As there has been a lot of rain just recently the herbs in my garden have flourished and are ready to harvest sooner than I expected.
I have been researching alternatives to culinary uses and found an article on making herbal incense.
I mentioned in a previous post that I’m a bit over scented candles at the minute. I don’t use air fresheners so I thought a herbal incense might be a different way of introducing fragrance into the house.
I gathered a variety of herbs and dried them in a warm oven.
Once the herbs had completely dried out I ground each one to a powder using a pestle and mortar.
In the days before my twig broom gave me the gift of patience I would have mixed all the herbs together straight away and created an incense that might not actually have worked in terms of fragrance. Today, however, I ground and stored each herb separately so that I could get a clear idea of the aromas each would produce when placed on hot charcoal.
The lemon balm was the biggest disappointment. As a fresh herb it has a strong, lemony, spicy smell. Once dried it didn’t smell of anything. Slightly frustrating as the plant escaped from its pot a few years ago and the garden is full of it. Maybe I dried it out too thoroughly. It was quite black when it came out of the oven. I will try again before I give up on lemon balm.
As for the other herbs, they each gave off their own distinctive smell when a pinch was added to the charcoal.
So now it was time to start creating a blend of the dried herbs. The rosemary scent had been very strong so I used a bit less of this in my blend. I used roughly half a teaspoon and mixed it with a teaspoon of lavender, thyme and sandalwood powder.
I lit another charcoal disc and covered it with my incense blend. The smell was, I have to say, just wonderful I could definitely pick out rosemary and lavender and the thyme added a grassy top note. However, within a couple of minutes the incense had burned completely away.
I had an initial sense that I had blended time and patience in with my herbal incense for not much of a reward. However, never underestimate green magic!
It made perfect sense to me when I went back into the room an hour or so later and the aroma of the incense was still there. It had mellowed and I couldn’t really pick out the thyme and but the rosemary and lavender had left behind an almost spicy scent. I’m guessing that as these two plants are more woody and robust some of their essential oils remain after drying.
I am so happy to have discovered this new way to use the herbs from my garden.
I am going to give the lemon balm another try and dry some lavender flowers to add to my next blend.
I have also thought about an incense for winter. My husband always says Christmas really begins for him with the scent of bay leaves and cloves coming from the kitchen. So maybe a blend of these with some dried Night Scented Stock flowers would be a good combination to try.