Gadenin日本語Get the appYoung leaves only
This is the single thing to understand about picking mugwort. The soft, pale, silver-backed leaves at the top of a young shoot in spring are aromatic and pleasant. Leaves from a stem that has run up to full height are tough, dark, fibrous and unpleasantly bitter, and no amount of preparation fixes them.
The window in spring is short, perhaps four to six weeks from the first shoots reaching six inches (15 cm) until the stems begin to elongate. Pick heavily during it rather than taking a few leaves at a time, because the quality drops fast once elongation starts.
The change is easy to see once you know to look. A shoot worth picking has short internodes and pale, softly felted leaves that yield when you fold one. On a shoot that has run up, the internodes are an inch or more apart and the leaf feels papery and stiff between the fingers.
A second harvest from the summer cut
Cut the whole clump back to about a third of its height in early summer and it responds with a flush of soft basal shoots within two to three weeks. Those shoots are nearly as good as the spring growth and give you a second harvest that would not otherwise exist.
The same cut delays flowering, so it does two jobs at once. If the plant runs up again afterwards, a second cut gives a smaller third flush, though by late summer the priority shifts to removing flower stems rather than picking.
Take no more than about half the clump at any one picking in the plant's first year. From the second year onwards a hard cut does it no harm at all.
How to pick and what to leave
Cut whole shoot tips with scissors just above a pair of leaves rather than stripping individual leaves off a stem. The plant branches from that node and the next flush comes back thicker.
| Part of the plant | Take it or leave it | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Top four to six inches (10 to 15 cm) of a young shoot | Take | Soft, aromatic, best of the plant |
| Silver-backed leaves low on a young stem | Take | Still tender before the stem elongates |
| Dark leaves on a tall stem | Leave | Coarse and bitter, will not improve |
| Anything on a stem carrying buds | Leave | The plant has redirected everything into flowering |
| Flower stems | Cut and bin | Pollen is a hay fever trigger and seed follows within weeks |
Drying and storing
Pick on a dry morning after the dew has lifted and before the sun has been on the plant for long. Do not wash the leaves unless they are visibly soiled, because water on the leaf slows drying and turns the color a dull brown.
- Bunch and hang Tie small bunches of six to eight shoots, loose enough for air to move through, and hang them upside down somewhere shaded, dry and airy. Direct sun bleaches the leaf and drives off the aroma.
- Judge it by feel It takes five days to two weeks depending on humidity. They are ready when a leaf crumbles cleanly between finger and thumb and the stem snaps rather than bends. Anything still leathery will go moldy in a jar.
- Strip and store Strip the dry leaves off the stems and store them whole in a sealed jar away from light. Whole leaves keep their aroma far longer than crushed ones. Crush only what you are about to use.
Dried mugwort holds its scent for about a year. If a jar smells of hay rather than of the plant, it has been kept too warm or too bright.
Keeping a record of the window
The picking window moves by a couple of weeks from year to year with the weather, so a written date is more use than a rule of thumb. Note the day the first shoots reach six inches (15 cm), the day you first find a stem that has started to elongate, and the day of your summer cut.
After two seasons those three dates tell you exactly how long your own plant gives you and when to have the drying space ready. It is the difference between catching the good leaves and finding them already coarse.