Harvesting Marjoram Herbs
You can start harvesting marjoram herbs when the plant is about 4 inches (10 cm.) tall. This should be before the flowers start to form, when the leaves are at their best. Just pick the leaves as needed and use them fresh. You can brew them into tea, extract their oils for salves, or put them into your food just before you finish cooking to impart a pleasant, mild flavor.
Can You Use Marjoram Flowers?
Marjoram blossoms tend to appear in midsummer as beautiful, delicate clusters in pink, white, and purple. Do marjoram flowers affect harvest? Not completely. You can still pick the leaves, though they won’t taste quite as good. When you have marjoram buds, the best thing to do is to start picking sprigs for drying. Before the buds open, cut some of the stems from the plant (no more than one third of the total leaves) and hang them in a dark airy space. Once they’re dry, pull the leaves from the stems and either crush them or leave them whole to store. Once you have a marjoram plant blooming fully, the flavor of the leaves isn’t going to be as good. It’s still perfectly safe to eat them, though, along with the flowers, which taste like a milder version of the leaves. At this stage both the leaves and the flowers can be brewed into a very relaxing tea. Of course, leaving a few plants to bloom in the garden will entice pollinators. You can also harvest seeds from the spent blooms for more of this delightful herb.
