• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Home Garden Joy
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Gardening
    • Seed Starting
    • Composting Basics
    • Vegetable Garden
    • Grow Fruit
    • Herb Garden
  • Recipes
    • Canning and Food Preservation
    • Vegetarian Meals
    • Salad Recipes
    • Soup Recipes
    • Dinner Recipes
    • Dessert Recipes
  • Classes
  • Books
    • Books for Christian Herbalists
  • About
    • Advertise with Us
    • Awards and Accolades
    • Privacy Policy

Savor the Taste of Summer: How to Dry Fresh Herbs without Special Equipment

June 19, 2014 by Jeanne

Tweet
Share
Pin1
Share
1 Shares

Learn to dry fresh herbs without special equipment. Now’s the time to dry basil, oregano, mint, parsley, catnip and many other fresh herbs. It’s easy and all you need is the sun!

dry fresh herbs

 

 

How to Dry Fresh Herbs without Special Equipment

Nothing says ‘savor the taste of summer’ like fresh herbs…or herbs dried at the peak of freshness. I love growing herbs and have basil, sage, lavender, lemon balm, mint, dill and chives growing in the garden. Mint and oregano were taking over the raised beds, so I moved those to the edge of the woods. Now whenever I need herbs to make a meal delicious, I just snip off a few leaves and voila – instant flavor.

Yet in a few short months, the herbs will be gone. Now’s the time to dry them when they’re at the peak of freshness. Drying herbs is easy, and you don’t need any special equipment. Sure, a dehydrator would be a wonderful piece of kitchen equipment to make drying herbs a snap, but I don’t have on yet. And while I’d love an old-fashioned drying rack, a special cabinet just to dry herbs, I haven’t had time to make one yet.
So it’s back to the old-fashioned methods:

  • Tie up a bundle of herbs and hang them in a hot, dry location;
  • Place herbs in a metal dry and let them dry out on their own.

Air-Drying Herbs

I used dill as an example of how to air-dry herbs.
Here’s the fresh dill in the garden. Isn’t it pretty? I just let mine seed wherever it wants to…it started in another garden bed several years ago, and now it just grows wherever it wants to. But that’s fine, because it makes few demands, and doesn’t bother the other plants, so I just let it be. This dill grows among my onions and beets.
 

Herbs such as dill and rosemary are easy to dry using this method. Snip several long stems and tie or rubber-band the ends together. Hang them upside-down in a warm area. Some instructions call for the herbs to be placed inside a paper bag; the bag allows air to circulate to dry the herbs, but keeps dust off of them. I don’t bother with that. I just hang them up near a window in my garage.
 

Dill drying in the garage.

When the herbs are dry, bring them into the house. Spread paper towels on the table. Wash and dry your hands so that they’re clean. Then use your fingers to gently pull off the dried herbs. I form the paper towel into a little funnel and tap the dried herbs into a container. I’ve used cleaned and dried bouillon cube containers, recycled small glass containers, and herb containers purchased from the dollar store. The herb containers look like salt or pepper shakers but the lids snap on tightly. It doesn’t matter what kind of container you use to store your dried herbs, as long as you can label it with the type of herb you’ve dried and the date, and it has a lid that locks into place to seal in the freshness.
This method works best for low-moisture herbs such as chives, dill, and rosemary.
Solar-Drying Herbs
Herbs with large leaves, such as the basil in the first picture or the catnip I’m using here as an example, contain more moisture in their leaves and are a little harder to hang-dry like dill.  I’ve tried drying basil the way I dried the dill and it just ends up getting mushy.  Instead, snip the leaves and lay them on an old metal tray. I use a large roasting pan like this one. Place it in the sun to allow the herbs to dry out. You should bring it inside at night so that they dew doesn’t re-hydrate the herbs or cause mildew. When the herbs are dry, simply crumple them up with your hands and tap them into a container.
 

 

Catnip in the garden…

 

Catnip drying in my garage.

One word of advice: if you’re drying catnip, keep it away from the felines! That’s why mine is in the garage. If it’s outside, they’ll find it. My cats are nip fiends.
 
 
Oven-Dry Herbs
Lastly, you can oven-dry herbs. Turn the oven on to a very low temperature – 150 to 180 degrees F should do it. Place the herbs on a cookie sheet and let them sit in the warm oven for two to four hours. I like to use an old cookie sheet because the herbs can stick and I have to scrap at them with a spatula! I also like to use the oven after I’ve made a roast, so that the oven is already warm and I don’t have to waste electricity (I’m pretty frugal about stuff like this). I rarely dry herbs in this way, but the technique is similar to solar drying. You’re just speeding up the process by using the oven’s heat to desiccate or dry out the leaves.
If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy:

  • How to Dry Basil
  • Growing Catnip

post signature

Tweet
Share
Pin1
Share
1 Shares

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: how to dry fresh herbs

Previous Post: « Fresh Food Wednesday: Healthy Ploughman’s Lunch
Next Post: Savor the Taste of Summer Event and Give Away! »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Erin

    September 25, 2014 at 7:54 pm

    This is so helpful! I always seem to have some herb that grows out of control and I never have been able to find a good way to save it.

  2. Alli

    September 9, 2015 at 8:27 pm

    I’ve got an overabundance of basil and I’ve never tried to dry fresh herbs before. And you made it look so easy. I’m going to do it!

Trackbacks

  1. Five Fall Gardening Tasks | Home and Garden Joy says:
    September 25, 2014 at 7:14 pm

    […] 1. Harvest and dry the last of the herbs. It’s easy to take herbs for granted during the warm summer days when basil, cilantro, oregano and rosemary are plentiful. The first frosts of fall will damage if not kill tender herbs. Now’s the time harvest, dry or freeze these wonderful culinary delights so that you can enjoy them all winter long.  For more information, see my article on Drying Herbs. […]

  2. How to Dry Basil says:
    August 25, 2015 at 6:45 pm

    […] Savor the Taste of Summer: How to Dry Herbs without Special Equipment […]

  3. Grow Rosemary for Remembrance - Home Garden Joy says:
    June 28, 2019 at 2:45 pm

    […] can dry rosemary quite easily. I’ve hung up bunches of rosemary in the garage, let it air dry in the heat, […]

Primary Sidebar

Learn Gardening!

writer Jeanne Grunert

Hi, I'm Jeanne Grunert, master gardener, herbalist, and writer. If you're new to gardening, welcome! I make it simple and easy for you to grow a kitchen garden: delicious, organic vegetables, fruit, herbs, and yes, flowers, too.

My Books on Amazon

cover of plan and build a raised bed garden

Visit my author page on Amazon to find all of my fiction and gardening books.

Grow Vegetables

17 year cicada

Do the 17 Year Cicadas Hurt Gardens?

strawberries are great for vertical gardening

Vertical Gardening to Expand Your Space

rosemary growing in containers for space saving gardens

5 EASY Space Saving Vegetable Garden Ideas

red and green lettuce in the garden

The Winter Garden – Enjoying the Seasons

Easy Healthy Recipes

beet and cabbage soup

Easy, Simple Beet and Cabbage Soup Recipe

walnut applesauce bread with apples in the background

Walnut Applesauce Bread

butternut squash risotto on a plate

Butternut Squash Risotto with Sage and Caramelized Onions

How to Make No Salt Homemade Tomato Sauce: Easy Recipe!

Featured

logo of the american horticulture society

Home Garden Joy was featured by the American Horticultural Society on #plantchat.

Let’s Connect!

  • Bloglovin
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Medium
  • Pinterest
  • RSS

Footer

rosemary growing in containers for space saving gardens

5 EASY Space Saving Vegetable Garden Ideas

These 5 space-saving vegetable garden ideas offer  urban gardeners, apartment gardeners, and anyone with limited space the ability to grow lots of plants in small spaces. I’ve put together the following 5 ideas to help you grow your dream kitchen garden – vegetables, herbs, fruits, and edible flowers – even on a tiny city balcony.

red and green lettuce in the garden

The Winter Garden – Enjoying the Seasons

Happy Holidays! Here at Home Garden Joy, I’m celebrating the “winter garden” – what’s left of the fall vegetables, any herbs that haven’t been nipped by the frost, and the bounty of  canned goods I’ve set aside for just such a season. Here’s what Hubby and I have been up to at Seven Oaks Farm.

green and red lettuce

How to Grow Lettuce Like a Pro

Learn how to grow lettuce like professional growers. If you’re tired of store bought lettuce, growing it in your backyard is easy. Lettuce is surprisingly quick to grow, too, so there’s also the almost-instant gratification of harvesting soon after planting seeds. How to Grow Lettuce Lettuce plants should be grown from seeds sown directly into…

Read More

winter vegetables picture of parsnip

Harvesting Winter Vegetables this Week: Abundance!

I finally got some time this week to harvest the winter vegetables. The hard frosts we’ve experienced over the past several weeks killed some of the vegetation above ground, but the root vegetables were fine, and they tasted delicious.

Copyright © 2021 Home Garden Joy on the Foodie Pro Theme