- Determine the ideal time for harvesting
- How long to wait before harvesting home-grown woodruff?
- Plan the harvest of woodruff according to use
- tips and tricks
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The harvest season is somewhat more limited for woodruff than for many other herbs and aromatic plants. This also had an effect on the designation of the woodruff or May punch made with it.
Determine the ideal time for harvesting
It is not without reason that the punch enriched with woodruff flavor is also called May punch. It is traditionally only prepared in spring by briefly soaking fresh woodruff. The reason for this is that woodruff should actually only be harvested before the start of its flowering period, between mid-April and mid-May. In the forest, you can recognize the woodruff even before the white, cross-shaped flowers bloom by its stalks, which are a maximum of 30 centimeters long, with the lance-shaped leaves arranged in tiers in a circle. The plants often form extensive carpets in the sheltered shade of trees and shrubs, as they not only reproduce by self-sowing seeds, but also by their root network.
How long to wait before harvesting home-grown woodruff?
When sowing woodruff in your own garden, you should consider a few things:
- The season for sowing is at the end of the year, since woodruff is a frost germ
- as a dark germ, woodruff should be covered thinly with soil when sowing
- An even moisture during the germination phase is absolutely necessary for the forest plant
In principle, if you sow seeds from September, the first stalks of woodruff can be harvested in spring at the earliest. However, you should be aware that this will severely disrupt the development of roots and plants in a newly planted location. It is therefore better to only collect woodruff from a newly established location in the second year.
Plan the harvest of woodruff according to use
The harvest of the fresh woodruff should be coordinated with the planned use. You will get the best taste if you hang up the cut stalks upside down and let them wilt before further processing. You can also dry or freeze the woodruff for longer-term storage. If you need the plant for a short time for May punch, you can also achieve the development of the aroma by briefly freezing it.
tips and tricks
Harvesting the woodruff before flowering is recommended, as the coumarin content in the plants then increases relatively sharply. Although woodruff can still be used in summer or autumn, it should then be dosed even more sparingly.
WK