How to Air-Dry Flowers
by Monica Resinger
Air-drying flowers is a simple, fun hobby that can save you money by providing
free material to make dried flower decorations for your home or to give as
gifts.
It's very simple to air-dry flowers. All you need is a place to hang them out of
direct light, rubber bands and either paperclips or florist wire. I have used
wooden pegged coffee cup hangers and pieces of lattice attached to the kitchen
wall as places to air-dry flowers. You can also insert cup hooks into a wall and
use those.
Once you have a place to hang them set up, you can begin to find flowers to dry.
Hopefully you have a variety of flowers growing in your yard to experiment with.
If not, you can find wildflowers growing alongside roads or in forests. If you
are using these flowers, be sure to take care of the plants you take the flowers
from. This ensures that there is plenty of plant growth for insects, birds and
other wildlife to use.
Some flowers that have air-dried well for me are: Yarrow (Achillea millefolium),
pompon Dahlias (Dahlia hortensis), Poppy seed heads (Papaver somniferum), Roses
(Rosa), Marjoram (Origanum vulgare), Delphinium, Larkspur (Consolida ambigua),
Lavender (Lavandula Augustifolia), African Marigold (Tagetes erecta),
Strawflower (Helichrysum bracteatum), Globe Thistle (echinops ritro), Cornflower
(Centaurea cyanus), Statice (Limonium sinuatum), Globe amaranth (Gomphrena
globosa), and Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena) seed heads.
To find flowers that air-dry well, it's good practice to experiment. If it
doesn't dry well, you gain the knowledge not to use it next time. Sometimes, an
air-dried flower that doesn't look good to one person may look pleasing to
another.
With most flowers, the best stage to dry them is when they are just beginning to
open. Depending on the flower, if you hang it too late, the petals will fall
off. You will learn this as you experiment. Others, you will want to wait until
the seed head is developed because this is the decorative part.
The best time to cut flowers for drying is late morning after the due has dried
and on a dry day. I like to take a wicker basket with a handle and my scissors
with me and take a walk around the yard snipping what looks appealing.
Once you have your flowers picked, you can prepare them for air- drying. To do
this, bundle eight to ten stems with a rubber band at the cut end of the
flowers. The rubber band works especially well because as the flowers dry, the
stems will shrink and the rubber band will shrink to the appropriate size of the
bunch. Now you can insert an unraveled paper clip or florist wire inside the
rubber band and bend it to form a hook that the bunch can hang over a peg, piece
of lattice or hook. Hang the bunch of flowers upside down and depending on the
weather, they will probably take anywhere from one to three weeks to dry
completely. You can tell they are dry completely when they feel crisp to the
touch.
Air-drying flowers make a fabulous decoration by themselves, but when they are
dry, you can take them down and make dried flower arrangements, Christmas
ornaments, dried flower wreaths and more.
Copyright 2001, Monica Resinger
About the Author:
Monica Resinger is a loving wife and doting mother of two who enjoys gardening,
painting, dancing and homemaking. She edits and publishes the e-zine The
Homemaker's Journal, a free e-zine published Monday through Friday, that
features a useful homemaking tip and scrumptious recipe of the day; if you'd
like to subscribe, just send a blank e-mail to:
HomemakersJournal-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
