Drying Lavender

Hi. My name is Sarah Bader from Lavender at Stonegate in West Linn, Oregon. And, today what I'm going to talk to you about is how to dry lavender bunches. This particular species is called royal purple and we use it for decoration in the home or you can use it for culinary. Certain species are just wonderful for hanging upside down and using for it's smell. Some hold their smell better than others. What I'm going to show you, is some tricks that we use here on our farm to make sure that we dry a lavender bunch successfully and all the little flowers don't fall off. So, what we do is we hang ours at our barn. You can hang them in your garage, as long as it's a cool dry place and it doesn't get any direct sunlight. What you want to do, is bunch it with a rubber band like this. And, then we take a paper clip and we just clip it right there on our rubber band and we hang it on the chain. Or, you can hang it on a rope if you want to. One that's braided and that might be a little less expensive than buying chain. We make sure we space them, so they're not directly touching so it gives them some good airflow. Then, in about two weeks after a little bit of warm weather but not direct sunlight then they end up drying really nicely like this. And, you can use them for decoration in your home. You can use them for culinary purposes. And, they just make a beautiful addition to your recipes or to your home. So, in conclusion this is a wonderful way if you have lavender in your yard or you have lavender that you grow commercially it's a wonderful way to preserve your lavender and keep it for longer than one season.