How to preserve mint

While the weather has not been very inspiring for humans, it has clearly been heaven for plants as my garden has turned itself from a neat flowerbed into an urban jungle. Especially the mint has decided to launch an attack so I fought back, well armed with some secateurs. But what am I going to do with the spoils of war?

That’s a lot of fresh mint and as much as I love it, there is only so much fresh mint tea I can drink at a time. To solve this dilemma, I consulted the internet to come up with a few good ways of preserving mint leaves and tested them. Here is what I found:

1. Freezing in ice cubes

I have done this with other herbs and it has always served me well. It is especially handy for herbs that are added in small quantities to sauces or stir-fries.I try to always keep a few cubes of coriander on hand.

All this method needs is an ice cube tray, a knife, a chopping board, some water and the mint. Just chop the mint into fairly small pieces, fill the ice cube tray roughly with the chopped herb and top it up with water.

It freezes within a few hours and now you have fresh, chopped and portioned mint ready for a few months. I haven’t tried using the mint yet but I don’t really see how this could have gone wrong as I have done the exact same thing with a variety of herbs and it was always fine.I generally use herb cubes like these by just throwing them directly into whatever I am making. You could probably also defrost them in the microwave, drain and just use the herbs itself if the water is a problem.

2. Freeze directly

I have used this method for parsley where I just took an entire bunch, stuck it into a freezer bag and froze the whole thing. Because the Parsley is so bushy, it doesn’t freeze into a massive lump. Instead, the frozen leaves become very brittle so I just crumble some into my sauce/salad/stir-fry and save myself the chopping.

With the mint, I had taken the leaves of the stems already and I think just making a bunch would take up the majority of my freezer space anyway so I just stuck some into a box and froze them like that. A few hours later I grabbed a few of the now frozen leaves to test if they are still good for tea. I’m glad to report that they are. Pouring boiling water over a handful frozen leaves and leaving it to stew for a few minutes produced a lovely fresh mint tea. I think as long as the leaves are not packed to densely, getting them back out of the box should not be a problem.

3. Drying in the Microwave

I read about this somewhere and the technique seemed fairly easy. It promised that layering a few leaves between kitchen towels and microwaving them for 1-2 minutes produces perfectly dried leaves in no time at all.

I wasn’t very convinced by the result. The leaves lost virtually all their flavour, the process smelled funny and it is a pain to set up if you have a large number of leaves. Thumbs down from me.

4. Drying in the Oven

I thought this was a fairly safe method because it is so common. All it requires one to do is to distribute the leaves thinly on a tray, stick them in the oven at a low temperature and leave them for a few hours.

As this seemed a safe method, I put the vast majority of my leaves into it. That was a mistake. While the resulting dried leaves looked like one would expect, something went wrong. When I used the dried result to make tea, it smelled disgusting and tasted even worse. I have no idea why. Maybe I have the wrong kind of mint in the garden, or maybe the temperature was too high. Whatever the reason, I’m not trying this again.

5. Drying by hanging them up in bunches

This seems like another safe method. Unfortunately, I only thought of this once I had lovingly picked all the leaves off the stems. I do however have plenty more of that stuff in the garden so I might be starting another attempt soon. Until then I will be enjoying the fresh tea directly from the garden.

Spring

I'm so proud of our little garden at the moment, I just had to show you some pictures. Above you can see one of the plants from last year which actually came back and is already flowering again.

I believe these are Forget-Me-Nots, which were badly attacked by snails and ants last year. Look how amazingly they bounced back! I can even see the first few buds in the centre of the plants so we might actually get flowers this year.

Mr Robin kept me company while I was pottering about. He doesn't seem to be building his nest any more and I haven't seen Mrs Robin for a few days so I think there might be family on the way.

This used to be a 1 m high, majestic nightshade that treated us to some lovely flowers last year. Then the snails got to it and look at it now. It's barely alive, it's companion is completely dead already. I'm so sad. We have a serious slug and snail problem. Last year I tried to collect them periodically and every few days or so, I'd pick up to 30 of them off our three square meters of garden. Also, we are not talking tiny cute snails like here, we are talking seriously huge Burgundy Snails and giant slugs. They ate EVERYTHING. Even though I'm really not a fan of poison in the garden, this year I am not having the same thing happening again so poison and meticulous collecting it is. Keep your fingers crossed with me that the nightshade will pull trough.

More daffodils have opened by now. Together with some red and white daisies (which I got for a pound at the local garden center because one of the flours had broken. Crazy world ) they provide the only spots of colour at the moment but I'm hopeful that the rest of the plants will catch up.

I found this jar in one of our cupboards and I believe it used to belong to the Misters grandparents. I got laughed at by my flatmates when I pointed out that it's so peculiar, I it's beyond bad and has gone back to nice, and was called a "granny". They just don't have any taste ;)

 My little seed collection is somewhat limited at the moment. There are some herbs, lots and lots of poppy seeds and four little packages I evidently forgot to label. I do remember collecting some pot marigold and hollyhock seeds so they must be in there but I have no idea what the other two might be. Oh well, I love surprises.
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Don't forget the give-away! It closes tomorrow at midnight so if you still need something to cheer up your easter breakfast, go and leave a comment quickly. :)

At long last

Remember when I was all excited about planting some daffodil bulbs in our little garden? The first daffodil opened it's flower today! In other gardens they have disappeared already again but because our little patch is quite shady, plants tend to be later than expected. It doesn't matter, they have finally made it and they make me smile whenever I walk past.

I love how our little garden has been doing lately. A few of the flowers have come into bloom again and its a nice mix of crazy green and specks of colour. We are considering cutting a few more of the bushes down to give the flowers even more light since thinning it had such a great effect.

By the way, I will be leaving London early tomorrow morning (Don't ask how early) and I won't be back until October. Furthermore, I will not have internet access for the next two weeks or so. Fear not, I won't let you get too bored. On monday, I will start the promised travel journal series and there will be new updates every few days so have a look regularily. I hope you enjoy it.

green chaos

Remember when I blogged about our attempt to shape the front garden? At the time we pulled pretty much everything out and I distributed what felt like kilograms of seeds. As ever, most of it was never heard of again but some came out quite nicely.

Unfortunately I can't remember what exactly I put in so it is hard to tell what is meant to be growing and what isn't but for now I'm just being hopeful and leaving most of it.

first signs of success

The seeds outside are still hiding but the ones I put in pots in my room have started to grow like crazy already. I put them in less than a week ago! I check them about ten times a day, that's how excited I am. Go little plant!

Where did the jungle go?

We made some serious progress in our little garden.It's hard to imagine now what it looked like a few weeks ago. Remember the jungle?

Well, have a look now, after hours of cutting down bushes, working in compost, pulling out weeds and collecting snails.

 

There are some parts of the flower beds that still need planting and I am far from convinced all of the seeds we put in are going to be a success but we'll just keep our fingers crossed. I can wait for barbecues and breakfast outside!

Down with the Jungle!

 Please imagine the title being yelled by the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. I saw the oldest Alice in Wonderland movie ever yesterday and it is so incredibly sweet. Have a look here, Alice in Wonderland from 1903. I can't believe that this movie is actually over a hundred years old. When it was made, it was the longest cinema movie at the time with a whole 12 minutes. Oh, how things have changed.

Anyway, what I was actually trying to tell you is: we made some progress and managed to trim down the vast majority of the jungle in our little garden. Look how much space we suddenly have! And we even found some proper flower beds.

 

As you can see, we now need to get rid of all the things we cut of. Luckily, this just involves a call to our local council but first we need to get some bags and string so we can gather things in a way that they can actually be collected. Then we need to go and get some compost, work it into the flower beds and get planting. I can't wait!

The Jungle

Our house this year has a little courtyard in front which we lovingly call "The Jungle". After a look at the pictures I'm sure you will understand.

 As you can see, it is pretty overgrown with all sorts of things. I'm generally not even sure what the plants actually are.There is a lot of foliage but very few flowering plants.

 Does anyone know what this one is called?

However, for London even this is amazing and I would really love to turn it into a space we actually use. I'm thinking evenings out with a glass of wine and barbecue parties with friends here. 

So, I have been nagging my flatmates and finally they agreed to help me with some of the heavier work. A fair number of these bushes will have to go, especially the one on the picture above. It blocks out any of the remaining sun and it is shady enough as it is.

Watch ous as we attempt to tame the Jungle.

Getting earthed

Today was one of these restless days. We had family over for easter, lots of food, some talking, more food. I tried to squeeze some studying in as well. Towards the late afternoon, I reached that point where I cannot sit still any more. I get restless, grumpy and unhappy. That's when it is time for me to go outside and dig around in the garden. It sounds funny but since I have been living in big cities, I realised that the best treatment for this ill mood is to go outside, find a little patch of earth and weed it, plant something or even just sit there and play with the earth.


Difficult to find in London but here we have a nice garden so today I sat outside for a while and kept myself busy by weeding the path. I had to flee back inside after about half an hour since it really started pouring with rain but I did manage a few meters and my mood had improved significantely. Mission accomplished. And the little daffodils looked happier too.