Meet Adelaide Elliott-Joy, Author: Adelaide was raised in DC but got pulled west through the farming-on-a-college-accredited-commune pipeline, with stops on veggie and sheep farms in Washington's Skagit Valley and the Salish Sea before grad school landed them in Missoula. These days they tend a plot at the Northside community garden, where volunteer dill finds them whether they like it or not (they like it). You can usually find them with three books on hand, possibly drinking sun tea, definitely in the water.

I have a plot at the Northside garden, which means I was "blessed" with an abundance of volunteer dill. Volunteers are plants that grow without you intentionally sowing them — seeds dropped from a previous year's harvest, carried in by birds, or smuggled through the compost pile.

The volunteer dill at the Northside garden is prolific. As a dill lover myself, I aspire to use as much as I can while it's around. (Harvesting dill before it goes to seed can also slightly slow down next season's volunteer numbers.)

Each time I go to my garden, I grab a handful of dill. Sometimes I pull quite a few plants, drop their roots in the compost, and bring home an armful. That's how I ended up with dill hanging from an empty plant basket in my living room. (I'm not the best with houseplants…)

The bundles on the left are pictured below the day I harvested them, June 22nd. The picture on the right is the same dill on July 2nd. You can see it's not as full — the moisture has dried out.

Most herbs can be air dried, though anything with a woodier stem has less moisture to begin with and will hold up better. Woody-stemmed herbs include oregano, thyme, rosemary, and sage, to name a few.

What good is a drying rack?

Drying racks can be a great way to do low effort food preservation. As long as you start with herbs that are not wet (be sure to pat any water off after washing them), and have a source of flowing air, you shouldn’t have any problems with mold or food hazards. It’s less involved than canning, and the end product takes up less room. Dried herbs can be stored in ziplock bags or spice jars to save you space.

Building the rack is truly the most involved part of drying foods on a rack. If you don’t have the time or space, bundles of herbs can also be hung from a nail over a doorway. I know that my personal dried herb needs require more space than a nail (or an old hanging basket) which is why I opted for a drying rack.

Building a drying rack

I did some research and used the trays from two Garden City Harvest solar dehydrators, plus a drying rack my friend made, for inspiration.

Assembling the two-tiered rack took me 2 hours and 22 minutes, which I know because I listened to the entirety of the Beowulf audiobook. By the time I placed the final eye screw, I'd gotten to the acknowledgements.

I ran into some trials and tribulations while building the frames — hopefully, if I do my best here, I can help you avoid them.

Materials List

Lumber: enough 1x2s to get 8 pieces at 24 inches long. Eight pieces will make two frames; if you only want one, cut four pieces to two feet. I used scrap wood, so I had varying lengths that I cut down to 24 inches.

Mesh: choose between hog wire, window screens, or hardware cloth.

Tools:

Saw (chop, circular, or hand saw)
Power drill (with a pilot bit and a bit compatible with your screws)
Staple gun
Hammer
Tin snips
Speed square
Leather gloves, if using heavy-duty mesh

Screws, bits, and other things of those natures:

Pilot bit smaller than your screws (I used a ⅛ inch bit)
Bit compatible with your screws (I used a T25)
2.5 inch T25 wood screws (I used 16 for two trays)
Staples compatible with your staple gun
Eye screws or eye hooks (at least 4 if you want to hang your rack, at least 12 if you want shelves, and a handful more if you'd like to hang herbs from the sides)
Twine

Note: The way I oriented my pieces, my frames were not a perfect square. This is because one set of pieces sandwiches the other set in each corner.

Building Your Frame

Cut your 2x1s into 24” lengths. You will need 8 pieces of the same length.

Making halves of a frame: For connecting the lengths together, I think of it as a three step process.

Note: In the way that I oriented my pieces, my frames were not a perfect square. This is because I have one set of pieces sandwiching the other set in each corner.

It took me a few tries to figure out how best to connect my boards, so I racked up some time here.

Place two pieces at a 90 degree angle. Use a speed square in the corner to check your angle. Match the 1 inch sides together, so that your screw can have a stronger purchase. I aligned the end that I’ve labelled “C” in the diagram below with the wall behind it, so that I had something to force my weight against as I drilled pilot holes and placed the screws.

I drilled two pilot holes through B1 into B2. I swapped between my pilot bit and my T25 bit, so that I’d have one point of contact with my first screw before I flipped my boards over.

Swap your bit. Drive a wood screw into each pilot hole.

Repeat this process with the second set of pieces.

You should have two L-shaped pieces. Align them as so:

Assemble the frame:

- Fit the two L-pieces together to form a square. Check your corners with a speed square.
- Drill pilot holes in the remaining corners.
- Swap your bit. Secure the corners with a screw in each pilot hole.

Attaching the mesh:

Now is the time to really use leather gloves if you’re working with hardware cloth!
Lay the mesh over your frame and pull it tight.
Starting at one corner and working down a side, staple every few inches, continuing to pull taught as you go.
Hammer any raised staples to be flush with the wood.
Trim any excess mesh with tin snips.
Bend any sharp wire ends flat against the frame.

Install the eye screws:

Drill VERY shallow pilot holes in each corner, keeping in mind the depth of the screws in place.
Twist eye screws into the pilot holes by hand.
Tighten them as needed.

For a two-tiered rack:

Place eye screws on the top of each frame.
Install eye screws on the bottom of the upper frame, as well.

If you’d like to have hooks on the side of your trays so things can hang off, install eye hooks along the sides. I put hooks on two sides of each of my trays.

Hanging your drying rack:

My apartment already had a handy hook on the ceiling. I doubled up some twine and strung it through the first rack (the one with eye screws on top and bottom) using the eye screws diagonal from each other. I adjusted my second string until it was even with the first and my tray was level.

When attaching the second tray, I used two strings and threaded them through two eye screws on the underside of the upper tray, on both sides.

so, what’s on my drying rack??

I laid my dill from 10 days ago flat and spread out the stems to allow for more airflow. I also added a ton of thyme, which I know I won't be able to eat while it's all fresh — but it was crowding out my fennel bulbs, so I pulled it. Some calendula flowers were encroaching on my strawberry patch, too, so I pulled the plants, popped off the heads, and left them to dry on my rack.

I have plans to make shortbread cookies with the calendula and thyme, and infinite skillet loaves of dilly bread with — you guessed it — my infinite amounts of dill.

Once I get around to buying a roll of parchment paper, I'll lay out the chamomile heads I harvested while helping clean out a friend's plot.

How to: Build an Herb Drying Rack