Spruce tips come and go in a flash in the late spring and early summer.

What many people don’t know is that they hold valuable vitamins like Vitamin C, Vitamin A, Potassium, Magnesium.

But spruce tip harvesting is very seasonal and must be harvested at the right time.

Here we will discuss the best way to harvest spruce tips and a fast recipe to infuse your spruce tips into a simple syrup.

Let’s Dive In…

Harvesting Spruce Tips

Spruce tips are the baby branches of the tree.

You can harvest off of pine, fir, or spruce.

They appear on the trees during late spring or very early summer.

You can harvest very young spruce tips or slightly more mature spruce tips; either way the stem should be tender, and the color be bright green.

ETHICS are important when harvesting!

Do not harvest all the spruce tips off one tree.

This greatly stunts the growth of that tree, which affects the health of the tree in the long run and will affect future harvests.

If you have a tree you are cutting down afterwards, than you may harvest them all. But if you want this resource to come again each year, you MUST harvest ethically.

GENERAL RULE FOR HARVESTING: you pick one, leave two.

For every one tip you pick leave the next two beside it.

A little goes a long way with spruce tips, thankfully, making this an easy rule to follow.

Simple Spruce Tip Syrup Recipe | Stovetop Method

There are a few ways to use spruce tips and today I will explain how I make a syrup that I use for teas and other cold or warm drinks.

Tools you need:

Saucepot
Mason jars with lids

Ingredients:

6 cups Filtered Water
2 cups Raw Cane Sugar or Maple Sugar, (or even honey if preferred)
2-3 cups Spruce Tip harvest

Instructions:

This recipe is a light simple syrup that infused with spruce tips.

In you sauce pot add your water, sugar and spruce tips all at once.
Place it on medium high heat and bring to a boil.
Let boil for 5 minutes
After the 5-minute boil, allow to simmer on low for 15 minutes with a lid on.
After the 15-minute simmer, take it off the heat and allow to cool to room temperature.
Once cooled, strain into mason jars.
Store in fridge and use in to sweeten homemade drinks.

Benefits of Spruce Tip Syrup

Spruce tips are a wonderful source of antioxidants, especially Vitamin C.

For northern gardeners (like me), this is wonderful since citrus doesn’t grow up here naturally.

Spruce tips also have been long researched into with findings of them being antimicrobial, antiviral, and even anti-tumor.

If you love to do deep dives into scientific research about medicinal benefits of plants, there is a great article linking many of them about spruce tips.

Instead of regurgitating what the original authors said I will leave a link here to their article: Spruce Tips, Pine Needles, and Vitamin C: Everything you need to know.