Gadenin日本語Get the appThe leaves are ready months before the seed
Most people grow anise for the seed and never touch the foliage, which wastes half the crop. The rounded, toothed lower leaves are usable from about six weeks after sowing, long before there is any sign of a flower. They carry the same sweet anise scent in a milder, greener form and are excellent raw in salads, scattered over carrots or fish, or stirred into a soft cheese. They are also the only part of the plant a short season garden can rely on.
Take leaves sparingly if you intend to harvest seed, because the plant fills its heads from that foliage. A few outer lower leaves from each plant across a stand costs you nothing, but stripping plants bare in early summer gives a light seed harvest later. Decide early which plants are for leaf and which are for seed.
- Cut the outer lower leaves, leave the center Snip individual leaf stalks at the base with scissors. Never pull, because pulling rocks the taproot and checks a plant that has no time to spare.
- Take no more than a fifth of the foliage from a seed plant The head is filled from the leaves. A plant kept in full leaf gives noticeably heavier, better filled umbels than one that has been picked over.
- Use the leaves the day you cut them Anise leaf wilts fast and loses its scent within a day. It does not dry usefully. Stand cut stems in water in the fridge if you must hold them overnight.
- Eat the thinnings Thinning the stand to its final spacing pulls perfectly good young plants, and that is the sweetest leaf of the season.
Anise leaf is at its best before the flower stem rises. Once the upper leaves have gone thread like, the flavor of the foliage thins out and your attention should move to the heads.
Green seed is a harvest in its own right
Between flowering and drying there is a two or three week window when the seed is full sized but still soft and green. Green anise seed is intensely aromatic, sweeter and less resinous than the dried spice, and it is something you can only have if you grow the plant. Strip a few umbels between finger and thumb and use the seed the same day in baking, poached fruit, or infused into cream.
This window matters enormously in a short season. If your summer is going to run out before the seed dries, green seed is the harvest you can actually count on. Watch for it deliberately rather than waiting and hoping, and take the green crop from the last flowering heads even when you are drying the earlier ones.
| Stage | How it looks | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Flowers open | Flat white umbels, no seed | Leave for the insects. Nothing to pick |
| Seed set, soft and green | Full sized, pale green, squashes easily | Use fresh the same day. Strongest aroma of all |
| Turning | Green fading to gray, still slightly soft | Cut whole heads now for drying |
| Ripe and dry on the plant | Gray brown, ridged, shedding when touched | Cut immediately or you will lose it to the soil |
| Overripe | Heads empty, seed on the ground | Too late. Note the date and cut earlier next year |
Cutting the seed heads at the right moment
Anise ripens unevenly. A single plant carries a main head that flowered first and side heads that follow it by a week or more, so there is never a moment when everything is ready together. The rule is to cut when the first seeds on a head have gone from green to gray brown and the earliest are beginning to shed, which is usually four to six weeks after that head flowered. Waiting for the whole plant to look finished means the best seed is already on the soil.
Cut whole heads with a few inches of stem, in the morning after the dew has dried, and drop them straight into a paper bag heads first so nothing is lost in transit. Handle them as little as possible. If frost threatens while heads are still green, cut everything and finish it under cover: seed that is close to ripe will continue to fill and dry on the cut stem, while seed left out to freeze is lost.
- Go over the stand two or three times, not once Take the main heads first and come back for the side heads a week or two later. A single clearance either wastes ripe seed or harvests green seed that will never dry properly.
- Cut dry, in the morning Damp heads packed into a bag go moldy within days. Wait until the dew has burned off, and never cut on the day of rain.
- Bag the heads immediately Ripe anise seed sheds at a touch. Hold the paper bag under the head, cut the stem, and let the head fall in. Do not carry loose heads across the garden.
- Beat the frost if you have to Cut every remaining head the day before the first frost is forecast and hang them under cover. Partly ripe seed on a cut stem finishes far better than seed left on a frosted plant.
Anise seed is small, oval, ridged and gray brown, and it stays attached to a short stalk. Do not confuse the harvest with star anise, which comes from an unrelated tree and looks nothing like it.
Drying, cleaning and storing
Hang the bagged heads upside down somewhere warm, dry and airy for two to three weeks, until the stems snap rather than bend and the seed rattles out when you shake the bag. A shed, a spare room or an airing cupboard all work. Do not use heat above about 100F (38C), which drives off the volatile oil that is the whole reason for growing the plant.
Then shake the bag hard, tip the contents onto a tray and separate seed from chaff. Winnow outdoors on a breezy day, or pour the mixture repeatedly between two bowls in front of a fan on its lowest setting: the seed falls and the lighter chaff blows away. Store the cleaned seed whole in an airtight jar in the dark. Whole anise keeps its aroma for two to three years, while ground anise is noticeably flat within a few months, so grind only what you need.
| Step | What to do | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Hanging | Bagged heads upside down, warm, dry and airy | 2 to 3 weeks |
| Testing | Stems snap, seed rattles free of the head | Check weekly |
| Threshing | Shake the bag hard, then rub the heads by hand | Minutes |
| Cleaning | Winnow in a breeze or in front of a low fan | Minutes |
| Storing | Whole seed, airtight jar, cool and dark | Good for 2 to 3 years |
| Grinding | Grind small amounts as needed | Use within weeks |
Set aside the largest, best filled seed from your earliest ripening plants and label it separately as next year's sowing seed. Anise seed sown the following spring germinates well; seed kept a further year is noticeably weaker.
What to record about the harvest
Anise is a race against the season, and the numbers that decide whether you win it are all dates. Two seasons of records will tell you whether your garden can finish the crop, how much earlier you need to sow, and whether a sheltered bed genuinely gains you the two weeks it appears to.
- Record the date the first umbel opened Ripe seed follows by four to six weeks. Set against your first autumn frost date, this single figure tells you in midsummer whether the crop will finish or not.
- Record the date of the first seed cut and the last The spread between them is how uneven your stand ripened. A long spread means you should cut in more passes next season.
- Record the weight of clean dry seed and which bed it came from Yield per bed, compared across positions and seasons, is the only honest way to judge whether the warm sheltered corner is worth giving up to anise.
- Record whether frost caught any heads green If it did, you sowed too late or your season is too short. Either sow two weeks earlier next year or plan the crop around leaf and green seed.