Dehydrating Dill Without a Dehydrator

Growing herbs is another wonderful addition to any homestead. While I would love to grow a whole host of different herbs I really only grow a couple different kinds and even then it's only when I really need them. My time is extremely limited and I have to make sure I'm using it wisely, which is why I don't grow more of a variety of herbs.

One of my favorite herbs to grow is dill. It is super easy to plant, pick, and preserve. Talk about my kind of herb. Seriously y'all, this aromatic savory herb is black thumb proof! It's so easy to get carried away and plant more than you'll need. This year we only planted two little rows of dill and if you scroll the pictures, you can see how much we harvested ~ quite a bit for such a small patch.

Excuse the crude picture, but this is our storage room/sewing room and it was hard to get a decent picture, but I wanted y'all to see how I hung the bunches. I used push pins to hold them up there.

When it comes to harvesting dill to dehydrate, I simply cut the stems at the base, bunch them into about 1.5 inch diameter bunches (no exact science here, just bunch some stems together), tie yarn or twine around the bunch, knotting tightly and leaving a long tail. Alright here's where we might part ways, lol. Now, I take my bunches of dill and hang them from the ceiling in one of my rooms.

Ok, ok, ok, I know some of ya'll are rolling your eyes and maybe even already left the page; but hear me out. When homesteading everything from your land to the four walls you call your home is fair game to meeting the needs of the homestead. For us, one of those needs includes using our ceiling to hang herbs to dry. It only takes about 2 weeks for them to dry and we do try to use a room that isn't frequented by guest. But honestly, at this point in the game it really wouldn't bother me if folks saw my dill hanging from the ceiling anyways. It would probably be a great conversation starter, lol.

After about two weeks your dill should be dry enough to take off the stems and store in jars. To do this, I take each stem, turn it upside down and strip the dried dill off into a jar.

I don't worry about sealing my jars or even using those little preserving packets. I've never had a problem with my dill going bad by just keeping them in glass canning jars in a cool dark place. It's that simple, no need to break out the dehydrator to dehydrate dill. And let me tell y'all fresh dehydrated dill makes the best ranch dressing and dip!!

So, what's your favorite herb to grow?

With Love & Hope,
Jennifer