Harvesting and Drying your Own Herbs

Last week I harvested 6 bunches of fresh parsley from my garden. It was beautiful, so green and it smelled so good. I have a large abundance of parsley right now and I wanted to be able to preserve it. Fresh and dried herbs are very expensive. Growing and drying your own herbs is very economical and easy to do. 

I washed the parsley well and loaded it up pretty heavily on my food dehydrator. Jacob and I inherited our food dehydrator from Jacob's Mom and Dad and we have used it so much for all kinds of things from dried fruit to jerky and now I am using it to dry herbs. I filled all my trays and on the lowest heat setting I dried the parsley. It dried very quickly. It only took about 4 hours.

 

 After all the parsley was dried I simply removed the leaves from the stems. It came off easily.  It was still a beautiful bright green and still smelled amazing. From my 6 bunches of fresh parsley I got 2 Cups of dried Parsley.

 In the store 2 Cups of dried parsley would cost about $4.00 and 6 bunches of fresh parsley would cost about $6.00. This is an easy way to save money and get the benefit of having both fresh and dried herbs.