Hi Newby! An excellent site it is! It serves to get me in more trouble wanting new plants and trying new gardening ideas. Lots to offer. See even you have some good ideas on drying and utilizing herbs. We all have something to share, glad you joined in! pod
herb drying racks?
Welcome, newby, and WATCH OUT!!! You have entered the land of gardening enablers.
Hi, my name is Ann, and I'm an addict.
Thank you all for your warm welcome. Brigidlily, I welcome enablers. That way I don't feel like I'm asking too many questions. I'm venturing into experimentation with other plants now and I really don't know what I'm doing. Just trial and error. Problem is that I don't always follow instructions to a tee. I have a tendancy to improvise. I guess if I have questions about a particular plant I go to that forum?
Go to whatever forum feels right. Remember, there are no stupid questions! Just interesting ones and very interesting ones!
I have an old fashioned tobacco drying rack, a rather simple affair that can be folded up and stacked in a barn or up against a wall. I always thought it would be easy to reproduce, except that the wood is quite old, is a rich tobacco brown in color, and still retains a hint of the tabacco smell (pleasant, not like a cigarette). I've used it as an herb drying rack, but never had quite enough material at one time to get the lush look and smell I was after. Now I use it as a dish towell or bed cover hanging rack. I've lived in FL in humid conditions and VA, still humid, but less of the time. I've never had a problem drying any herb, including lavender, lovage, costmary, basil, sage, thyme, fennel, dill and on and on. On occassion when I had a large bunch of one or another, some leaves turned darker and I discarded them, but most leaves just go to the paper stage in a matter of days being hung upside down. Are you growing huge volumes? That's never been an issue for me. As far as I'm concerned, I've never had enough. My two favorite ways to use either fresh or dry herbs, and especially FRESH, is on pasta or as an herbal tea. What I love best is that it's never exactly the same twice. As you move through the season, you have more chives or lemon verbena or sage or rosemary (and I always add a little raw garlic to the pasta), so there is always something that may dominate the flavor, and other herbs that add subtlety.
Just a few questions - Why not is an air conditioned room? I've read through this thread twice now and can't find a reason. I've got my oregano on an old box fan in my a/c kitchen now and I'm wondering if I've made a mistake.
Also, I've read somewhere that you can chop fresh herbs, place them in ice cube trays filled with water and freeze them. Has anyone tried this?
C.
I think that is one of those "wives tales" that got started before refrigerated air. If you have a "swamp" cooler it adds humidity and would be defeating the purpose, with a refrigerated AC it is no problem. Mine dry quickly even if my AC is on.
Thanks Cactus,
Another question I have - why can't you dry them in the sun? I've paid a small fortune for sun-dried tomatoes, why not sun dried herbs?
The sun saps all the nutrients & much of the flavor out of the leafy herbs.
When you cool air the humidity in the air rises as the temperature drops.Some ACs have a dehumidifier in the unit to keep that damp feeling out of the cooled air.
Hi all, I hvae dropped the ball on drying my herbs, been way too busy.
For the record, I was picking the laundry room mainly because it's the only dark room in the house.