Dehydration

So if you have read any of my other blog posts you should know I have an Excalibur Dehydrator.  I love that thing.  It really does save a lot of space for things you dont want to can.  I have dehydrated lots of mushrooms, and a ton of onions from my garden.  I also opted to dehydrate my greens this year from my garden.  My garden is planted for my convienence.  I plant super early with greens, peas, and carrots.  And my early I mean by the end of Indiana March my garden has been planted with snow peas, regular pod peas, two types of lettuce, two types of chard, carrots, brussel sprouts, cabbage, radishes, beets, and potatoes.  Now for a normal person they start that months after I do but by then I have so much needing to be canned I dont have time to plant.  Anyway, dehydration is a great way to take what you have and reduce it down to nothing with no waste and plenty of shelf life.  Here is an example of what dehydration can do for you and your garden. 

Here is a tray of lettuce.  Now my planting of lettuce made 5 heaping trays to fill my dehydrator and I mean I heaped and had to skip trays or it would shove it off.  I layered a lot.  This picture is of some leaf and swiss chard. I tried not to leave any tray showing underneath. Here below is a picture of swiss chard after it is dried.

Yes that try was heaping.  Now I planted 4 - 6foot rows of greens( 2 types of lettuce and 2 types of chard) and one 8 foot row of kale.  I cut it all once when it was bit and bushy.  Each row would have made a huge salad for 6 people.  When I dehydrated all of it, I got two quarts of crushed greens.  That is a big space saver.  At the moment I have 3 quarts because the second cutting wasnt as good and I only did the 4 rows.  I have tilled them under now to allow my tomatoes to spread out and that area is now my tomato picking walkway.  I still have my kale and I am slowly pulling it up and giving it to the chickens to eat.  I have enough greens to last for a few years because I still have last years canning that I am using also.  It really does pay to get a dehydrator.  I also have winter onions.  My row is around 16 feet long and after I picked the small bulbs and chopped/dehydrated that I was able to get a 2 qt jar full of those also.  I still have the bulbs they produced on the top to replant this fall.  I think in a future blog I will give you a chart of when I plant and what I am harvesting/canning/dehydrating during that month.  It will be beneficial if you live around indiana or have a simular climate.