How to Harvest and Store Jasmine

Jasmine is a wonderful plant and although there are lots of different types, all of them smell delightful. Jasmine can be planted in virtually any garden and it is a climbing plant great for breaking up walls or other solid objects.

Learning how to store and harvest jasmine can help to protect the flowers so that you can enjoy the smell and taste in places other than your garden. Jasmine is actually very easy to cultivate, so here are the steps needed to harvest and store jasmine.

Step 1 - Growing the Jasmine

There are many different varieties of jasmine and you need to carefully choose the right one. Make sure that the variety of jasmine you are attempting to grow is suitable for what you are using it for.

It's important to note that several varieties of Jasmine are poisonous, so you need to learn about these before planting them. If you are going to use these to make herbal tea then you should choose Jasmine tisane or Jasmine sambac.

Step 2 - Harvesting the Jasmine

Once the Jasmine has grown and started to bloom you can then start to harvest the flowers. The best time to harvest the flowers is during the early morning when the flowers are still tightly closed. The flowers open at night, so during the early morning is the best time to harvest the flowers without risking causing any damage to them.

When harvesting Jasmine you can either pull off each individual flower, or alternatively, if you want to dry the flowers out, then it will be much easier to pick a small branch containing the flowers.

Step 3 - Storing the Flowers

Once you have harvested the flowers you will want to know how to store them so that they don't go off. If you have picked the individual flowers then you can do this by putting them in a cool dry place. Alternatively, if you want to dry the jasmine you can tie up bunches of the flowers on stalks and then hang them from the ceiling in a cool dry place. Once the flowers have dried you can then pick the flowers off the branches.

By drying the flowers they will last much longer than other techniques. Just keeping them in a cool dry place will make them last for a few weeks.

Step 4 - Using the Jasmine Flowers

There are lots of different ways that these jasmine flowers can be used. You could use dried flowers as potpourri or to make a nice cup of herbal tea. Recently harvested flowers can be used in oils to create unique tasting and smelling oils.

Jasmine is a very popular scent with most perfumes being based on the smell of jasmine. You can enjoy this smell without having to splash out on a bottle of very expensive perfume.