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Preserve your Garden Harvest with the Sun
Once you start gardening, the issue becomes how to save your delicious harvest so that you can enjoy it all. One method that is very useful is dehydrating or drying your fruits and vegetables. Instead of having food drying come down to one more appliance that uses electricity, why not try making your own solar dehydrator?
food dehydrator guide
info, plans and more
Food Drying Without Electricity
We used to have an electric food dehydrator in the house. It was great for saving food from the garden and it made making your own camping meals really easy, but the housemate who owned it moved out, so that was the end of the electric dehydrator.Since we'd love to still be able to dry foodstuffs, but would like to reduce the amount of electrical appliances we use in the kitchen, I thought making a solar food dehydrator would be a great option. With the right plans, lots of recycled materials can be used and in the summertime, the power is about as cheap and abundant as you could want.
We don't have a lot of room, so building a taller and more narrow one with several shelves will probably be the overall shape we develop. One of our biggest uses is going to be for herbs we grow, followed by vegetables that get harvested in the fall. I sure wouldn't mind making my own sun-dried tomatoes instead of buying them.
THE SOLAR FOOD DRYER by Eben V. Fodor
The Solar Food Dryer: How to Make and Use Your Own Low-Cost, High Performance, Sun-Powered Food Dehydrator
Amazon Price: $12.44 (as of 07/13/2009)
List Price: $15.95
Avg. Customer Rating: 
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DIY Solar Food Dehydrators
- Solar Dehydrator
- Made from two cardboard boxes, some clear plastic wrap, and a little tape. You can build a nearly free solar dehydrator. Set it on a stool or chair and face it's solar collector towards the sun, and you have a functional food preservation machine for little work and even less money.
- Solar Chimney Dehydrator
- A Solar chimney dehydrator can be constructed with any number of designs, adjusted to meet whatever needs you have. Following, is a basic design used at the Crofford Demonstration Farm in Woodruff, AZ.
- Chris's ENGR305 Solar Food Dehydrator - Appropedia: The sustainability wiki
- The idea of creating a hybrid, solar food dehydrator, that also adhered to as many of the principles of modern food dehydration as possible sounded excellent to me. The potential of using this old system in new ways can save both power and materials. The original goal was to produce a solar dehydrator that had an upfront cost similar to a conventional dehydrator, but used less industrialized materials in addition to harnessing the sun's energy, which reduces the energy impact associated with conventional food dehydration (discussed later).
- A Review of Solar Food Drying (The Solar Cooking Archive)
- Food drying is a very simple, ancient skill. It requires a safe place to spread the food where dry air in large quantities can pass over and beside thin pieces. Sun is often used to provide the hot dry air. Dry, clean air including dry cold air from any source will dehydrate food.
- Solar Food Drying
- Lots of variations for building solar food dryers.
Take a Look at a Solar Dehydrator
Solar Food Dehydration
Ron Berezan, The Urban Farmer describes how his simple home made solar dehydrator works.
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an option for those who can't solar dry food
Nesco American Harvest FD-1010 Gardenmaster Food Dehydrator
Amazon Price: $119.37 (as of 07/13/2009)
List Price: $149.99
If you live in an area where you don't get enough sun to really make solar drying viable, or for those winter-time food storage projects, you might like owning an electric food dehydrator. These let you dehydrate just about anything and are great for making your own jerky, fruit leather or dehydrating pre-cooked food to assemble your own low-cost camping meals.
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DIY Dehydrator PDFs
- Hardcore solar dehydrator
- This site makes available 8 1/2" x 11" conceptual plans that can be helpful in developing building layouts and selecting equipment for various agricultural applications.
- Making New Dryer Screens
- How to build dryer screens for your solar dehydrator using window screen frames.
Have you built your own solar food dryer?
If you're working on your own solar dryer, let us know how it's going! If you've had problems, let us know what they were and how you worked them out!
TheresaMayhew wrote...
I love dehydrating fruits and vegetables. We use a drying rack that is enclosed in fine mesh. It has about 8 layers/racks and hangs by a hook. I take it outside and hang it on my clothes line in the direct sun. It's great for when I dehydrate onions since the smell lingers for a long time.
Great information on dehydrators.
Theresa
Posted June 23, 2009
starsam wrote...
Your lens would be a great addition to the 'Solar Technology and Solar Energy' Group
( http://www.squidoo.com/groups/solar )
Feel free to add it anytime!
Posted February 16, 2009
by Euryale
In myth, Euryale was an immortal Gorgon. I'm a gardener and Giant Squid, growing things via Lenses. I have a wide range of interests including playing...
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