Flowers and plants drying kit

All you really need is to want to dry the flowers. To start, you don't have to pay for anything. Did you bring a meadow bouquet from the bike trip? Let's start.

 

 

Separate and review the plants

Gently separate the plants and flowers, and put the broken and squashed ones aside. If some have started to wilt - don't worry, it's part of the drying process. If some of the flowers started to lose their petals, collect them - you can dry them separately and then "rebuild" the flower from the dry elements. You can separate the flowers from the stems, cut off the leaves and buds, and dry everything separately. See if it is possible to remove thick centers in flowers without disturbing the structure of the plant. You can try to cut them with small scissors.

Pressing and drying in books

Prepare paper towels or other paper sheets from raw paper. Arrange the plants with space in between, put a paper towel on top, close the page. Don't put it on the next page right away, flip more pages. Fill a book and put it under a pile of other books, or under something else that is heavy. Try to put weight on the book so you can keep it closed. Check out this article for some more tips.

 

Flower press  

You can buy a flower press or ask someone to help make one yourself. I used two kitchen boards (thick, solid wood) to make my press. Bolts and wide nuts were also needed. In such a flower press, you can easily place entire books or individual plants into paper towels. For a better pressure distribution, I also prepared additional piecies of cardboard to put in between the books and paper towels. I squeeze the press as much as I can. After 2 days, I loosen the screws, check the condition of the plants. If there is a lot of moisture, I open the press, pull out the moist papers with plants and put them on a table. After a day, everything dries up nicely. You can re-insert them in the press for a few days.

 

 

Drying without special supervision 

The technique described above is for drying whole flowers and plants, stems with leaves, sets of flower buds, and all plants that may contain a lot of moisture. But if you decide to dry leaves, grasses, delicate flowers (such as pansies or violets) or the flower petals themselves, you can simply arrange them in books and put them on a shelf. Without any special checking or heating, in about 3 weeks you will have the material ready to make decorations.