We dried a lot of stuff, and canned other stuff.
Corn (maize) we just pulled the shucks back - but not off - and tied 4 or 5 ears together by the shucks and hung the ears to dry. It has to be "shelled" of the cob and either rehydrated or ground for use after drying, except in the case of parching it - you just parch the dried kernels in a skillet with a little oil or grease. It parches like popcorn, but usually less spectacularly.
"Flint" or "field" corn is better for grinding into meal or flour, and sweet corn is better for rehydrating and cooking whole-kernel. Popcorn is, of course, better for popping. It's a specialized type of flint corn.
Beans, hot peppers, and things like that we dried. We'd take a needle and thread, and run it in one side and out the other and string together a long string of them and hang the string to dry. The beans were strung while still in the hull, not individually.
Tomatoes, apples, and things like that with a higher moisture content can be sliced and dried, but it seems to me they lose something in the drying. We usually canned them. To dry them, we just sliced them and spread them out on a tin roof in the sun, but less adventurous and more prudent folk might prefer to substitute sheets of tin foil for a tin roof. As an aside, I detest dried apples, but they do keep longer. Covering them with a cheesecloth helps keep bugs off them while they are drying.
Herbs are gathered in bunches and hung to dry, usually in the sun, but always where there is air circulating whether in the sun or not, to prevent them from molding before the moisture is driven out. I still have some dried basil and spearmint from last year, and plan to add sage this year. I have a rosemary plant from last year, but it's not doing well, and I recently had to revive it with a grow light.. I'll probably pop it into dirt outside this year, if I can find a suitable dry and sunny place for it. Rosemary is perrenial, and a bush can live up to 30 years if you can get it started. Sage is also a perrennial. Where I was raised, there was a white sage bush that lived the entire time I lived there, and may have been started 50 years earlier by a great aunt.
Root crops, like onions and potatoes, were just tossed in a bin in the cellar house and stored as-is in the coolness of it. They have to be kept cool, but not frozen. if they freeze, they just mush up and become useless.
Last spring I planted some onion bulbs. I got them out of a bag of onions from the grocery store - when I saw green blades starting on them, I just took them out of the bag and popped them into the dirt in a planter outside. I [planted 3 of them in the hopes that they'd bloom and seed, but they never did, and I never harvested them. I checked them a couple days ago, and where I planted 3, there are now 8. Since they never seeded, they must have split or divided at the bulb and are still growing.
.
Corn (maize) we just pulled the shucks back - but not off - and tied 4 or 5 ears together by the shucks and hung the ears to dry. It has to be "shelled" of the cob and either rehydrated or ground for use after drying, except in the case of parching it - you just parch the dried kernels in a skillet with a little oil or grease. It parches like popcorn, but usually less spectacularly.
"Flint" or "field" corn is better for grinding into meal or flour, and sweet corn is better for rehydrating and cooking whole-kernel. Popcorn is, of course, better for popping. It's a specialized type of flint corn.
Beans, hot peppers, and things like that we dried. We'd take a needle and thread, and run it in one side and out the other and string together a long string of them and hang the string to dry. The beans were strung while still in the hull, not individually.
Tomatoes, apples, and things like that with a higher moisture content can be sliced and dried, but it seems to me they lose something in the drying. We usually canned them. To dry them, we just sliced them and spread them out on a tin roof in the sun, but less adventurous and more prudent folk might prefer to substitute sheets of tin foil for a tin roof. As an aside, I detest dried apples, but they do keep longer. Covering them with a cheesecloth helps keep bugs off them while they are drying.
Herbs are gathered in bunches and hung to dry, usually in the sun, but always where there is air circulating whether in the sun or not, to prevent them from molding before the moisture is driven out. I still have some dried basil and spearmint from last year, and plan to add sage this year. I have a rosemary plant from last year, but it's not doing well, and I recently had to revive it with a grow light.. I'll probably pop it into dirt outside this year, if I can find a suitable dry and sunny place for it. Rosemary is perrenial, and a bush can live up to 30 years if you can get it started. Sage is also a perrennial. Where I was raised, there was a white sage bush that lived the entire time I lived there, and may have been started 50 years earlier by a great aunt.
Root crops, like onions and potatoes, were just tossed in a bin in the cellar house and stored as-is in the coolness of it. They have to be kept cool, but not frozen. if they freeze, they just mush up and become useless.
Last spring I planted some onion bulbs. I got them out of a bag of onions from the grocery store - when I saw green blades starting on them, I just took them out of the bag and popped them into the dirt in a planter outside. I [planted 3 of them in the hopes that they'd bloom and seed, but they never did, and I never harvested them. I checked them a couple days ago, and where I planted 3, there are now 8. Since they never seeded, they must have split or divided at the bulb and are still growing.
.