Herb Drying Rack

I love to grow herbs and try to add one or two new ones every year.  I turn my basil into pesto, which gets frozen.  The rosemary and parsley gets dug up, potted and brought in for the winter.  The lemon balm gets boiled into tea concentrate and frozen to drink all winter.  But, the rest of them need to be preserved for winter another way.  Since I haven't delved into the whole flavored vinegar thing yet, that means they need to be dried.

Last year I only had one bundle of thyme and a couple of sage to dry.  This wasn't a big deal to find space for.  But, this year I have a lot more herbs that need to be dried and I needed someplace to hang them.  So, the wheels got to churnin' and I came up with a plan that was executed with the help of my hubby.

I found this large canvas picture at Goodwill for $8.95 and thought it would be just the thing I needed for my project.

The first thing I did was take the canvas picture out of the frame and pop the name tag off of the bottom of the frame.  Then I filled in holes with putty and gave it a light sanding.  Next came a coat of spray paint.  The weather turned cold and rainy and delayed my spray paint efforts.  Then my hubby took over.

He finished painting the frame for me and then stapled chicken wire on the back.  The last thing he needed to do was hang it in the kitchen for me.

All I had to do was gather my herbs in bundles with little clear rubber bands (that I bought in the hair department) and hang from the chicken wire with little "S" hooks.  Here's what it looks like after it's make-over.

You can see the chicken wire up close.

I still have a bunch more herbs that need to be cut and bundled, but am out of room.  I think I might try my hand at drying them in the oven and see how that turns out.  Of coarse I do have room to add a couple more smaller drying frames on each side of the large one.  I'll let you know what I decide. :0)

Pam