The Art of Pinching
(Page 2 of 2)
June/July 2004
By Barbara Pleasant
Pinching is a kind thing to do to plants. Most basils are vastly improved by pinching early and often, and the same goes for scented geraniums. Thyme, mints and oreganos can be pinched more casually, by gathering stem tips as you need them in the kitchen. With rosemary and other slow-growing semi-woody herbs, pinch out stems here and there to sculpt plants.
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If you plan to dry herbs, save your pinching and do it in waves, so you harvest handfuls of thyme, marjoram, oregano, or whatever in one fell swoop. This makes the drying process easy to manage, whether you dry the herbs in bunches hung in a warm, airy room, lay them out on screens or dry them in a slow oven. Depending on your climate, these herbs may produce two or more good cuttings in the course of a season. Herbs handled this way are not as pretty as those tended by hand, in pinches, but they are very productive.
Often times you literally can pinch herbs with your fingers, but this time of year I slip a small pair of scissors into my back pocket whenever I visit my herbs. Snipping off stem tips makes clean cuts, which are less traumatic to stems than twisting and pulling. 
Barbara Pleasant is a contributing editor to The Herb Companion and author of several books about gardening, including The Whole Herb (see Bookshelf).
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