Today is St John’s Day and Midsummer’s Day. Traditionally, this is the best day to harvest herbs. Most of the very large mint family — sage, thyme, lavender, balm, catnip, motherwort, and rosemary, among others, in addition to all the plants named “mint” — are in flower now. Some are approaching the end of their bloom cycle, some are just getting going. The various carrot-family herbs are also blooming now. The tickseeds and marguerites in the dyer’s garden are sending gold suns up on slender stalks. The betonies and borages are beguiling the bugs with purple and blue bell-shaped flowers.
And then there is St John’s Wort. This flower was considered sacred to many European peoples. The name is derived from its tendency to bloom on St John’s Day. There are elaborate Midsummer rituals for harvesting these flowers, which are used in herbal medicine as a potent mood regulator. (It’s also a fantastic dye plant, all parts, and shades from taupe to gold to deep burgundy.) It wards off many of the symptoms of menopause and has been shown to moderate anxiety disorders and hyperactivity. It is anti-inflammatory and has antibacterial properties and so is used to treat wounds. It is also an effective antidepressant and has made its way into chem-based pharmacies touted as a happy pill. However, like many mood-altering drugs, it can also exacerbate anxiety and restlessness, and many people get headachy when regularly taking this herb. (This may be more due to not taking it correctly, under the care of a knowledgeable herbalist… those pills in the drugstore can contain just about anything, given that there is no regulation on herbal medicine.)
Herb-wives across Europe would harvest the flowers of St John’s Wort early on Midsummer’s Day, after the dew has dried but before the sun could heat up the plant and cause it to lose its volatile oils. Some funny superstitions have come down to us, though most are probably no older than the Romantic Victorians and Edwardians, who liked to make up ancient traditions. It is said that you should never let this plant — or indeed most medicinal or magical plants — touch the soil after cutting. All the healing properties will earth out of the plant. Gathering baskets or squares of linen were used to catch the plant while the herbalist cut the base, always with the right hand (which ticks off us lefties to no end). Another tradition is that the St John’s Day harvest should not be done with iron cutting tools. Supposedly, herb lore was given to humans by the Good Folk who loathe iron, so herbs lose their effectiveness when they come in contact with this metal. Obsidian blades and bronze knives were acceptable, but I’ve seen more than one reference to silver as a cutting tool, though I doubt this soft metal would hold an edge for very long — and sharpening it would likely pare it completely down to nothing.
I don’t actually follow too many traditions. I have several books on herbs and I have put together a practice that more or less works for me. I do have an herb knife, but I prefer to use snips, very sharp snips, as this minimizes the damage done to the plant. The sharp blade makes a clean cut that the plant can heal quickly. Dull blades tend to make ragged cuts that are harder to seal and therefore invite infection. This same principle applies to pruning and to cutting flowers. The cleaner the hole, the healthier the plant.
I also do harvest things in the morning and never in the rain. I find the plants recover better from my poking and prodding in the morning than in the evening. I also think there’s something to the idea that an herb’s efficacy is lessened later in the day. Many plants actively move water out of their leaves in the hot sun to reduce transpiration and desiccation; and if you can smell the plant, then the volatile oils are no longer in the plant. On the other hand, cutting a plant in the rain is just asking for microbes to slink into the hole. So I avoid that. Plus, I get grumpy working in the rain, and I tend to project my mood on the garden.
There is also something to harvesting many of the herbs around Midsummer. For one thing, if you want floral material, like lavender buds and chamomile flowers, this is when the plants are flowering. But more generally, you want to harvest leafy plant parts before the plant blooms, at least before it finishes blooming, because after blooming it is done for the year. At that point a plant starts sending most of its nutrients and phytochemicals to seed production or to the roots for winter storage. Of course, it follows that if the root or seed is the part you need, then harvest that after blooming. I dig up mallow and echinacea root in the fall when it’s time to divide and transplant perennials.
I don’t actually use too many medicinal plants. For a while I tried out feverfew to curb migraine. It works for a while, but it also gives you stomach cramps and indigestion. And at some point everyone decides that there isn’t as much benefit as discomfort from the treatment. I don’t have any notable mood disorders aside from a tendency toward a mild and resigned gloominess. I call it Eeyore syndrome and go munch some greens to cure it. I also was blessed with pretty decent skin even as a teen, so though I grow calendula and hops and sea oats, I don’t make skin creams for myself — though I did go through a phase where everybody got lip balm and moisturizer from me for every holiday.
I do love scent, but I have not set up shop to extract essential oils from plants. So I make potpourri mixes and use orris root to fix the scent as much as possible. Then I buy essential oils to add to the mix when the original scent is gone. (My favorite herbal supply shops are Bulk Apothecary and Richter’s Herbs.) I air-dry most plant parts by hanging them in the attic where it is rarely humid, out of direct sunlight, and very warm in the summer. Culinary herbs, the bulk of what I grow, can be air-dried, though I also put these plants in paper bags to keep the dust off. This is how I harvest seeds like coriander and dill too. Put the seed heads in a paper lunch bag, seeds facing the bottom of the bag. Tie off the top and let the seeds just fall into the bag as they dry. The bag method also works to dry garlic in a humid climate because the bag will absorb moisture from the air, yet allows air to circulate through — though you first need to cure the bulbs a few days in direct sunlight. It’s better to put the bulbs in a bag in a single layer and lay this somewhere warm rather than hanging, but your garlic will have durably papery skin in no time. Even in a flood year.
Some herbs like basil and parsley need to process more quickly. They lose most of their flavor and usefulness if they dry slowly, and parsley doesn’t dry well at all. (Those grocery store cans of parsley flakes taste nothing like actual parsley… they taste like dust.) So I freeze these herbs in ice-cube trays, turn them into herb butters and spreads like pesto, or infuse them into oil. I use these methods for all herbs to some extent. I really like to chop up fresh herbs, either singly or in the mixtures I use most commonly — for example, chive and dill or oregano and basil or the Simon & Garfunkel herbs: parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Then I fill up ice-cube trays with packed herb and a bit of water and freeze it all into serving-sized cubes of flavoring. To store these herb cubes, I use plastic pint freezer tubs and layer the cubes with parchment in between to keep them from becoming one huge block. I have found that you should never store them in plastic baggies (they freezer-burn too easy) nor in anything metal (they come out tasting like metal).
This year I have started to cut some herbs like sage and thyme, but it isn’t a notably herby Midsummer yet. The dill is late this year and the basil is just pissed off about the late cold. I also didn’t get many of my chives back this year. I think this is because last year’s weather was the opposite of good for chives. Dry and cold when the plants were growing and flowering, then, after Midsummer, so wet their roots probably rotted. I bought three small plants on sale at Agway and hopefully they’ll do what chives do best and spread all over by next year. I do have garlic chives, but they grow wild on the bank out front and I worry that they probably taste more like car exhaust than chive. So I haven’t eaten them.
But I do not get up at dawn on Midsummer’s Day to harvest the herbs. If the holiday falls on a weekend, I am not getting out of bed at 5am, which is when the sun rises this time of year (though thankfully it stays behind the mountain for another two hours or so). If it falls on a weekday, like today, I don’t have time to do anything with the herbs I cut… so that’s a waste. But I don’t sweat these traditions too much. I harvest when the plants are ready and when I have time to process the harvest.
However, I do tend to go wandering into the garden early in the morning on Midsummer’s Day — actually on most days of the Midsummer season. There is always something that calls to me. Radishes, a handful of fresh arugula or spinach, peas and strawberries when the rodents aren’t destroying peas and strawberries, and flowers. I love the flowers of Midsummer. Roses and iris, penstemon and coreopsis, monarda and scabiosa and daisies. Most of the time, I just enjoy their colors and forms in the garden. Sometimes, I brush my hands over them to release scents. But now and again, I’ll cut a bouquet to take into work or to brighten the kitchen.
This morning I might cut some summer savory and thyme to sprinkle on scrambled eggs. It is not as hot as last week, but I am still not inclined toward heating up the kitchen with lots of cooking. Nor do I need that much food this time of year. Stew is just not very appealing in the summer, which is good because there’s not much to make into stew at this time of year. Roots are far from harvest time and the nightshades are all barely beyond seedlings.
But the cucumbers might be coming on soon, and cucumber makes the best cold soup. You have to do nothing but peel and chop the cucumber, sauté it for a very little while until it’s translucent (with or without onions, your call), and then purée it with some sort of creamy base. I use milk and yogurt, about a cup of dairy for every medium sized cucumber, but you can also just use broth if that’s more your thing. Then chill the mix. After chilling, I add parsley and chives and dill. Sometimes I get adventurous and use tarragon and cooking sherry or fennel leaf and white wine. Sometimes I make it a bit sweeter with mint and a touch of honey and lemon. I can make a pot over the weekend and have refreshing soup all week, with different flavors every night if I wish — and no cooking whatsoever.
Which means more time in the garden!
Though not today… and maybe not this week… this rain is supposed to stay with us for the foreseeable future. And I have never been a garden in the rain kind of person. It’s just not comfortable. Plus, I don’t think the plants like being handled when it’s wet out. I suppose it’s a good time to pull weeds… but I am not overly fond of that even in nice weather.
Still, it is Midsummer’s Day, and pretty soon I’m going to need all the hours I can get just to keep up with the harvest. I can hardly wait!
©Elizabeth Anker 2024
By My Solitary Hearth 
You are inspiring the way you use what you produce 🙂
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