There is snow in the mountains and frost on the valley floor along the Columbia River here in the North West and it is time to harvest what the roots have in store.
Today some friends and I harvested Valerian officinalis from my garden. Tahnee is girling the camera for us. It is 38 degrees and as usual I can't find my gloves but the rain is holding off nicely.
Josh tried to dig a wide circle around the Valerian roots. Valerian doesn't have a tap root system and most of the roots are not terrible deep. Some roots always get cut off. Some of them grow back.
The easiest way I know to get the extra dirt off at this point is to drop the clump several times on the ground. This loosens a lot of soil.
Once you have smelled Valerian in any of it's forms you will always know when you have harvested the right plant!
We choose to harvest in winter after the first frost and in the last 1/4 of the moon because the roots are their healthiest. They have stored all they need to get through winter.
We place the roots in a bowl of water in the garden to start rinsing the soil away. We want roots clean of soil but scrubbing the roots removes too much. Often the best nutrient load in a plant is right under it's peel where contact with soil takes place. For fruit the contact with the sun gives the best nutrition.
We empty the rinse water in the garden. We give another rinse and we are ready to take them in the kitchen.
Now we can rinse in the sink and avoid dirt in the pipes.
When I make a tincture fresh herbs I fill the bottle with the herb then fill it again with vodka. This I put in a blender and pulverize the best I can.
After it is chopped the best the machine can do pour the chopped roots and vodka into bottles and label them.
It is important to put what and when on your label.
Valerian Root vodka date
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