How to dry hawthorn in the home: use oven, dryer

Hawthorn is not only a prickly hedge, which pleases with its beauty during flowering, but also a very useful product. There are several ways to dry the hawthorn, thanks to which you can harvest the fruits of the plant for the winter. Then the berries can be added to tea, boil from them compote and coffee drink.

No less popular are infusions, decoctions and jam from hawthorn, cooked at home. The use of the products obtained positively affects the state of the cardiac system and blood vessels, allows you to get rid of the effects of chronic stress, insomnia. The main thing is that the harvest should be collected from shrubs remote from factories, highways and industrial enterprises.

How to dry the hawthorn flowers?

Very few know that not only the berries, but the petals of the hawthorn inflorescences are marked by a pronounced therapeutic effect. To prepare a product is quite simple, you only need to consistently perform the following manipulations:

1. The hawthorn blooms in May, but only a few days, so you need to catch the time. Only dry flowers with integral petals without rot and traces of the presence of insects are exposed to the assembly. Wet petals do not fit, they are difficult to dry quickly, not allowing rotting.
2. Collecting products with whole inflorescences or petals, folding into a bucket or basket, tamping the elements can not. In the package, it is better not to keep them, the flowers will not live to home, banned in a warm and airless space.
3. By publishing a pleasant aroma, hawthorn actively attracts insects, so the harvest should be shaken regularly by touching the flowers.
4. Immediately after the assembly, you need to start drying the products at home. To do this, lay out the petals on a paper substrate in one layer. If you cover them with a layer of gauze or a very thin cloth, you can not be afraid of insects.
5. The construction is placed in a dark, warm place with a good level of air movement. As the petals dry up, mix. The product will be ready in about 7-10 days.

Tip: The process will be much simpler and faster if you use an electric dryer to handle the petals. Manipulation is carried out at a temperature of no higher than 40 ° C.Time depends on the quality of the flowers and ranges from two to six hours.

The finished product should be stored in fabric bags, containers made of wood, cardboard or glass. But you do not need to seal them tightly, it is better to use a cloth fastened with a rope instead of a lid. Shelf life is more than 2 years.

Tip: If the fragrance from the petals is gone before the expiry date has come, it is better not to eat the product. But you can add them to the bath, homemade scented candles. Under the influence of high temperatures, the remains of useful substances will come out, filling the atmosphere of the house.

Recommendations for harvesting hawthorn berries and ways to dry them

Before harvesting hawthorn for the winter, it must be properly collected. The optimal time is the period from the end of August to the end of September. Some believe that it is better to collect and store the hawthorn collected during the first frost, the main thing is that the berries are bright red, burgundy or orange. Experienced suppliers of this product recommend to initially sort the product by color, and then dry and store it separately.

Immediately before the beginning of manipulation, the fruits need to be sorted, cleared from the scutes, and the unripe or substandard berries removed. You do not need to wash the hawthorn!

How to dry the hawthorn in the oven:

• Put the berries on a clean and dry baking tray with a uniform homogeneous layer and place in an oven preheated to a temperature of 60 ° C.The door is covered, but not to the end, otherwise moisture, coming from fresh fruits, will accumulate in an enclosed space.
• There is no exact period of preparation of berries at home, the quality of the product will have to be determined empirically. When the fruits are slightly deformed and change the shade, we take one berry and squeeze it. If it is soft, then we continue drying.
• There is another method of verification. We take just a few berries and we squeeze them in a fist. Finished products do not secrete juice and do not stick together. Otherwise, we keep them in the oven for a while, instead of trying to bring them to the right state by pouring it into the box.

When planning the harvesting of hawthorn and storing his house, it must be taken into account that the dried product will have no more than a quarter of the outgoing mass, the rest of the weight will go along with moisture.

If, for some reason, the use of the oven is not available, you can dry the berries in the fresh air. In this case, they are also sorted, cleaned, laid out in one layer on trays covered with paper. Washing before drying is contraindicated. To dry and keep the pure fruit, you need to turn the handfuls of berries one by one into a cloth and grind them in hands without pressure.

Drying is best done on the street, setting trays in a shaded place. At night they need to be cleaned in the room, otherwise falling dew will ruin all efforts. Paper on trays must be changed daily. With an abundance of insects, fruits can be covered with gauze. This drying will take several days, but the value of the product will not be less than with fast intensive processing.

How to store dried hawthorn berries at home?

The finished product can be stored for up to two years, provided it is placed in fabric bags, glass jars or cardboard boxes covered with cloth. From plastic containers will have to be abandoned. Ready-made products from hawthorn are best consumed within 3-5 days, for this reason it is not recommended to prepare at once a large amount of jam or jam. This does not apply to alcohol tinctures, which must stand for several days, and sometimes even weeks, before use.

The use of hawthorn has been proven for a long time, but valuable components in the fruits and petals of the plant are preserved only when properly processed. Do not buy ready-made products in pharmacies or with hands, only with the self-management of all manipulations can be expected to receive high-quality composition.

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