Nesco Food Dehydrator manual Drying Flowers, Drying Crafts

Drying

Crafts

ou've all seen a flower so perfect Yin form, color, and texture that you wish you could keep it forever. With the Snackmaster® and Gardenmaster® dehydrators, it now can

become a reality.

Drying Flowers

Preserve garden and natural favorites for attractive dried flower arrangements, Christmas and holiday decorations, party favors, place cards and corsages. Help your children dry specimens for their science class.

Many lovely flowers, foliage, flowering grasses, seedheads, cones, and non- flowering plants may be dried simply by placing on drying trays and drying at 130° to 145°F (55° to 63°C) until no moisture is evident. This is wonderful for those of us who are too busy to experiment with other techniques, and also for the beginner who has not attempted preserving flowers before. Quite interesting arrangements can be made with these dried materials.

Materials suitable for drying by this method are bracts, cultivated and wild

grasses, seedheads, foliage, and everlast- ing flowers.

For flowers with petals, leaves, ferns, fungi, and some varieties of mosses, the best way to preserve them is to use a desiccant powder. A desiccant is a substance which absorbs moisture.

It speeds the drying process, especially when used in a dehydrator, preserving the vibrant colors and delicate structure of the flower. The longer the drying process, the more colors will fade.

Using a desiccant in your dehydrator will allow flowers to dry in a day instead of a week or two. There are several brands of flower desiccants available from craft stores. They may seem a little expensive, but can be reused indefinitely. Silica gel is the generic name and absorbs up to 50 percent of its own weight in moisture.

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