I don't know about you, but it just seems like some years I'm out in my garden really harvesting and using EVERYTHING...and then every once in a while I end up not picking herbs quickly enough and the plant goes haywire and I lose it.
I've tried freezing my herbs - I actually bought the cutest little hexagonal trays to freeze small "blocks" of herbs, and then I end up just not really using them as much as I thought I would.
At some point it occurred to me that I own a dehydrator. My husband has been using it for jerky for years, and for whatever reason it's taken me this long to think to use it to dry my herbs, LOL. Well, at least I finally thought about it!! It's a NESCO Food Dehydrator with 4 trays. It's pretty basic, I guess, and works great!
So, without any more delay...let me show you how I dried my basil. It was getting really "leggy" so I went and trimmed it WAY down, pulling off all of the usable leaves for my harvest. I made sure to check around and underneath all the leaves so there were no bugs or pests.
After I made sure all the leaves were good, I loaded them into 2 of the trays. I didn't have a whole lot and made sure that there was plenty of space to help them dry more quickly. I like to use a temp that is just a little above the "herb" setting (which is the lowest temp).
Depending on how much plant material you are drying, it's probably going to take a few days to get it all completely dried. I just make sure there is pretty much zero moisture so when I store it - it does not mold. Here's what it looks like once it's all dried:
You can see the tray wasn't very full this time - I'm really trying to just not waste anything I'm growing this year!
Once it's fully dried, I load the leaves into a coffee/spice grinder.
Again, you don't need anything fancy, just any basic coffee/spice grinder. Pulverize it until it's all uniformly powder, it should look something like this:
After that, you're done! I like to use these little small jelly jars since they don't take up much space and I have them. You can go buy any glass spice jar you can find - it's totally your preference!
I've done quite a few sets this summer and even made a blend with a lot of dried dill that I labeled as my "ranch" mix. I also dried some of my green onion tops and ground that to use. It's been fun! I hope you try drying some of your own herbs. Let me know if you do and how it turns out!!
