Mullein

My mom allowed me to collect about 20-25 Mullein leaves from her Mullein plant. I've never harvested it before. Does anyone have tips for drying it successfully. I don't want to ruin them in the drying process as I'm sure mom won't offer more until next summer.

Any advice is welcome.

Login or Signup to reply to this post.

Personally I like to lay mine flat on a piece of kitchen roll and put it in a warm, dry space for a few days. If you have a drying cupboard, or an airing cupboard, that tends to be best.

If you need to you can turn them every evening to get an even dry.

Another alternative is to put them in the oven after you have cooked (not a good idea while the oven is still hot hot) and allow them to dry quickly in there, but this is not a great idea if you don't know the effect burning the leaves could have, i.e. toxic fumes, etc.

There is an excellent episode of Good Eats about herbs and drying them. Alton Brown shares some very good information. Yes, it's a cooking show. But the goal of course, is preserving the herbs for later use, just as with cooking.

Thank you very much for your advice. I truly appreciate it. I found a YouTube video earlier and discovered I picked the wrong sized leaves. You are supposed to get the short leaves from the new growth of a first year plant.

I'm pretty sure Her's is a first year plant because of the size. But, there is no way she would let me collect the new growth leaves. I'm not even going to ask.

But, I'm not going to mow my yard for a couple weeks and see what herbs/weeds I can find in my own yard.

I replied below to both of you.