THE GARDEN.

How important is the harvest of the garden and with what delight the skilled herbalist surveys it.

The practical herbalist of modern days has little belief in the influence of the stars and magic charms and he no longer picks his herbs with prayers, but still he follows the path of the ancients and watches for the auspicious moment for his gathering.

Herbs, of which the leaves only are used, attain their greatest healing virtues when the flowers first open, and the leaves must be gathered and stored before any of the flowers have shed their petals. The day must be dry, to retain their natural and aromatic oils; but they must not be picked in the heat of noonday.

Lime and camomile and all flowers for herb teas must be gathered before seeding, dried, and stored whole in tins.

Herbs for physic and culinary uses should be tied in bunches, with a piece of paper covering the entire bunch, but left open at the untied end and hung in a warm, dry room. This is the homely way practised by cottagers. Be careful not to bruise mint when picking it; it bruises easily and when dry the bruised leaves will turn black.

Seeds must be harvested when ripe, and stored in paper bags or sealed envelopes, labelled.

After gathering flowers for sweet bags, perfumes or pot pourri, spread them out on trays to dry. A good way of making the trays is to stretch a piece of canvas or muslin across a child’s hoop. Suspend this in a warm room where there is plenty of draught. Never dry such flowers as lavender in the sun, it extracts too much of the essential oils and leaves the flowers scentless.

If the garden grows honesty, and the gay little red lanterns of the cape-gooseberry, both plants are ripe in September. Cut the fragile honesty with care and hang in bunches head downwards. Strip the cape-gooseberries of their leaves and hang up in the same way. At Christmas, or before, peel the dingy little brown scales from the honesty and expose the lovely shining silver discs and arrange these either alone or mixed with the cape-gooseberries. Set in deep jars they make beautiful Christmas decoration and light up dark corners in a winter house. They are effective, too, mixed with the glossy red berries and green leaves of holly, or with sprays of beech leaves.

Lavender must be gathered before the flowers turn brown, for then the aromatic oil is at its best. Dry carefully and fill satchets and bags for all the cupboards and drawers in the house. Give whatever you can spare to those unfortunates who have no lavender of their own, for to share the harvest of the garden is a good custom which goes back to very earliest days.

Do not throw away the lavender stalks. Dry them and then put them into a jar filled with a saturated solution of salt-petre. Leave them for seven days, then dry slowly and tie in bundles. One stalk lighted will smoulder slowly and throw off its scent, and a bundle thrown on the fire will sweetly perfume a whole room.

Remember that plenty of lavender in an unused room will keep off the clothes moth, the creature so poetically called “Silver lady,” although we all know that her behaviour among our possessions is far from that of a lady.

In a garden which is a sanctuary for birds nearly the whole of the berry harvest should be left for their winter food. It is their reward for providing garden music and for destroying garden pests, besides being a precept of Christian teaching: “Neither shalt thou gather every grape of the vineyard.”

But in years when the elders and rowans are very thickly berried, we might make a little elderberry cordial for winter colds, or take a bunch of the rowan berries and throw them into the boiling of apple jelly to give it an agreeable tartness. And if the garden grows rose trees with scarlet hips of a princely size, they may be gathered and when the seeds are removed, put into a second boiling of apple jelly to make Queen Victoria’s favourite preserve, rose hip and apply jelly.

When the harvest is gathered and stored the Spirit of the herb garden seems to dwell in the house; elusive, and yet present in the fragrance that lingers in every scented bowl and jar and in the aromatic perfume from the drying leaves and flowers.

The treasures which “kings and princes have esteemed as jewels, and wise men have made their whole life as a pilgrimage to attaine to the knowledge of them,” are safely garnered; and in tending them we, too, have made a pilgrimage.

And in the long, dark winter evenings, with herbal books and plans for new delights when summer comes again, we may enrich our knowledge and make yet a further pilgrimage, while we leave the herb garden to its quiet winter sleep.