Unit IV: Harvest, Preservation & Use

Units I, II, and III were about the living plant: knowing it, housing it, and multiplying it. Now the harvest comes in, and the gardener's work shifts from growing to keeping. In this unit you will learn to take each plant part at its right hour, to dry herbs the way generations before you dried them, to press specimens that may outlive us all, to save seeds that will grow true, and to keep a kitchen garden that feeds the table. This is some of the oldest human plant-work there is.

Harvest respectfully, my dears. Take no more than the plant can spare, leave every plant able to keep growing, and gather wild material only with permission and care. What you preserve later begins here, with the right plant, the right part, and the right hour.

Unit Learning Objectives

By the end of this unit, scholars will be able to:

• Harvest leaves, flowers, seeds, and roots at the correct stage and time of day, applying the one-third rule.
• Dry herbs by hanging and screening, judge doneness with the crispness test, and condition dried herbs for storage.
• Press, label, and mount plant specimens correctly, and begin a personal herbarium.
• Save seeds by the dry and wet processing paths, dry them to true brittleness, and label every lot completely.
• Grow, harvest, store, and cook with the classic culinary herbs using cut-and-come-again methods.

In This Unit

The Unit IV Quiz closes this unit. You will find it, with its download, at the end of Lesson 32: Unit IV Harvest Festival Project.

What Scholars Will Grow, Practice, and Make

Scholars harvest herbs at the right hour, dry bundles and screens of herbs, press and mount herbarium specimens with complete labels, clean and store a seed harvest, tend culinary herbs by cut-and-come-again, and complete a harvest project filed as the unit's closing record.

With the harvest gathered and safely kept, we turn in Unit V to the deeper craft: the plants that demand respect, the lore that demands honesty, and the garden you will one day design yourself.