I am passionate about cooking and because of that, I am very passionate about ingredients. If I have the opportunity, I will grow my own spices and herbs. And if I feel like the spices I have access to are not up to my standards, then I’ll try to find a workaround.
Elevating the backyard herb garden:
A lot of people grow fresh basil, thyme, rosemary, and some other herbs, but I took it a step further and decided to start growing my own bay leaves.
The basic reason I did that was because the quality of the leaves that I was getting was frankly awful. They were expensive, and when I opened the bottle, they were dry and brittle and smelled dusty. As we all know, the key to good herbs is the essential oils, and if a bay leaf is totally dried out and brittle, then that means those essential oils are fundamentally gone.
So I ordered a starter bay leaf plant from an online nursery, and I’ve been growing it now for five years, and I have an ample supply of bay leaves whenever I need them.
When the weather starts to turn cold, I bring it inside and overwinter it, and wouldn’t you know that even during the winter it will still produce leaves, just not quite as many as it does during the summer and warmer months. 
How to grow your own bay leaves, step by step:
- Once the plant arrives, replant it into a slightly larger pot with good drainage. I say slightly larger, because if you put it in a huge container, then it will spend all of its time growing roots rather than foliage.
- Once your plant is established, like mine in the picture, then you can start harvesting leaves.
- The most important thing to remember, is that unlike many plants, you only harvest the actual leaf with a bay leaf, and you leave the stem because then additional leaves will grow from that spot.
- Never harvest too many leaves and stress the plant, because it still needs to continue growing, and it needs some leaves to do that.
- Once you’ve cut the leaves, bring them inside to a sunny place and set them on a plate or a paper towel. Turn them over once a day for about a week and then they should be ready to go into a covered glass container, like in the picture above.
And that’s really all there is to it and you can have your own bay leaves whenever you like.
If your looking for a way to use your new bayleaves, they would be perfect in this recipe, Classic French Beef Stew with Red Wine
Fresh vs Dried Bay Leaves
People have asked if you can use the bay leaves fresh and the answer is yes, but the flavor is quite different. I’ve used them both ways, but I prefer them dried for the kind of dishes I prepare. But, feel free to try for yourself and see what you think.