hi our video today is about the herb time times are a very large family of herbs and some of the most common varieties of time include French time English time German kind caraway thyme and lemon thyme they they either grow in a very dense carpet about six to eight inches tall like this women spread via little roots dense root system or they make about a one and a half foot clump and and they are the ones that grow very very short like this are real suited to the rock garden there is there are rocks in there here but it looks really pretty along a rock garden and in England they plant it between paving stones so that when it stepped upon it releases a nice wonderful scent now time can be propagated or multiplied in several ways probably the the two ways to get the most herbs are either by root separation or dividing the roots or by cuttings and you can also grow them from seeds but if you do grow them from seeds it's going to take you about a year to get a substantial stand of time so what I suggest is to either get cutting from a friend that you can root or or by your initial plant at a nursery okay now I'm going to show you how to propagate or make more plants by root divisions for root division you want to first just pull your pick your plant up a little and kind of leave them in it because there's going to be so you can take to determine exactly where the next root is okay the next screwed on this one is right here I don't know if you can see that and so what you'd want to do is use your shovel and dig down right here about six to eight inches deep and dig this piece up and that's how you would do a root divisions now my preferred method is to take cuttings and to route the cuttings I take a pair of scissors and then I cut like six inch long pieces of time now this is just flowered not long ago so it has some string you kind of pieces on here where some flowers where you can see a little bit of a flower right there that's remaining so get a nice green soft new piece that hasn't just flowered let's see hard to find one that's about six inches tall it's license okay here's a pretty good one take your cutting like that and then strip off the last few inches off of leaves off the bottom and all and then run your fingernail along the edge again so all these places where you remove to leaf is a potential place where a root could emerge now put your piece of thyme in water in a clear glass or plastic container and now you can set it either on a window seal or or you can even route it outside if the last frost is over just make sure if the water turns dark to reap to refresh it with new water and and also just make sure the water doesn't evaporate and in a few weeks roots will emerge on the time and then when the roots emerge you can then transplant it into the garden here's some time that I rooted actually a couple of months ago it needs to be replanted and it's grown a couple of inches too and so I grew these from cuttings and there's lots of little cuttings there are lots of little cuttings that are rooted so what I want to do is separate just a few of them out be very gentle and pull them apart you probably don't want to wait until they're this matted when planting your plants so that's probably a good amount for the first plant that's a few sprigs together and now I want to now I can either plant this directly in the garden or in a pot and like I said it's really nice along the front of a border because it makes a nice carpet or in a rock garden it's very beautiful okay to plant your time after the transplant or your cuttings have rooted you just want to dig a hole right in the garden so you can hit it put it in the garden or a pot and you just and now water it after you've transplanted it and it's always good to pour a little bit of the water that it was rooting in back on top of it as that helps it get acclimated better all right and that's how to plant time from your transplants from your your cuttings so harvest in use time you can cut leaves any time of the year that you need it just all you have to do is just cut off what you need and also if you want to take a big harvest to make to dry a lot of it at once you want to take that big harvest when the plant is blooming and also when you when you cut your your time for harvesting or if you're using it's ideal to cut it in the morning because that's when it has the highest percentage of essential oils present so if you cut it then you get the highest amount of essential oils in your herb so it has more flavor and more taste the best way to use thyme is fresh but you can also dry it or freeze it or put it in little baggies in your refrigerator this way you'll always have fresh fresh thyme that you won't have to run back out to the garden and get more another thing I like to do too is to put my time in a little jar of water like this and just leave it in the window seal until I need it that way I have some nice watch time ready to use so for fresh cooking anytime that I wanted and well save me another trip to the garden and the way you can dry thyme is you can simply take the take the time with this and you can bundle it up with like a twist I or a or a rubber band and then you can just hang it in your kitchen and a bundle to dry and when it feels very dry to the touch that there's no no obvious moisture left then you can get the remaining leaves off of the off the stems and I don't have some time that I have dried that I have rosemary and do the same thing you do it the same way so once it's thoroughly dried I just do it like this I'm kind of just using my fingers to make the dry parts come off you do this until all of the rosemary is off or all of the time is off see now you have the dried herbs to put in your jars and to use at a latter time for cooking so in the way and you want to bottle these and glass jars that are either dark-colored or clear and put them in a cool dry place to see use for later and here's how you use here's how you use time for cooking when you use fresh thyme and you really want to use it fresh whenever possible you want to remove the leaves has these teeny-weeny little bitty leaves on a little woody stalk so you want to remove the leaves I go the opposite way from the end of the stalk just remove the leaves and you'll have to just pick off the last ones on the end and just get the leaves like this so just remove the leaves from the little woody stalks as best you can and then to release some of the flavor of time you want to cut those little leaves up just cut them like this you can also grind them for a second and your mortar and pestle if you want so now that really releases the flavor of time and time is a very very strong smelling herb so you want to use time early on in the cooking process so it will balance out the taste of time and give it and let it let it not become so strong but become aromatic and infuse your your cooking the best and as far as using time it's been used in Greek and Mediterranean cuisine for centuries and it goes very well with most meat egg egg dishes garlic and tomato dishes stuffings soups and marinades and dry thyme is a great addition to pizza toppings in fact it's a it's in all the pizza topping mixtures and tom has also traditionally been paired with parsley for poultry stuff for this last section I wanted to include some footage of when the time was blooming a few weeks ago time blooms in mid spring when it's in bloom it attracts honeybees as you can see this is just full of honey bees and the flowers are just amazingly beautiful it's just a carpet of flowers and it's so nice to see so many honey bees especially since their numbers have been declining also the honey made from the pollen of time it was considered to be the very best honey by the ancient Athenians and another little tidbit of info about time the main chemical in time that it's his medicinal chemical is called daemul or thyme all th ymo l time all has antiseptic properties and has been used by the ancients forever for these properties and still being used today in products such as Listerine and a septic mouthwash you you