I have an Omcan stainless steel 20 shelf dehydrator that I paid nearly 500.00 for. They also have a 12 shelf (might be 10...) for around 300.00. I have been really happy with mine. I can dry about 25 pounds of tomatoes in about 5 hours. I actually have another 20 shelf unit but I bought it at an estate sale and it has no identifying numbers/name on it and it works equally well. If you are drying a lot of "poundage" of anything, these larger units will more than pay for themselves.

Re: fruit leather. I stumbled across a way to make individual "fruit roll-ups" without needing the special trays, or the hassle of covering my trays in plastic wrap. I cut squares of baking parchment so that 4 fit per tray, then spread the fruit puree onto each square. Dehydrate as usual. The dried fruit leather easily peels off of the parchment, but to store, just toss the individual squares into a zipper bag, paper and all. DS LOVES the applesauce "fruit rollups" I made this wayâ¦easy to throw into his school lunches.

I own one of the Ronco dehydrators. We originally bought it for drying a few things for backpacking trips. It does OK for small trips for two people, but it has been seriously underpowered keeping up with the garden production of what we had wanted to dry in order to preserve food. That happened last year with tomatoes, and this year with figs. We went around the problem learning how to can (last year) and learning to make fig/fruit wine (this year). You can figure that the freezer space was shrinking rapidly with full summer garden production, so freezing was not an option. Nothing against canning, and certainly nothing against wine, but I would have preferred to have a larger capacity dryer. I love drying tomatoes and then grinding them up into a tomato powder that can reconstitute into a sauce out in the woods in a backpacking trip. It is also great to have at home, easier than canning and you can actually store them without refrigeration. I love their taste too! For figs, I use dried figs in breads, muffins, energy bars I make myself (mixed with nuts and other things). Lately I have also found out that zucchini slices dry very nicely, and so do green beans. I also have peach and nectarine trees, they ripen with the figs, so yes, more space in a dehydrator! We are considering making one of the solar ones, but out of nice materials that we already have (not cardboard). The main model plan that is going around the internet has a tilted black air duct, it should work just by the principle that hot air rises. Also, it is very sunny and very dry where I live, so solar should be good for us, save energy and avoid heating the room in the summer. The food is confined so critters should not be a big problem. Has anyone had any experience with the solar types? any advice?

Hey ajsmama, Fancy meeting up with you on the Harvest Forum ;-)) I've done pounds of pepper powder each year for the past four or five years. john__showme__usa is right, it takes more than 4-8 hours to properly dry peppers, especially for subsequent grinding into powders or flakes. In my experience, using home (non-commercial dehydrators), depending on the variety of pepper, 24 - 48 hours drying is the norm. They're dry enough when you can easily snap them. If you are planning to grind them after drying, a little trick to ensure they were properly dried is to fill your jar with powder leaving 1/4 - 1/2 inch head space. Invert jars and let rest for two days. If no condensation forms, you're good to go. FWIW, Bill