Summer's over and the output of my vegetable garden has ceased, save for a few late season tomatoes. It wasn't a great season for me, mainly because I don't know what I'm doing. My squash yield was only so-so, and the few watermelons and cantaloupes that appeared never made it past the ping pong ball stage. But I learned plenty of tips from new and old friends (and kind Boing Boing readers, too!), so maybe my fall/winter garden will be better.
My most successful crops were figs, cayenne peppers, and tomatoes. They came so quickly and in such abundance that we couldn't eat them fast enough. I gave a lot away to friends (except the figs, which are too delicious to share with anyone), and I dehydrated the rest using a Ronco food dehydrator. (The particular model I use is not available on Amazon any longer.)
It took several attempts to learn the best way to prepare different fruits for drying. Figs are tastier when dried whole instead of cut in half, and tomatoes are better halved rather than sliced into disks. I dried the peppers whole until they were crunchy and ground them up in a food processor.
I put the tomatoes and peppers into my eggs every morning and I cut the figs up and sprinkle them on my nightly bowl of blueberries and cream.
Next summer, I'm thinking of making a solar dehydrator (the "Appalachian Dehydrator") like the one Kelly and Erik of The Urban Homestead made.
