How to dry lavender for the best results

Drying lavender is quite simple, but you can make mistakes that cost you a lot of time. If you dry your lavender right, you can enjoy the best smells. I tell you how I do it.

To dry lavender I first bundle the flowers with an elastic band. This rubber band is important because the stems become thinner during drying. I label the bunches with the cultivars name and time of harvesting. That matters if you have different cultivars and different moments of harvesting.

Dry lavender dark, dry, dust-free and with good ventilation

The bunches I hang in the basement just below the ceiling. In the cellar the window is always open. Dark, dry, dust-free and with good ventilation, these are the most important conditions. under the bunches of lavender, I’ve stretched a clean sheet to catch the flowers that are letting loose.

You will notice when the flowers are dry. The buds then release relatively easily from the stem. Check them regularly and do not let them hang too short or too long.

How to detach the lavender buds from the stem?

I have tried a lot of methods to detach the buds from the stem and this one works best for me: a clean pillowcase. I put a bunch of lavender in a clean pillowcase and then carefully roll the bunch back and forth. After a few rolls you pull the bunch of bare stems out of the pillowcase. Only the flowers are left behind. Which you then store in a closed bag or container.

Tip: remove leaves immediately from the stems when harvesting

Remove leaves immediately from the stems during harvesting and before you make bunches, this saves a lot of work later on. As well as pruning the plants twice a year. Last year I harvested lavandin from a friend. Because the plants were not pruned, it was impossible to harvest the flowers without leaves. And I didn’t know then that leaves are very annoying to separate from the flowers when everything is dry. Endlessly I had to get the lavender through the sieve before I only had the flowers.

This time I hung up the lavender bunches without the leaves, that’s going to save me a lot of work. 🙂

Lavender stoechas, wild surprise in Andalusia

On our land grows a wild lavender. It is the lavandula pedunculata, or a lavender Stoechas. Here in the mountains of Andalusia the lavender stoechas or cantueso as it is called here blooms early in the year. While I start to harvest lavandula angustfolia, the stoechas has almost finished flowering. Today I’m going to prune the plant and harvest the flowers. The oil would be good for headaches and colds.

We found the stoechas two years ago between weeds and since then we clean the field. We don’t have to do much else because the stoechas doesn’t make a lot of demands. It sows itself, which we don’t find a problem because the result is there.

Lavender Stoechas, resistant to drought but not to frost

The lavender stoechas is resistant to drought. Only the very young plants we irrigate a few times and after that we don’t irrigate any more. The plant cannot withstand frost, but frost is very rare here.

Prune in time otherwise you will be left with bare stems.

As soon as the stoechas starts to make seed you will notice that all of the plant’s energy goes into it. The leaf at the bottom of the stem falls off. If you want a beautiful plant, it is better to prune it in time. If not, you will get long bald stems. Prune immediately in the first year and after flowering.
This week I pruned the plant. It could have been done earlier, but luckily I was still on time. I left a few branches with flowers for the seed.

wild lavender stoechas before pruning — before pruning

wild lavender stoechas after pruning — before pruning

Lavender stoechas, good for headaches and colds

Just like the lavandula angustfolia, the lavandula stoechas is soothing. And also good for headaches and colds. With the pruning I have harvested flowers. They still smell delicious. A soft scent between lavender and rosemary. I’m going to make essential oil from it and fill an eye pillow with the flowers and see which of the two works best against headaches and colds.

How to harvest lavender for real essential oil

When do you harvest lavender? That depends on what you’re going to do with it. Most lavender oil these days is made of lavandin. That’s a pity because only lavandula angustfolia has the soothing properties for which lavender is so famous. This ‘real’ lavender was already in bloom in May. Halfway June a lot of flowers opened already.

harvesting hidcote blue lavender — Hidcote Blue

Time to harvest lavender depends on your goal

If you want to harvest lavender for bunches of dried lavender, you’re already too late. Opened flowers fall off the stem while drying. That does not matter if you want loose lavender flowers. This is also the right time to harvest lavender for making lavender oil. A maximum of half of the flowers should be open.

Harvesting real lavender starts in June

The real lavender, lavender angustfolia, blooms earlier than lavandin. At the moment of my first lavender harvest – mid June – the lavandin only begins to form a few colourless flowers.

With some of the flowers already opened I decide to harvest some. My goal is to make essential oil. For a big lavender farmer it is difficult to determine the right moment of harvesting, I suspect.

Even within the same plant the flowers differ from stage to stage

Not all flowers are at the same stage of development. Even within one and the same plant there are flowers that are much further ahead than others. On my small lavender farm it is not (yet) a problem. I harvest the ripe flowers and leave others standing.

Provence lavandin — Lavandin Provence with only a few pale flowers in June

Harvesting lavender till October

The advantage of this is that I can enjoy the blossoming lavender for a very long time and that the bees don’t pass by for nothing either. I also suspect that more flowers will come through. Pruning makes them bloom. In any case, I will continue to harvest for a long time. Some species remained in bloom last year until well into October.

What is the best time of day to harvest lavender?

According to Virginia McNaughton’s lavender growers guide, it’s best to harvest early in the morning. When the dew has dried, but before the heat. Harvesting lavender in small production also has an advantage here. In small quantities it is possible to harvest as much as possible in the morning, while large producers have to harvest all day long.

Harvesting just in the morning is fantastic. The sun is low, it’s not warm yet. And the bees, like me, are busy harvesting. The beautiful view and the smell of lavender; these are the best days of the year.

How do you make lavender cuttings?

Lavender cuttings I make at the same moment when I prune the lavender. In (early) spring with no more risk of frost. And after the summer bloom, in autumn. There are growers who prune in early spring and store the cuttings, if it’s still too cold, before they go into the ground. I try to find the optimum time for both. And after cutting, I put the cuttings right into the ground in their place in the prepared planting beds.

How do you cut the lavender cuttings?

First of all with good pruning scissors that cut the cuttings, but do not squeeze them. Ideal are cuttings that first have a piece of wood and then new material. It is important that you don’t cut under the green of the plant. Make sure there are some leaves and preferably some new spout under where you cut.

lavender plant before and after the prune — before

Then I prune the whole plant back into shape, a kind of hairdressing it is. It is important that you prune generously, but not too generously, to prevent bald branches from forming. With the pruning in spring you often also cut away the first tiny flowers. That’s no problem, there will be many more in return.

Preparing lavender cuttings

Immediately after cutting the cuttings I select the strongest. Per lavender species this can be quite different. The photos of the cuttings on this page are from a Provence lavandin. With long somewhat thinner leaves. Other species seem more robust.
The branches with wood often have offshoots that you can tear off the wood. It is said that that works well. In my trial latest autumn I have put every type of cutting in the ground, with wood, without wood, torn from wood, thin, thick, big, small. And it all worked. At least on land, right in the ground under a shadow tunnel. In pots, all the results were less good. In every case you let only the leaves at the upper part stay. The rest you take off carefully.

lavender cuttings step 1 — cut from the plant

I also experimented with growth hormones to baptize the cuttings, but that didn’t make any difference in my case. So I stopped that.

PH value cutting soil

Soil should not contain nutrients, but I could not find anything about the desired PH value for lavender cuttings. This spring I prepared the beds with half the lime I normally give to the lavender plants. If anybody knows about the best PH for lavender cutting I would love to hear it.

Watering the cuttings

I find lavender cuttings in pots pretty awkward myself. The soil should be moist, but not too wet. When it rains heavily they are too wet right away. And with sunshine and no rain they are too dry very soon. I watered the cuttings on land every two days in times of no rain. A larger amount of soil is a good buffer for water, but also for draining too much water.

Shade cloth with 70% UV filter

A shade cloth that lets some sun through, but not too much seems to work well in my case. I still have to see if the cuttings like it in the summer. The Spanish sun can be merciless. The autumn cuttings are from after the summer and also the new spring cuttings haven’t seen summer yet. If necessary I stretch a double cloth.

I hope to be able to plant the autumn cuttings in their final spot in May. And the spring cuttings in the autumn, after about 7 months. But most of all I look at what they look like. The stronger ones go first.

Lavender propagation: the results after 6 months

Lavender propagation did not go well the first time, which is why I stabbed the lavender according to three methods in the autumn of 2019:

in a heated propagator inside;
in pots with cutting soil outside on the terrace;
and directly into the soil on the land.
See my see my previous blog. It is time for the results.

Lavender propagation indoors in a propagator

Lavender propagation with the propagator inside was not a success. Very soon it started to get mouldy. I turned off the heating and removed the lids, but the remaining cuttings didn’t like it either. Of the 100 or so cuttings, three are left. After a while I put them outside because it was clear that they craved light. They became long and thin while the outside specimens looked a lot sturdier. I carefully let them get used to outside and after a while they also became firmer.

Lavender propagation outside in pots

The planters with the cuttings outside on the terrace were in the shade with only a little sun in the morning with just like the cuttings inside a carefully chosen mix of cuttings soil clearly did better, but at least half did not root. The ones that survive don’t look very good compared to the ones on the land.

Lavender cuttings directly in the ground

lavender cuttings directly put in the ground

The big winner is cuttings directly into the ground. In my case in Spain with a shade cloth that blocks 70% of the UV radiation. That soil was tested beforehand as relatively poor and therefore suitable for lavender. Except that the PH value at that time was not yet increased with lime. From March the cuttings suddenly started to sprout a lot. Not all the same, but per type of lavender. Apparently one goes faster than the other. I haven’t exactly kept track of it, but I think about 90% is doing well to excellent. Soon I hope to plant them out, I think around May. I’m curious how they will experience the summer sun in Spain, that’s why I bought some extra shade cloth just to be sure.

New spring lavender cuttings

Last week I pruned the plants and made cuttings again. Now only directly into the ground in the same way as last time. The fourth week of April is a bit later than I had hoped and that’s because the temperature in my region has been relatively low in recent weeks. While northern Europe was already almost in summery atmospheres we got an unprecedented amount of water. That is fantastic for the nature. But I thought it would be better for the cuttings to start a little later.

How to distil Lavender Oil

Today I’m going to distil lavender oil. Last year I followed a lavender oil distillation workshop in the Netherlands. Since then I’ve made orange oil from organic orange peels, mint oil and oregano oil. But no lavender oil yet.

My own lavender harvest is not yet big enough, but fortunately I still have the harvest of a friend I was allowed to pick in August. In total I have about 2,5 kilos of dried flowers that I can use to distil lavender oil.

The yield exceeded all expectations.

I don’t want to use it all, but that’s no problem because they don’t fit all in my distillery. I have a little one of 12 litres. The idea is to press the plant material firmly into the pan.

With a double elevation in the pan – to make the contents even smaller – 680 grams of lavender flowers went in with difficulty. That was much less than I thought. But the yield exceeded all expectations.

I thought it was a lavandin and that is clear from the yield of 7.1% oil.

Essential oil makers handbook

In the essential oil makers handbook of Bettina Malle and Helge Schminckl I read that flowers of lavandula angustfolia have a yield of 2.5 to 3% and lavandin 3 to 5%. The 7.1 is therefore excessively high.

Except for 48,7 grams of lavender oil the 680 grams of dried lavender flowers yielded me about 1,5 liters of hydrolate. About the quality of the oil I can only say that it smells very good. At a later moment I will analyze the harvest of my own lavender. For now the oil is enough to make my own soap and bath salts.

How do you distil lavender oil?

At the bottom of the distillation kettle a sort of sieve is used to separate the plant material from the water. The steam from the boiling water pushes up through the sieve and the plant material, taking the oil from the flowers with it.
Fill the pan with water until just below the sieve. The plant material should not be in the water.
Fill the pan from sieve to lid with lavender flowers, very firmly pressed.
Close the kettle and connect the hoses for cooling.
While the kettle is warming up, keep an eye on the cooling. The cooling water should be lukewarm, but not too hot. I still have to find a way to cool the cooling water without losing water. Now I need to get rid of hot water and add cold water. I need to be able to do this more efficiently.
As soon as the temperature at the top of the kettle rises to about 97 degrees Celsius, hydrolate with oil runs out of the kettle. I prepare a row of well cleaned bottles or glasses and you can clearly see that the first amount contains the most oil. The oil is in a yellow layer on top of the hydrolate.
After about an hour my bottles were gone and I quit. Henk Ploeger of In de koperen ketel says you can go on for two hours, but I was a bit afraid that the water in the kettle was running out. (The amount of water I put in I have to measure the next time.) That fear turned out to be unfounded, there was still enough water in it. But I ran out of bottles and I thought I could smell that the smell of the hydrolate was getting less. So still a good time to stop.
One by one I have put the content of the bottles in the Byzantine vase to separate the oil from the hydrolatum. The oil floats on top of the hydrolate which you can clearly see in this picture.

Byzantine vase to separate the oil from the hydrolatum

Workshops distilling in Gilze, the Netherlands

Cleaning sheep’s wool that no one wants

Sheep’s wool is a beautiful material, but unfortunately scores poorly on animal friendliness and environment. Just about the only thing you can say positively about the environmental impact is that it doesn’t contain any plastics. Against this background, it’s pretty crazy that the shepherd in my neighbourhood can’t get rid of his wool. He has a shed full of it and nobody wants it.

The waste of wool less than a kilometre away wouldn’t let go of me.

Cleaning sheep’s wool costs a lot of soap and water. And the use of chemicals is also enormous. And the sheep emit methane, a strong greenhouse gas. In addition, most of the sheep’s wool comes from Australia. These are quite a few kilometres of transport from Europe. The waste of wool less than a kilometre away wouldn’t let go of me.

Cleaning sheep’s wool is a big challenge

Two years ago the shepherd gave me a big bag of wool, so I could see if I could use it. Cleaning the sheep’s wool was no fun. It took an awful lot of soap and water, it literally smelled like an hour in the wind. The quality of the wool didn’t seem bad, but cleaning the sheep’s wool in an environmentally friendly way turned out to be a big challenge.

I put the big bag of dirty wool on my land and every now and then I came up with a new idea, which didn’t work. And suddenly the solution was there by itself. With time, the plants even grew a bit through it, the stench had disappeared. And it didn’t feel greasy any more and reasonably clean.

After a test I was still able to felt with it. And after one washing it was relatively clean. I found it interesting enough to ask the shepherd for a few more bags of wool, which he gave me with great pleasure.

Hot water from the sun

Cleaning sheep's wool on my land: let time do the first work — Cleaning sheep’s wool on my land: let time do the first work

The new wool I spread on the land between a folded piece of chicken wire, from the ground away from leaves en twigs. Waiting for the time to do its work again. Plus hot water. When irrigating plants on the land, the black irrigation hoses are usually first filled with hot water from the sun. That water is too hot for the plants, but now very useful. I use it to rinse the wool for a short period of time. The sun dries the wool again. Five weeks and a few short rinses later the wool doesn’t feel so greasy any more and doesn’t smell so strong.

Homemade woolpicker for cleaning

Cleaning sheep's wool with a handmade woolpicker — handmade wool picker made out of an old cabinet drawer

Today I put some of this wool through my homemade woolpicker. Just after 5 weeks washing it two times seems to be enough. Soon carding and felting. And see if this is the solution to clean the wool without a lot of soap or water.

A small other experiment is if the sheep poop that come along with the water do the bamboo next to it well, because they can use some manure. And whether the bindweed under the wool still likes it so much with manure and hot water.

Somewhere I read that the invasive bindweed is doing very well on poor soils and that fertilizing would be a solution. See my post about getting rid of invasive bindweed. A test, free of charge and for nothing. I keep on rinsing the rest of the wool, hoping that the wool will be sufficiently clean with one soap washing and the mechanical cleaning with woolpicker. More about that later.

Making your own lavender soap with olive oil

Today I made real lavender soap. Making your own lavender soap is not difficult, but something can go wrong. As I wrote yesterday. The problem was mainly in the right temperature and the NaOH, which didn’t get warm, so it wasn’t good anymore.

The recipe is the same as yesterday, but with less water. A tip from the website thenerdyfarmwife.com if you don’t use palm oil.

The recipe to make your own lavender soap is made in this soap calculator

276 grams of olive oil
184 grams coconut oil
67,55 grams NaOH (sodium lye)
151.8 grams of water (lavender hydrolate, tap water or distilled water) 33% instead of 38%
10.5 grams of essential lavender oil, this should be 13.8 grams. But I don’t have that much at my disposal today. Soon I will be distilling lavender.
Dried lavender

I have the pan au bain Marie set up with the olive oil and coconut oil and heated to about 54 degrees. About the same time I added NaOH to the water. Stir well until everything is dissolved. Note: in a sturdy plastic container or in heat-resistant glass. Then the heat doesn’t disappear and the material won’t be affected. The first time I made soap, a few years ago, I used a wooden stirring spoon, which I could then throw away. Now I stir with an ordinary spoon and that goes well.

Making your own lavender soap is an accurate job

Now we have to wait until the temperature of the sodium caustic soda drops back to about 54 degrees Celsius. While the temperature of the oil mass rises to about 54 degrees. I have already mixed the oil a bit. If both are about 54 degrees, you can carefully add the lye to the oil. And then mix it.

trace in making your own soap — I think this is a real trace

Yesterday nothing happened after 45 minutes. And now the ‘trace’ was already visible after 10 minutes. That means you can draw a line in the mass. Then you can add the lavender oil and mix briefly. Then pour the mixture into the moulds. A clean and cut-up pack of soy milk will do just fine and there was enough left over to fill three silicone soap moulds.

I smoothed out the mass in the moulds, which looks the most like a thick vanilla lettuce with a spatula and added the dried lavender flowers. A lovely smelling and beautiful blue colored lavandin called Heavenly scent.

Sodium lye that doesn’t sound very nice in a natural soap

The NaOH with water or sodium lye is necessary for the saponification, without which it will not succeed. Fortunately, the substance will disappear from the soap by itself, at least if you do it right. NaOH is a natural product, but during processing it can burn a hole in your skin. So be carefull. If the saponification goes well and you let the soap dry long enough, I keep it for at least 6 weeks, all NaOH will have been disappeared from the soap.

How to make sodium lye safely?

Weigh the right amount of cold water and put it in a sturdy container. Then add the right amount of NaOH to the water. Never the other way around. Work with safety goggles, gloves and a face mask. And make sure that nothing can fall over during the process. So work with sturdy pots and pans and a clean countertop. The sosa, as they call it here in Spain the NaOH, got quite hot today. The temperature rose to over 70 degrees after it was added to the water and stirred.

By mixing at the right temperature, the saponification should start relatively quickly, now after 10 minutes. The ‘soap’ from yesterday of which I suspect that the saponification did not take place properly, is hard today. Tomorrow or the day after I will cut and dry both. Then the test. When in doubt you can taste whether the NaOH has disappeared or not. If the NaOH is still in the soap it will tingle. So you can’t use that soap for your skin, but maybe you can still use it as a base for a detergent for your clothes.

Soap making: first aid for soap problems

Soap making always went well, but maybe it was beginner’s luck. Since a few years I make my own soap with laurel berry oil. And a basic olive oil soap. I had excellent results. Until today.

I wanted to make lavender soap, but it already went wrong in the base

Because I wasn’t sure how dried lavender would keep in the soap, I made half of what I was up to. Luckily. The soap calculator had calculated for me:

276 grams of olive oil
184 grams coconut oil
67,55 grams NaOH (sodium lye)
174.8 grams of water (lavender hydrolate, tap water or distilled water)
14.26 grams of essential lavender oil
Dried lavender

Luckily I hadn’t added the lavender oil yet.

Add NaOH to the water (not the other way around).
Heat olive oil and coconut oil au bain Marie.

soap making so far so good — Heat olive oil and coconut oil au bain Marie.

The temperature of the lye turned out to sting at 30 degrees. I should have stopped by then, because that’s not good. If you add NaOH to water the temperature rises enormously.

The mixer overheated but no ‘trace’

According to the recipe, both lye and oil had to be between 30 and 40 degrees when they were put together. And that’s what I did quickly. (stupid!) The lye a bit colder than the oil, but between 30 and 40 degrees. Earlier I always had both at exactly the same temperature, between 40 and 50 degrees.

I added oil and lye together and started to mix. The mixer overheated, but the mixture didn’t get thicker, no trace of the so-called ‘trace’. You should be able to put a mark trace the mixture before adding essential oil and pouring it into the mould.

After three quarters of an hour I gave up. And I could have done that after just fifteen minutes, I now understand.

what went wrong with the soap?

I searched in Dutch on the internet. After all, that’s my mother tongue. But couldn’t find any help with soap problems. Apparently everyone in the Netherlands immediately makes good soap. 🙂

Still, I needed to know: was it the sink unblocker NaOH, which didn’t get very hot and, on closer inspection, only consisted of 90% NaOH?

In English I came a lot further. On this great website with answers to a lot of mistakes you can make. It became clear to me right away that my lye is not good. I’d better buy others. And I also read that if you don’t use palm fat (who still uses palm fat? I hope no one else does) it’s better to use a lower percentage of water.

You can change that percentage in this soap calculator. From 38% in my recipe to 33% or even lower, which is recommended according to the Nerdyfarmwife.

I’m going to make another lavender soap soon. With new lye and less water.

Throw away olive oil and coconut oil? That’s not so sustainable.

And what do I do with this mix of olive oil and coconut oil? Disposal is not very sustainable. After browsing the internet I found out that my temperature was also very low. I came across the tip on the internet to possibly use unsuccessful soap as a basis for a detergent for clothing. What exactly I had to do was not clear.

Is this a real trace or not?

I reheated the au bain Marie pan and when it came above 50 degrees and I kept mixing the contents pulled a kind of trace. Is this a real trace or not? It would be more logical if the oil became thinner instead of thicker.

I have put the thicker mass in an opened milk carton. Let’s see if it hardens and if it can eventually be used to wash clothes. I can always throw it away. What is certain is that I will not use this batch for the skin. This is only possible with guaranteed successful soap.

Propagating lavender by cuttings, is that really that easy?

Everywhere I read that propagating lavender by cuttings is not difficult. Easier than sowing and much better too, because you keep the original characteristics of the plant. But with my lavender cuttings this spring I went quite wrong.

Propagating lavender in a cutting tray

I took extra precaution. I bought a cuttings tray to keep the temperature at a desired 22-25 degrees. And cutting powder, from two brands. I watched videos on the internet about propagating lavender by cuttings and made at least 100 cuttings, with and without two different cutting powders.

But the result was 0. Only 1 out of about 100 cuttings got significant root formation and eventually died.

What did I do wrong?

According to a friend here in the Alpujarras I had pampered them too much. Furthermore I read about the soil, potting soil was wrong. I had mixed the potting soil with poor garden soil, but it was fertilized potting soil, others were not available here.

Lavender cuttings in autumn in four ways

At the end of September I tried again. This time no cutting powder and no potting soil. And according to four different methods.

Outdoors in the ground, under a small tunnel against the still relatively warm Spanish sun.
Outside on the terrace in two planters in the shade.
Inside in the cutting board, but without heating because it is still warm enough.
And I have partly dug in a number of side branches of lavender plants, in the hope that they will form new roots.

Cuttings soil

In the planters and cutters I put 1/3 part sterilized soil of the land (sterilized in the solar oven) 1/3 part perlite (for better drainage) and 1/3 part coconut substrate (contains no fertilizers and retains water). Outside on land, the cuttings are simply in the ground.

Water, what is not too much and not too little?

Something I hadn’t thought of before is that it’s quite difficult to know when the cuttings need water. Larger lavender plants don’t need a lot of water, but cuttings shouldn’t dry out. What is neither too much nor too little water?

I use a handy device. It was for measuring the PH, but that doesn’t work at all. There are 2 positions more on it. Light and moisture. I don’t really see the point of the first one yet, but the second one works well. The moisture gradations are useful to keep track of. At position 4, the lowest position of moist, I give (a little bit of) water. Maybe it’s too late or too early, but it feels good to be able to measure something.

handy device for measuring moisture. Normaly with 2 legs but PH and light doesn’t work, so we cut of 1 leg.

Update: two weeks later

All the cuttings seem to be alive and looking good. Except for 12 cuttings in the cutting tray. They even started to mold. Apart from the mouldy cuttings I also removed the plastic caps from the plugs. That’s right, pampering lavender too much is not a good idea.

To be continued

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