What I've learned so far!!
1. Its best to load the trays from the top down. When you push a tray in, it can catch on the items in the tray below and push them into a heap, when you've spent hours spreading them out neatly. Similarly, if you pull a tray out, it can pull items from the tray below with it. The items in question were kale and chard leaves that were a bit curly and didn't lie flat on the tray.
2. Make the items you want to dry as flat and thin as possible (See 1.)
3. Lovage dries faster than chard/spinach which dry faster than kale.
4. At a temp of 125 F/ 52C, Lovage takes 3 hours to dry, the rest take 4-5 hours.
5. A 5 tray Excalibur is not as heavy as I feared but it does have a big footprint.
6. It isn't too noisy although its nice to have it in another room.
7. I over estimated how many leaves I could dry - its about 4/5 chard leaves to a tray. Gave the stalks to the chooks as I was too lazy to chop them up for drying.
8 5 trays of leaves fill a 1lb jam jar when dried.
1. Its best to load the trays from the top down. When you push a tray in, it can catch on the items in the tray below and push them into a heap, when you've spent hours spreading them out neatly. Similarly, if you pull a tray out, it can pull items from the tray below with it. The items in question were kale and chard leaves that were a bit curly and didn't lie flat on the tray.
2. Make the items you want to dry as flat and thin as possible (See 1.)
3. Lovage dries faster than chard/spinach which dry faster than kale.
4. At a temp of 125 F/ 52C, Lovage takes 3 hours to dry, the rest take 4-5 hours.
5. A 5 tray Excalibur is not as heavy as I feared but it does have a big footprint.
6. It isn't too noisy although its nice to have it in another room.
7. I over estimated how many leaves I could dry - its about 4/5 chard leaves to a tray. Gave the stalks to the chooks as I was too lazy to chop them up for drying.
8 5 trays of leaves fill a 1lb jam jar when dried.
The Moneyless Chicken says:-
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.