Drying, pressing flowers preserves seasonal beauties

Published 12:00 am Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Andy Tullis / The BulletinDried flower combinations arranged with pinecones on the side in The Bulletin studio. From left to right: saffron thistle, artemsia, seed heads from ornamental grass, rabbit brush, various dried flowers and seed pods, and glittered pine cones.

Dusting off a shelf of gardening books I was reminded gardening doesn’t have to end with the frost.

This came to my attention upon noticing several books on gathering and drying materials from the garden that hadn’t been opened in a while. That was a good excuse to put down the dust cloth, make a cup of coffee and revisit a process I did for many years.

It started in the 1980s, the heyday of dried bouquets and potpourri. I grew hundreds of strawflowers and statice and picked through baby’s breath fields gone wild, creating bouquets I sold at a Saturday market.

Looking through the books, especially “Everlastings” by Patricia Thorpe and Malcolm Hillier’s “Decorating with Dried Flowers,” I realized how much I missed that end-of-season hurrah.

It is a little late to find garden flowers at their prime, which is when they should be picked and dried. The two most common methods are air drying or using a granular desiccant, usually silica gel. There are also methods for drying in the microwave. I preferred the natural look of materials that had been air dried, plus the fact it was the easiest to just strip off unnecessary foliage, band a bunch of flowers and hang in the garage to dry.

Borax, cornmeal, kitty litter and sand are among the common household items that can be used to dry flowers. An effective, homemade drying compound can be made from one part borax and three parts white cornmeal, according to a University of Nebraska Extension’s fact sheet.

Of all desiccants, silica gel is the best to use and can be used many times. When the blue indicator crystals turn pink, it has absorbed all the moisture it can. Recharge the gel by heating it in an oven at 225 degrees for several hours to restore the blue color.

Pressing flowers is another way to preserve and eventually use in a craft project. The tradition of pressing pansies between the pages of the dictionary is a familiar childhood memory for many of us. In this electronic age, do families even have a dictionary on the bookshelf? Do they have a bookshelf? Thoughts to ponder another time. If you had developed a serious interest in the process, a flower press was added to the Christmas wish list.

Pressed flowers have gone beyond pansies. Foliage, especially delicate leaf structure, or the fern fronds are pressed for stylized framed pieces.

If your garden has passed its peak for bloom, the dried seed heads can be combined with ornamental or native grasses for a natural fall arrangement, perhaps for an outdoor entry way. We always seem to give up on outdoor containers once the petunias or geraniums fade out at the end of the season.

Think of the herb garden as a source of materials providing a variety of foliage color, shape or fragrance. The immature seed head of chives or other allium species would be dried upright so the flower heads keep their globular shape. If you wait long enough, Mother Nature will do the job and all you have to do is cut them.

The bushy perennial oregano is the one to look at for drying, not the annual culinary variety. It is the reddish purple bracts around the blossoms that dry well. I keep threatening to dig mine out, but maybe I‘ll look at it in a renewed light.

The fuzzy gray leaves of lamb’s ear should be dried flat for tucking into an arrangement or added into a wreath. Think of poppy pods that have already dried naturally. I was shocked to find that some critter had eaten most of my dried pods. It wouldn’t have been the deer. I suspect it might have been the chipmunk I saw scampering around in that vicinity. Lesson for next year, grab ’em before some critter does.

The common teasel (when it’s green you can scrape off its prickles) or the common dock that can be picked at any stage from green to rich burnt umber will add color and texture. Even the native rabbitbrush has merit in a fall arrangement.

Rose hips and the changing color of branches snipped from vines shouldn’t be overlooked. Have you trimmed off any tree branches with interesting bark or shape? Less is sometimes more when it comes to eye appeal.

If you have ever picked up a fall leaf and enjoyed its beauty, you are a perfect candidate for enjoying the craft of drying. We just need to look at our landscape in a different light in a different season.

— Reporter: douville@bendbroadband.com

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