Christmas (Prep) In July
If you all are avid blog readers, as I am, you will have noticed that almost every blogger has done up a post about Christmas in July.
So, not to be outdone, here is my simple version of the holidays in summer. Christmas in July for me means a bit of prepping, snipping, and drying. No crafting right now while you are busy watering, weeding, growing, and harvesting. No decorating or shopping, just a wee bit of time in your garden, deadheading and pinching, which you are doing anyways.
July is the perfect time to gather flowers and herbs for your Christmas crafting later on in the year, when the garden has been put to bed for winter.
Here are some ideas of what to gather....
Lavender - Beautiful in the garden, easy to care for, deer and bunny resistant, drought resistant, too... but best of all, lavender has that lovely soothing fragrance that makes it perfect for crafting. I love the English lavenders best for harvesting flower stems, either Hidcote or Munstead.
Use lavender flower buds to maker soap, sachets. bath salts, candles, wands, body butter, salves... So many things you can do with those super pretty, scented lavender blooms.
The very best time to harvest lavender is when it is still in the tight bud stage, before the blossoms open up. If you missed that window this month and they are already open, or maybe you wanted to leave your flowers for the bees this month, not to worry, we still have lots of time!
Cut those flower stalks off now, taking the stems down where the lavender plant starts to get leafy and bushy, don't cut down the foliage. This pruning/dead-heading will promote more flowers to grow in a few weeks time, blossoms that you can harvest towards the tail end of summer.
Don't have lavender but want some for gifting? Or to bring into your bedroom for that calming scent? The garden shops will have them in various sizes. Pick up a gallon pot or two and you will still get plenty of blossoms for gifting this winter. Grow the lavender in pots or plant them up into the garden in late summer.
Calendula - The more you deadhead these lovely blossoms, the more flowers it will make. Keep on harvesting!
Calendula has antiseptic and antibacterial properties, plus is soothing for your skin, which makes it one of the most used flowers for bath and body products. The flower petals are used for making salves, soaps, and balms.
Calendula comes in so many wonderful hues of orange and yellow, plus creams and pinks, too. They are proficient self seeders, so if you plant them once, you will have them forever. They are not aggressive or hard to get rid of though, so if you don't like where they are growing in spring, is easy to move them to another spot or just toss them in the compost bin.
Roses - Pretty to look at, wonderfully scented, I love to gather rose petals.
I mainly just dry them to pop into small bowls as potpourri with a couple of cinnamon sticks, but you can dry the blossoms and make them into wreaths, or pretty bath bombs or bath salts. Put the dried petals into small sachets for under one's pillow or dresser drawer, or make into scented oils or rose water which is wonderful and calming for your skin. You can also make them into tea, add them to salads, and even rose infused vinegar.
Plus, they are great for tossing at the bridal couple, much prettier (and softer) than rice ; ) We used dried flower petals at my daughter's weeding a few years back.
Those are my favourite flowers to gather for gifting, but there are so many more that you can harvest from geraniums, to cornflowers and statice.
Herbs and flowers for teas... If you want to make your own herbal teas for yourself and for gifting, there are so many flowers and herbs that you can gather from your own organic garden.
Mint and lime balm are in the picture, lemon balm and lemon verbena are also great for teas, as is rosemary, pineapple sage, fennel, chamomile, echinacea, roses, rosehips, even catnip and beebalm.
Herb scented candles are super easy to make. I made these ones with some rosemary and added a bit of lemon verbena oil to make the smell even yummier.
More ideas...
Gather herbs for culinary purposes, give your friends the gift of dried basil, rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage, marjoram, mint, etc... from your own healthy, happy, organic plants.
Or... dehydrate your garlic for yummy tasting garlic powder, or pick up some pretty Pink Himalayan Sea Salt to make your own fresh garlic salt or onion salt. Dehydrate peppers to make paprika, cayenne, or chili powder. Even easier is to just make a great rub with a mix of crushed peppers.
Here are the links for some lovely smudge sticks that you can make from your own garden beds, too. I am super big on daily herbal home cleansing. Might not help, but certainly does not hurt and makes me feel amazing. I have not yet made my own smudges but there are so many ideas on these two links that I need to give it a try.
Plan and gather your goodies now, in July, for gifting at Christmas.
Wishing you a lovely time prepping for Christmas in July!
Happy Harvesting ~ Tanja
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