Food Dehydrator Re-think

by Rick
(From Container-Gardening-For-Food.com)

Ok, so I figured with all the food my garden will (hopefully) be producing this year, I will need some way of preserving it so it will last through the winter.

Freezing is one option, but doesn't work well for everything. Tomatoes for example, from what I have been led to believe do not freeze well, but they are very good dried.

Food drying is definitely something I would recommend, I’ve worked with dried foods before and it is a wonderful way of making natural foods last a long time. It also makes the food fun to eat. The kids will love fruit leather for example, they think of it as sweets or candy! A great (if a little sneaky) way to get them to eat some of their 5 a day!

Dried tomatoes are also extremely tasty. It seems the drying process concentrates their flavor.

I do have an electric food dehydrator, but it's noisy, takes a long time and uses a LOT of electricity, so I have been looking at alternative options from both a power-saving and preparedness perspective.

Drying using the power of the sun has been my focus.

My conservatory gets really warm when the sun shines, so I figured that keeping trays of food in there would be a good alternative. Space is limited, so I figured making use of the high roof area made sense as after all, heat rises. So I rigged up a large net into the roof and made some rectangular trays from wood and covered them with polyester mesh (fly-screen) see the above picture for the finished result.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the more I though about it, the more I was convinced that it wouldn't work very well. Air flow in dehydrating is the key to it working, and with this arrangement the air flow could be a problem. Also I figured the trays are too big and will sag under the weight of the food placed on them.

So for the past few weeks I have been trying to hatch a plan 'B'.

I finally decided to do the job properly, and have now opted to build a full size outdoor solar dehydrator. So far I have worked solidly on it for the past two days and hope to get it finished later on today. It is based on the beer-can solar furnace design and looks like it should provide an efficient service - obviously the proof will be in the testing.

I videotaped the entire process as I have been constructing it, so hopefully I will be releasing a 'How-to' video shortly.

Watch this space! or subscribe to my Rickvanman channel on YouTube, where I will be uploading the finished video.

Regards
Rick