Drying herbs/veggies for winter use

[Ape337]

Howdy all!

Has anyone ever dried the herbs in their bunny gardens at the end of the growing season? I have a small bunny garden with some yummy herbs during the season and it was sad to watch it all go to waste as winter came. So I was thinking if I harvested the herbs before the first frost and dried them I could use them for the buns during the winter. I have things like mint, basil, dill, parsley, cilantro. The perennial herbs will return for spring, but things like basil are killed off completely each November (around here). What do you think? :cooking:

 

[lagomorph]

Hmm, that is an interesting question. I do sometimes dry the herbs from my garden, but we eat them ourselves rather than give them to buns. I don't see any reason not to feed it to them, though. I would just be careful not to overdo it on any one kind of herb. Once it's dried, it doesn't look like much, so I would think it could be easy to over feed. (I know rabbit diet and nutrition is an oft debated topic, but my own rule of thumb is small amounts of lots of different greens, along with some pellets, alfalfa, oat hay, and unlimited timothy. I think that helps prevent nutritional imbalance, based on nothing but my own personal logic)

 

[Nancy McClelland]

We have a dehydrator that we use for every thing. During the winter, before we moved, I made wooden frames and covered them with 6 mill clear plastic and everything made it thru the winter, although the strawberries slowed way down--think that was from the reduced sunlight though.

 

[Ape337]

I was wondering if I needed a dehydrator or whether I could bundle and hang them in a cool, dry place. I always wanted to get an excalibur dehydrator.

I thought about using a cold frame. Maybe I'll try that at the end of this season, in addition to trying to dry some. Thanks for the responses!

 

[1357bunnylover]

I use a dehydrator all the time to dry lots of things like grass, herbs, veggies and fruit and put it all in a big bowl for the buns but before I got a dehydrator I actually just hung the herbs outside for a few hours and it worked, I even sometimes put them in the oven and it dried tem out and only takes a few minutes but sometimes they got burnt! But the buns still ate them. You could blend the herbs into a liquid then freeze them until summer to give to the buns for a treat that cools them down I also do that and the buns love them and it actually takes a while for them to eat a whole one so they are entertained for a while