There is a great Herbal Hive challenge: The Herb You're MOST THANKFUL For!! running now and lemon balm could easily be my entry, but this post is about sharing an almost completely catastrophic melissa harvest and what I learned from it. Plus the first entry of the contest by @annafenix is already about lemon balm and I can totally understand why!
Melissa officinalis, commonly known as lemon balm, is one of the most interesting herbs. It has a magic effect even just by touching it and breathing in its uplifting aroma. It is my cheerleader in a way :)
Cultivating it is not very demanding, it is a rather hardy one. A pleasure to have in the garden, it loves full sun, but also does ok in partial shade. Doesn't need anything in particular.
Photos from our herb garden. Happy to confirm that these guys are indeed very resistant as they survived with minimum water during hot September and October that we were away.
But, and there is a big but here, lemon balm is quite demanding when it comes to harvesting. You might have already heard and never payed attention, or you might don't know this caprice and I am here to warn you :)
I was super happy for the first ever gathering of the beautiful green leaves just before the plants would start to blossom. This is the perfect time to gather your herbs as their medicinal qualities are at the highest point.
A photo just before we plant them to the soil when they were teeny tiny. Maybe you can imagine now why this first crop was so emotional. It was the first crop of our herb garden project :)
Mistake number one
Lemon balm does not love procrastination and must be dried quickly. Or what? It turns brown and loses many of its medicinal qualities. And that sucks...
On the other hand, I am the queen of procrastination! Ok, on my defense I was also very tired.
Since I knew it, I spread the crop on a huge sheet so that the brunches wouldn't touch each other much and they could breath, but didn't actually work. The next day 70% of the harvest was almost brown and was getting worse and worse really quickly. This is the main reason I have no photos of this phase, I panicked and started to make bunches right away and as I was making them even the very green leaves were turning to brown in no time. Disaster! I had never seen anything like this before.
I managed to save some, more than 90% of the crop was ruined to be honest.
The earthworms had a good time though...
Mistake number two: I wanted to make a lemon balm oil to make beeswax cream later.
It never crossed my mind to check the weather forecast. I prepared my jar noticing that it is a rather cloudy day, very unusual for that time of year*.
The oil needs to be under the hot sun for a month and it was cloudy without any sun ray for about three days. Fortunately it was not ruined.
Olive oil must cover all the parts of the plant in the jar otherwise it can turn brown and get mold.
Conclusions
When you cut lemon balm, you must hung it to dry within the next few hours.
When you need sun to make herbal oil, you need to check if it is the right time to do it or maybe wait a few days :)
Sometimes I get tired of making new mistakes all the time even on basic stuff, but this is also why gardening and herbalism can never ever be boring. Every project feels like starting from scratch, a new surprise, a new emotion.
At the end the oil turned out to be fine! The beeswax cream is still on the list with the projects :)
I don't go anywhere without this cream in summer, it is amazing with mosquito bites and also works well as a repellant.
Lemon balm in the form of oil or cream is great for insect bites and skin irritations (itching, infections, wounds, burns).
(This paragraph was added thanks to the precious comment of dear @kesityu.fashion!)
*This project took place in July, but since then many things have happened, so I post it now. It could be useful for someone at the Southern hemisphere maybe! I made it all wrong even though I knew all about it in theory!
So I will remember from now on when saying "Hey, I am ready to do some lemon balm work, it is not a big deal" that it might be at the end :)
Wish you all the best luck with your herb projects!
Hopefully I will come back soon with an entry for the new challenge :)
If you would like to know more about me this is my introduction post.