Lovely Lavender

Lavender, oh how I love this plant. I have planted many lavenders and yet I never seem to have enough. It is easy to propagate by cuttings though, so I'll be making more. I even grew out seeds one year and got some good plants.

I had big plans to harvest the lavender and have long beautiful bundles of it, to give as gifts and so forth. I paid attention to when the lower two flowers opened, and cut the stems before noon. I banded the bundle of stalks with a rubber band. I followed the directions I read in the Lavender book by Robert Kourik. It was time consuming and tedious. And this from a person who is growing wheat with which to make bread. I'm into process, but something wasn't doing it for me with this process. And it made a rather unimpressive bundle once it dried.

A week passed and the flowers opened and drew the bees in. And I had a thought, since I was getting a little low on my batch of lemon verbena syrup, I thought I'd try making lavender syrup.

Harvesting was simply cutting the stems just at the base of the flowering head. I stripped off several heads and got about half an ounce of flowers and calyx. It was fast and easy.

I massaged the flowers a little, to help release the oils, while the sugar water boiled for 5 minutes. 2 cups sugar, 2.5 cups water.

When the 5 minutes of boiling was up, I took the pot off the heat and added the lavender to the sugar water. Cover and let steep at least 30 minutes.

The flowers shrank considerably. I strained it into a bowl while I cleaned the pot, then strained it back into the pot to boil for another 30 seconds.

I let it cool a bit and then poured it into my bottles. What a lovely color the syrup picked up from the flowers. I got myself a glass of ice and put a teaspoon or two of the lavender syrup and topped it off with water. Delicious!