Drying Flowers and Foliage to Enjoy All Year Long

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Flowers from your garden are a beautiful way to bring the joy and color of the outside into your home, but the end of the growing season doesn’t have to mean the end of flower displays. Drying flowersand foliage is a great way to keep the beauty of your garden on display all year long.

Selecting Plants for Drying

When selecting flowers and foliage to dry, make sure you choose plants with no petal or leaf damage, as the damage will become more apparent when dried. Most flowers should be picked at the peak of their bloom, but flowers to be air dried will continue to open as they dry, so buds that are not fully opened should be chosen for this drying method. To prevent mold, always be sure to pick flowers that are dry - never pick flowers with dewy petals or just after a rain shower.

Methods for Drying Flowers.

Pressing
Pressed flowers can serve as a wonderful reminder of a summer afternoon when displayed in frames or simply kept as mementos. The traditional method for pressing flowers is to place the flower between the pages of a book, but any clean, absorbent, porous material (like cardboard) will do. Once you have sandwiched the flowers in your chosen material, weight the top and store it in a warm dry place until dry. This drying method works well for flat flowers with small stems, like Pansies and Violets.

Air Drying
For larger plants with more substantial stems like Strawflower, Globe Amaranth, Cockscomb, Larkspur, and Yarrow, air drying can be the best drying method. To air dry, bind small groups of flowers, with foliage removed, and hang them upside down in a warm, dry, dark place. The less exposure to light, the more colorful your final result will be. Binding the stems with elastic is best, because stems will shrink during the drying process. It usually takes between two and three weeks for flowers to completely air dry.

Desiccants
Desiccants, or drying agents, can be used to dry flowers that do not hold their shape well when air dried, like Bachelor's Button, Crocus, Daffodil, Iris, and Salvia. Some common desiccants are silica gel, borax mixed with cornmeal, and borax mixed with sand. To dry flowers with a desiccant, place about one inch of the desiccant into the bottom of a container large enough to hold your flowers. Use airtight containers with silica gel and well-ventilated containers (like an uncovered cardboard box) with other desiccants. Trim or wire the stem of the flower and place the flower into the container, then slowly and carefully add more desiccant material to the container until the flower is covered. Be sure not the crush the flower with the desiccant. Most flowers will take between two and three days to dry.

You can also use a microwave oven to dry flowers buried in desiccant material. This works best with silica gel, but borax mixtures will also work. Use the defrost setting of your microwave oven (between 200 and 300 watts). It takes most flowers about two and a half minutes to dry in the microwave, but it may take some trial and error to get it right. Microwave drying does not work well for flowers with thick petals.

Drying Foliage

Glycerin is the best substance for preserving foliage. Glycerinized foliage is soft, pliable, and can be used over and over. To glycerinize, smash the ends of your chosen foliage and submerge completely in a mixture of one part glycerin and two parts water. The foliage will absorb the glycerin, so you will need to keep adding solution over the two to three weeks it will take to complete the process. You will know the foliage is fully preserved when it has completely changed color (usually to a honey brown).

Whether you display them in frames, vases, or wreaths, your [dried flowers]and foliage will be lovely reminders of your summer garden that you can keep throughout your home all year long.