Fresh Lavender

FRESH LAVENDER IN SEASON ( JUNE-SEPTEMBER)

You can pick your lavender or have it already picked for you.  The price is the same at $25 per pound for English lavender ( $1.56 per ounce).  There are about 450-600 stems per pound of fresh English lavender.  The French lavender is  $15 per pound( available later June-early July) or $.94 per ounce).  There are about 200-250 stems in a pound of French lavender.  

 

English Lavender 

English lavender blooms all summer.  However the  heavy bloom is in June.  It dries to a beautiful shade of blue-purple and thus makes great dried flowers.  It is also the type of lavender that is most preferred for cooking.  It has shorter and more slender stems and thus will drop somewhat when used as fresh flowers before drying.

 

French lavender

French lavender has a strong glorious fragrance as it has 3 times the essential oil in the buds than the English lavender.  Its stems are much sturdier and longer then the English lavender.  It makes great wreaths, fresh flowers and lavender buds for sachets.  However it does not dry as beautiful of a color as the English lavender does, more of a silver-blue color then a blue purple.   It also has about 20-30% camphor oil in the buds as part of its essential oil so it does not work as well for cooking.   Only about 20% of our lavender is French lavender and we lose all the plants about every 4 years so only about 1 in 3 years do we get a really good