Speed Up The Flower Harvesting Process With A Clever Hack Using A Bathroom Item Everyone Has

Since ancient times, flowers have been used for much more than just centerpieces and table arrangements. Many flowers can be harvested for a wide range of applications beyond decor, including teas, aromatics, beauty products, foods, and more. The problem is, when you're trying to harvest enough flower heads for these projects, a home garden may be too small for expensive flower harvesting tools, but too large for picking individual flowers to be productive. Instead of taking on the painstaking process of plucking each flower by hand, try this clever hack using a bathroom item everyone has: a comb.

When it comes to harvesting and storing your fresh garden herbs so they last longer, it's important to consider not only how you harvest, but when you harvest. A comb can be useful for harvesting a wide variety of flowering herbs that are useful around the house, as long as you harvest at the right time. It is best to harvest flowering herbs just before the flowers fully open for the most fragrant harvest that will last longer. To use a comb, simply cup it in your hands and place it along the stems of your flowers, then comb up towards the buds, and they should easily pull away from the stems. This allows you to harvest larger groups of flowers at once without damaging them, rather than collecting them one by one.

Chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla) is a beginner-friendly flower you can easily grow from seed that has many uses as an ornamental flower and a medicinal and culinary ingredient. It is also one of the most common flowering herbs that gardeners prefer to speed up the harvesting process for. If you picked each individual chamomile flower when harvesting for tea, you could end up spending hours plucking the tiny daisy heads off their stems. For commercial harvesting, there are chamomile rakes that could cost you anywhere from $20 for a simple rake to over $100 for a commercial rake. However, most home operations don't need specialized equipment if you have a comb around. Using a comb, you can easily harvest 10 or more chamomile heads at a time.

Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) is another flower you can harvest using a comb, but the method is slightly different. When you've determined your lavender is ready to harvest, you'll usually start by cutting the stems on new growth.Then, you dry the lavender, usually in bundles. You can use the lavender ornamentally in arrangements while it dries if you want. But when it's time to separate the buds from the stems, doing it by hand is time-consuming. Some people use the pillowcase method, which involves rolling the bundle in fabric, but it can leave stems in the final product that you still need to sort. Using a comb to gently pull the dried flowers away from the stems speeds up the process and reduces the need for sorting stems out after the harvest.