Freeze Dry your excess produce

[wiperhunter2]

For a number of years I've been using my freezer dryer(FD) I bought 5 or 6 years ago to FD my excess produce from my garden and peach trees. The first year I bought it, I still had my big garden out in the field behind my house and I tried FDing lots of produce but with little success, except for peaches. Since I had good success FDing peaches that first year, I continues doing them up until this year, when I started trying to FD my excess yellow squash and zucchini. After doing a lot of experimenting with the FDer I finally found the reason why years ago I had no luck FDing my excess produce. It turned out I wasn't drying them long enough on the dry cycle, in my journal, I had written down 3 extra hours and after numerous attempts this year I finally come up with the correct drying time 8 extra hours, wow, was I surprised. Up until this year we had always blanched our excess squash and froze them but now that I have it figured out, we will do both this year. FD our extra squash until the peaches start getting ripe. We will FD our first batch of peaches tomorrow morning, I got them cut up and on the trays and in the freezer today. I have found out over the years that starting the FDer the first thing in the morning works best because the produce come out 36 hours later, so they come out during the day instead of during the night. I have 5 peach trees, two of which are full grown and produce 500 to 600 peaches a year, here is a pic of one of the peaches I just picked.




Do any of you have a FDer? If so, maybe we can share info and learn to use them better.