The harvest season for woodruff is somewhat more limited than for many other herbs and spices. This also influenced the name of the woodruff or May punch made with it.
When is the best time to harvest woodruff?
Woodruff should ideally be harvested before flowering, between mid-April and mid-May. If you grow woodruff yourself, it is recommended that you only harvest in the second year so as not to disturb the plant's development.
Determine the ideal time for harvesting
It's not without reason that the punch enriched with woodruff flavor is also called Maibowle. It is traditionally only prepared in spring by briefly soaking fresh woodruff. The reason for this is that woodruff should actually only be harvested before its flowering period begins, between mid-April and mid-May. In the forest, you can recognize the woodruff even before the white, cross-shaped flowers bloom by its stems, which are a maximum of 30 centimeters long, with the lance-shaped leaves arranged in circular tiers. The plants often form extensive carpets in the sheltered shade of trees and bushes, as they reproduce not only by self-sowing seeds, but also by their root network.
How long to wait before harvesting home-grown woodruff?
There are a few things you should keep in mind when sowing woodruff in your own garden:
- The sowing season is at the end of the year, as woodruff is a frost germinator
- as a dark germinator, woodruff should be thinly covered with soil when sowing
- a uniform moisture level during the germination phase is absolutely necessary for the forest plant
Basically, if you sow from September onwards, the first woodruff stalks can be harvested in spring at the earliest. However, you should be aware that this will seriously disrupt the development of roots and plants in a newly planted location. It is therefore better to only collect woodruff from a newly created location in the second year.
Plan the woodruff harvest based on usage
You should coordinate the harvest of fresh woodruff with the planned use. You will get optimal taste results if you hang the cut stems upside down and let them wilt briefly before further processing. For longer-term storage, you can also dry or freeze the woodruff. If you need the plant for Maibowle at short notice, you can also achieve the aroma development by briefly freezing it.
Tips & Tricks
Harvesting the woodruff before flowering is recommended, as the coumarin content in the plants then increases relatively sharply. Woodruff can still be used in summer or autumn, but it should then be dosed even more sparingly.
