Fresh herbs are so delicious. You can enjoy them as early as mid spring from your garden or all year long growing them indoors. There is nothing better then a beautiful warm spring day, going out to your garden or farmers market and getting a few bunches of your favorite herbs.

What happens when the season change, the first frost is looming and you have large bushes of herbs in the ground. They brought you so much joy to all of your cooking spring, summer, and most of the autumn. Do you just leave them to freeze, and die on the stem? Hoping they come back next spring.

Of course you don’t waste all that you were blessed with. You choose to take the proactive approach and you chop the herbs a few inches from the base. Before you chop you tie a snug knot a few inches above where you plan to make your cut.

Now you have a huge bouquet of herbs. Find a dark place with some air flow and hang them to dry. Depending on how thick your bunch is, it could take anywhere from a few weeks to dry completely to a few months.

Maybe you are a little more techie and you use your air fryer’s setting to dehydrate your herbs, in smaller batches of course. Then again you might take the plunge and invest in a large freeze dryer dehydrator machine and get the whole bushel of herbs done a few hours.

That’s great now it’s time to store you bounty. You want to do this right. You made sure everything is dry so no chance for mold, ewe gross. Then you have to decide, do you want the leaves only, or do you keep the stems too?

A decision is made and you choose to keep only the leaves. How should they be stored? In a zip bag? No! The oils in the herbs could cause leaching from the plastic, so that rules out plastic jars as well. Not many options left. Brown paper bags, or glass jars? Let’s go with glass jars! Dark ones are best to shield the herbs from the light. No dark glass jars laying around. No worries just put them in a drawer. Hmmm, jars to big for a drawer? A closet is a great cool dark place to store your freshly dehydrated herbs.

Maybe you want to display your beautiful herbs on a shelf out where you can see them. Sure you can do that. Just keep in mind your herbs will not last as long out in the light.

There are many options for jars. No need to run out to the store for new jars. You can use empty pickle jars, carefully washed and thoroughly dried. Old mason jars are great as well. Get creative with your jars, use different sizes, shapes, and colors. This will make your herb display shelf look amazing.