How To Trim Herbs

I'm often surprised when I ask someone who I'm cooking with to go trim some herbs from my garden, and they don't know how to do that. Then I remember that I had to learn how to trim herbs too, and I learned it from a book, so I laugh, and go trim the plants with them. Its funny how intimidating a small task can be without the power of knowledge.

There are several ways of ripping plants apart, but if you want to take some plant material while still leaving the plant in good form to keep producing more leaves, then you better listen up. There are three usual ways that I trim herbs, we'll call them 'snipping,' 'pinching,' and 'cutting off.'

Snipping is taking a section of stem, of any length, right above a 'joint.' A joint being a place where either leaves sprout from the stem or two stems sprout off. Snipping encourages the growth of the plant to be directed into the joint, resulting in longer stems and more leaves. Best for the beginning to middle of the growing season, or for slow growing woody stemmed herbs.

Pinching off is taking the top growing leaves, or the leaders. This is best performed at the beginning of the growing season and makes for really bushy plants, and the top leaves are the youngest and most delicious, a nice thing to serve to your favourite people. Can be used on green or woody stemmed herbs.

Pinching is also the way of taking leaves off of trees like this Bay Laurel, except I take the leaf from the bottom instead of the top because I want the tree to be nice, tall and thin, right now, instead of bushy.

Cutting off is the way to harvest green stemmed herbs like Parsley, Cilantro and even Arugula and Lettuces. You cut the stems an inch of two above the soil, and in a little amount of time they will grow back, this method is commonly called cut-and-come-again. This also the way I do my final Basil harvest, when the season is done and I want to make my last Pesto.

Trying to consider how plants will repair themselves afterwards should be enough to guide you in how to harvest from them.