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How to dry pine cones properly, how to dry pine cones
The fruits of conifers contain a real bouquet of vitamins, phytoncides, useful resins and trace elements, and in dried form they represent an inexhaustible baggage of ideas for creativity. How to properly dry cones for healing and handicrafts, we will tell you in this article.
How to dry buds properly?
Healing tinctures, decoctions or preserves are made precisely from young, green cones, covered with a fragrant sticky resin. Of course, we are not talking about drying here. Such fruits are only carefully cleaned of visible dirt. This is the case, for example, of pine and cedar cones, which are used to treat a variety of ailments and relieve painful conditions. These include:
• high blood pressure,
• lung infections,
• ulcers and gastritis.
In addition, they are great for preventing colds and flu, strengthening the immune system.
We conclude that they dry the already ripe fruits and do this either for decorative purposes, or in order to facilitate the extraction of nuts.
Pine nuts are widely used in cooking and folk medicine. The people who have mined this raw material for years know how to dry pine cones in order to extract the nuts with maximum benefit.
To do this, the collected cedar fruits are dried over an open fire, all the time turning them from side to side, so that the drying process occurs evenly.
This method is also popular: the buds are dried naturally in the sun or in a dry room, although this method is more expensive in time. However, in most cases, pine cones do not dry out at all, immediately going to the stage of separating the nuts ripened in them.
How to properly dry your buds for crafts
In the manufacture of original souvenirs (and not only New Year’s), the fruits of pine and spruce are used most often. Let’s talk about how to correctly process them before use.
Before drying, pine fruits (the most popular and readily available material for creativity) are prepared as follows: they are treated with a cotton swab with alcohol, removing impurities. Then they are placed in a solution of water and 3-5% vinegar (1: 1) to get rid of insects and their larvae. Then drying can be done in 3 ways. Choose whichever is most suitable:
• natural drying in the sun: the buds are stored in a ventilated container or wicker basket. Paper is placed under the bottom to make it easier to get rid of the husk. The method requires a lot of time and appropriate weather;
• drying in the oven is more convenient and takes less time. To do this, heat the oven to 250 ° C and put the cones at some distance from each other on a baking sheet wrapped in foil. The process takes 1 hour. It is important to watch carefully so that the raw material does not ignite;
• The quickest way to dry the buds is in the microwave. It will take only 1 minute in time. The fruits are placed on a plate of the oven, pre-lined with paper in several layers. The maximum temperature is set, after a minute the cones are removed from the oven.
Important: If, after such a procedure, the inner surface of the microwave smells like a young spruce forest, wipe it with a damp cloth dipped in vinegar or lemon juice – the problem of the foreign smell will be solved.
Put all the intricacies of the process of drying buds in the piggy bank of useful knowledge and skills. Who knows, maybe it will be needed very soon, but with such theoretical training, you will no longer have any difficulties.