Harvesting Catnip

This year was no exception in my garden, catnip-wise; catnip plants sprouted up all over the garden as a result of my being too slow with the snippers. A word to the wise: catnip is an invasive plant. As Patrick Lima writes in his beautiful book, “Herbs: The Complete Gardener’s Guide” (Firefly Books),

Although we have never planted catnip, it has always been in the garden.

If you don’t cut the plant back before it goes to seed, you will have catnip throughout your garden. If this is what you want, by all means, let those plants flower and go to seed. If not, be prepared to either weed them out, or grow a lot of the stuff.

I first grew catnip not for my cats’ pleasure, but because I used it to mark the little graves of two cats in our yard. I thought it a fit way to honour them. Fortunately we now have two more cats, so having catnip around is a good thing. Farley loves to play with the fresh stems of his very own pot of catnip on the deck.

Today I harvested just one, very large plant. The plant was almost as I am, so about five feet tall! It grew from a seed that got caught on the wind, blown in from those little graves. It was shading some cucumbers, so I thought I’d cut it down.

I can’t bring myself to waste herb clippings, so I’ve bundled and hung all of the stems I cut from that plant in the roof of our gazebo on the deck. They’ll be shaded, have lots of good air circulation, and stay dry.

I think the bunches of catnip look very pretty hanging in the gazebo.

I pushed the hanging bundles as high up as I could, so the dangling tips wouldn’t interfere while we sit here.

I just used regular ol’ garden jute twine to hang them.

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