Has anyone other than me been shocked at the price of herbs and spices in the grocery store lately?
We have had a great crop of fresh herbs in the yard this summer... basil, chives, oregano, thyme, lemon balm, lovage, cilantro, rosemary, and summer savory. Oh, and did I mention basil?
As fall is upon us, and the frost is getting closer, I've been trying to preserve as much of this bounty as possible. The thought of forking over $8 to $10 for little bottles of herbs in the grocery store this winter led me to try drying some.
"Perfect," I said, thinking of the second-hand dehydrator I had bought last summer. "Those little bitty leaves should be done in a snap!"
My dehydrator says to run herbs at 95 F. I set up several trays to run overnight and went to bed dreaming of tiny green leaves to put into my spice bottles in the morning.
Well, imagine my dismay when after running that batch all night long the leaves were still soft and flexible! Nothing that I could crumble and put into the jars.
Maybe I had left too much water on them from washing? My next experiment was to skip the washing. Basil doesn't get very dirty anyway, as they grow quite upright., and the term "water activity" came back to me from my university food microbiology courses (meaning that microbes need a certain amount of water to survive and produce pathogens). So I figured it would be safe to dry herbs without washing them. But after another 12 to 14 hours of dehydrating I still had a bunch of leaves that were wilted but not dry!
Given that my main motivation for this urban farm is to reduce our carbon footprint (and maybe save some money) I could not bring myself to continue running electricity for the sake of a few herbs. I had to figure out another way.
I've tried hanging herbs in the past. They look lovely and homey hanging from the ceiling. But I find the smaller leaves fall on the floor, and I have been known to leave forgotten bunches of unknown plants hanging all winter, only to put them in the compost the next summer.
But then I came across a suggestion to dry herbs in paper bags! That made lots of sense to me - it would keep off the dust, keep the leaves from falling, and make it easy to add labels!
I didn't have any paper bags, but I had several of those net bags for buying produce at the grocery store. I tossed big bunches of herbs in, hung them in the kitchen, shook them occasionally to keep them aerated, and "voila!" lots of nicely dried herbs to put in the cupboard, with not a whit of fossil or any other kind of fuel expended!
I'd say I have saved about $30. And even better I am re-using plastic containers. And I have eliminated a whole lot of fossil fuels that would have been expended to grow, produce, dry and transport those herbs that I won't have to buy next winter.
The net bags are so simple and effective that I went and bought some extras, so I have more drying capacity.
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