Solar dehydrator, 1st attempt
We’ve been harvesting wild edibles (also known as weeding the gardens) and can’t eat them fast enough! So the shed is now a drying studio, but it’s not enough. And it’s just so sloooow; some of these weeds have been hanging for 3+ weeks.
So we found the simplest posible solar dehydrator idea.
| 1. Buy a pizza (for the box) and cut most of the lid out |  |
| 2. Paint the inside black |  |
| 3. Build a screen tray |  |
4 . Find something to dry - herbs and medicial plants, fruit or veggies (sliced thin) or homemade crackers
| 5. Cover in clear plastic or glass |  |
6 . Find sunshine - and bring your dehydrator in when it starts to rain. Tricky in the rainy season! Our dehydrator survived one rainstorm; it’s warped and less effective, but we’re still using it.
And it works! If we get a couple hours of sunlight our plants are DRY. Drier than the plants that are still hanging in the shed, actually. Stems take longest of course.
The wild edibles we dry include
- lambsquarter
- amaranth
- mallow
- purslane
- field mustard (We’re eating other “weeds” too but these are useful to dry, powder and use as food and medicine.)
Pick away all the bugs, eggs, old and undesirable bits and rinse. Use roots, stems, leaves, seeds, flowers, as desired.
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2 Comments:
August 22, 2018
How wonderful! But where does the moisture go? Don’t you get horrible condensation inside the box?
August 22, 2018
Well I don’t know! I think it’s not airtight enough for that to be an issue. Even more now since the last big storm got parts.of.the kitchen wet.that don’t usually get.wet, so the box is even more warped!