Harvesting and Storage

This week will discuss different ways of harvesting lavender and how to store it properly.

Harvesting is a manual or mechanical removal of a crops grain or biomass from the field. It is important to know when to harvest and how to store the harvested material properly, to reduce post-harvest losses.

To determine whether the plant is mature or not, it is advisable to check on it every couple of days when the plant is close to reaching maturity. For lavender oil, it is important to harvest when the flowers are starting to open in the lower half. This is usually around end of December and early January in South Africa. The weather should not be too hot and very windy during harvesting since it can result in loss of essential oil through evaporation. On the other hand, cold weather has a negative effect on the ester development, so harvesting has to be done during warmer weather. Lavender for the fresh and dried market can be a week later than for oil production.

If you want to harvest lavender manually, you grab a bunch of stems at their base and use a sickle knife to cut it off.  Afterwards, you can use rubber bands to tie of bundle

Figure 1 Lavender Harvesting (Lavender, 2017)

Figure 2 (Bizon-Ins, 2017)

Harvesting can also be done mechanically like illustrated in Figure 2. The harvester cuts the lavender and moves the cut lavender to the hitched trailer. (Bizon-Ins, 2017)

Figure 3 Lavender Harvest (Lavender, 2017)

It is important to dry Lavender in a dark and dust free place with good ventilation to ensure proper drying. This prevents that the lavender loses his color due to sunlight or that the harvest gets moldy.

 

 

References

Bizon-Ins. (2017). Lavender Harvester. Retrieved from Bizon-Ins: http://www.bizon-ins.com/en/catalog/lavender-harvester/lavender-harvester-mkl-2r-for-trailer

Lavender, E. (2017). Harvesting Lavender Flower. Retrieved from Everything Lavender : http://everything-lavender.com/lavender-flower-harvest.html