Drying rosemary

My rosemary plant is looking nice and healthy with lots of lilac flowers so I've decided to give it a little prune and dry some rosemary.

Rosemary plant

After giving them a good rinse, I tried to use the excess heat of the oven after cooking over a few days to dry my herbs.

Rosemary on baking sheet

I read that rosemary loses its flavour if dried too quickly so if oven drying it, it needs to be at around 60-80C, and turned once a while to even out the drying process.  But I was impatient and put them in whilst the oven was too hot and my first batch came out too dark.

So picked a second lot... 

Freshly picked rosemary

And this time decided to use the old fashion method of air drying them hanging them they upside down using my handy clothes peg device.

Air dried rosemary

After about 2 weeks, I began stripping them off the bark and took out any brown bits leaving just the green leaves and violet flowers which I thought looked very pretty.

Sorting out the dried rosemary bits

I then made origami packets and gave them away to some friends.

Origami packets