We are putting in a larger garden than normal, and I want to preserve the majority of it. I do can, but for space, would like to dry a lot of it. What are the best ways to dry the following vegetables:

Zuchinni peppers tomatoes other squash (pumpkin, butternut, hubbard, etc)

What are other veggies that you dry? Do you soak them in anything to preserve color, flavor? Yes, I do have a dehydrator, I just need more guidance.

-- Wendy Antes (philllips-anteswe@mail.cpp.usmc.mil), September 17, 2001

Answers

Hi Wendy,

My two favorite vegetables to dry are carrots and corn. To do carrots, I slice them and blanch for three minutes, cool in ice water, drain, then lay them out in single layers on my drying box. I turn them over at least once. They do shrink as they dry. For corn, I don't blanch, just slice the corn off the cob and lay the kernals on the drying box. Once dry, I store them in glass jars or zip-lok bags. To use, I re-hydrate them by pouring a cup of boiling water over them, then use are regular. What I like best about these two dried vegetables is when I'm making soup or stew, I just toss in a handful - no re-hydrating before hand.

My drying box is not your typical dehydrator (although I have one of those too). My dehydrator is a wooden box lined with aluminum foil with a 100 watt light bulb in one side of the box about 3/4 of the way up. The top is a black flat pan that fits the top of the box exactly. Found the directions in an old Organic Gardening magazine and DH made this for me years ago. Haven't had to replace the bulb yet. The flat pan makes drying small things like corn, carrots and celery much easier that the dehydrator because of the open spaces in the dehydrator trays. I also use the drying box to make beef jerky, fruit leathers and almost anything else that can be dried. Tried watermelon once with absolutely awful results. The children still laugh about the time Mom tried to dry watermelon. Good luck.

Wishing you enough.

-- Trevilians (aka Dianne in Mass) (Trevilians@mediaone.net), September 17, 2001.

Wendy, I have experimented for the last few years dehydrating. I love to string cayenne peppers and hang them in a sunny window to dry. They turn the most beautiful shade of red and yummy too. We love spicy foods and I tried stringing habanero peppers last year, boy was that a disaster. They got put into my dehydrator this year. I just washed them and took the stem off and dried them. I have found that if you want to dehydrate tomatoes, it is best to use a very meaty variety and to cut realitively thick slices and they tend to wither quite a bit when dried. I have never tried sun-dried but would like to. I have also heard of blanching vege's before dehydrating. I have gleaned some good information from the book, Making and Using Dried Foods by Phyllis Hobson. ISBN# 0-88266-615-0. And one final trick I like to use when drying herbs like thyme, oregano, dill and such it to tie it in a bundle for hanging but put it down in a paper bag then hang to dry. The paper is porous enough to let air in and moisture out. Then when the herbs are dried all you have to do is shake or scrunch up the bag to loosen the herbs and put them into your jars. Well, I guess I have rambled on long enough. Hope this was helpful. Happy Harvesting. :-D

-- Kim in Indiana (kwcountrygirl@aol.com), September 17, 2001.

I have been dehydrating all of our garden yields. I have learned from "experience " to combine use of forced air and covection drying units. By use of the combined techniques of using forced air units for "poor dehydration foods", convection units for "good and excellent dydration foods", and moving trays from initial dehydration on forced air units to convection units with longer time frames for the "poorest suitables", most everything dehydrate preserves safely. Also when prepping foods for dehydration on the forced air units, I always put my end scraps on the lowest trays to lower the risk of scrorching our dehydrated rations (the lower trays always seem to exibit scorching) and I can then process these scraps as back up winter ration food for my worm bins as fresh garden scraps become scarce during the winter months.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), September 18, 2001.

I haven't tried it, but I've heard my grandmother had great success putting pans in the front and back car windows to dry the fruits and vegetables.

-- Ann Markson (tngreenacres@hotmail.com), September 20, 2001.