How to Harvest and Dry Calendula Flowers
Many of you know that calendula flowers are one of my favorite flowers to have in my vegetable garden. They are beautiful and a wonderful companion plant to many vegetables. But calendula isn’t just great when it is in the garden reducing pest pressure and luring in pollinators. It is a wonderful medicinal flowering herb to harvest and dry to use in many ways. Read on for tips on how to harvest and dry calendula flowers.
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Calendula Flowers in the Garden
Calendula is an easy to grow flower and medicinal herb. If you haven’t yet grown it, you should try it this next garden season.
There are so many benefits to the calendula flower. It is a pop of sunny and bright among the garden veggies, it has a nice long growing season, and it can even be eaten along with being used medicinally.
It isn’t a flower that I have really seen much for sale in the nursery. Yet, it is quite easy to grow from seed.
Once you have your seedlings in the ground, it won’t be long until you are benefiting from this sunny little flower in your garden.
Plant it all around as a companion plant. Here is more info on calendula and other flowers to make sure you get into your vegetable garden.
Calendula, also known as pot marigold, can be used for more than just human enjoyment. I love to pick the flowers and give them to the chickens when there are a lot of extras blooming. They will get the same benefits as we do when eating them. They are also great in the nesting boxes fresh or dried as an insect repellent.
Benefits of Calendula Flowers
One reason that I believe that every garden should have calendula growing in it is due to all the good things you can do with the flowers. Not only are they beautiful, but they provide so many benefits to your health if harvested and dried.
Calendula is totally edible. You can remove the petals either fresh or dried and add them to food and drinks such as scrambled eggs, soups, and salads. It’s a great immunity booster.
The list is almost endless with how calendula can help you, but here are some of the best parts:
- Full of skin healing anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory properties
- Anti-viral
- Anti-fungal
- Supports the immune and lymph systems
- Immunity booster
- Gentle – can even be used for babies (diaper rash) in most cases
- Eases inflammation and redsness in skin
Who wouldn’t want the benefits from that list?
Along with eating the petals fresh in food, most people dry the calendula flowers and petals to be used in teas. The flowers can also be dried and then soaked in oil. After the oil is properly infused, you will be able to make salves and lip balms.
Drinking calendula tea is good for all the above reasons listed and especially the skin. It is also said to help with menstrual cramping when used regularly as a tea.
Used as a salve, it can help with multiple skin conditions such as sunburn, scars, stretch marks, dry patches, and more. We love having calendula salve in our medicine cabinet.
Hop on over here for more reasons to grow calendula in your garden.
How to Harvest Calendula Flowers
Calendula plants produce a lot of flowers and will continue to produce the more you pick the flowers from them. So instead of waiting until they are past their prime and having to deadhead them, harvest at their peak to use in other ways.
Pretty much all herbalists agree on the best time to pick herbs and medicinal flowers. Mid morning is the time! That way the flowers are open and the dew should be gone by that point too.
The flowers you pick should be young and fresh and just open. You can leave any of the older flowers on the plant to be enjoyed by both the pollinators and yourself. When they are done with blooming, they can be left for seed. You can let them dry out and fall to the ground to reseed themselves or pick when they are dry and save the seeds to be planted again the next spring.
When I am harvesting, I usually just snap off the tops with my fingers/fingernails. You can also use a pair of garden scissors and trim right under the bud of the flower. You do not need to keep any of the stem.
Drying Your Calendula Flowers
After picking the calendula flowers, bring them inside. You will want to lay them out in a single layer. I like to use the trays from my dehydrator to lay them out with the flower petal side down.
Once I have them all on trays I put the trays into my dehydrator. Depending on the weather, I will turn on my dehydrator to the lowest setting or leave it off with the doors open. I want them to dry out completely 100 percent! So usually I will turn it on and keep an eye on the flowers, checking to see how dry they are.
I have this food dehydrator that my husband got me for Christmas a few years ago. I have liked this model, but there are a lot of choices out there.
If you do not have a dehydrator, you can also just lay them out on some newspaper, a tea towel, old screens, or other flat surface they won’t stick to or be bothered by kids or pets.
100 Percent Dry
You want to make sure that your calendula flowers are completely dried out before the next step. If there is any moisture left in them, they can mold or rot and will not be usable.
Once they are all dried out, you can take them and place them into glass jars. At this point you can decide if you want to take out just the petals or leave the whole flower. I usually leave the whole flower.
You can then have the jars of dried calendula flowers for tea or submerge some in oil to make into salve in a few weeks.
You won’t regret harvesting and drying out calendula flowers from your garden this year.
Other Blog Posts You Might Enjoy
The Best Flower Seeds to Save for Beginners
A Guide to Winter Seed Sowing for Gardeners
8 Reasons to Grow Calendula in Your Garden
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