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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.
Flowers hanging to dry make a fabulous decoration by
themselves, and, when they are finished drying, you
can take them down and make dried flower arrangements,
Christmas ornaments, dried flower wreaths and more.
©, 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
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