I don't hang any herbs in bunches to dry. I've had some poor results - mold and poor drying where the plants are bunched. I live in a moist, cool location so I either use a food dehydrator or lay the herbs on screens to dry. With screens, I cover them in paper toweling first to keep the screens clean and to keep herbs from cross-contaminating. For stuff like mint, I never use the food dehydrator. Even on the lowest heat setting it is too hot. Just air dry them. Get some inexpensive window screens or screening material and some wood to make your own if you plan on doing a lot of herb drying. FataMorgana This post was edited by fatamorgana on Fri, Apr 5, 13 at 18:46

Great harvest! Herbs are a "consuming" passion! ;) FataMorgana

Hi Silvia, so glad you found your way back :-) My mouth always gets watery and could devour most all of your posted pics! Looks like you captured the Sun's Gold for a real Sweet Treat in a celestial blue pleated plate! ;-) I'll have to raid my Santas so the grape can make it's last stand for a respectable picture to keep up with you for the moment ;-). The only nice thing about this cold here is that if the tomatoes are kept above freezing, they can last so long on the plants ... they don't have top be picked every day as long as they are protected from birds and squirrels (!!!) I bet your transplants are quite big by now, and that's a nice cherry tomato trick to have some munching maters to fill in the gap. I'd like to do that but everything is tied up and intertwined, and since I'm also working with seedlings each day. I'm afraid to clean up little by little with the mold spores that will go flying in my hair and clothes if I try to separate the plants. Suddenly I'm hungry! Cheer! PC

I totally agree, some may never ripen. I had to make an in-field call. The greenest ones were removed from the tree accidentally, so I thought I would give them a shot them rather than throw them in the compost. I'm curious about the ants: What were they doing with those maggots. It looked as if they were placing them all around where the stem meets fruit and chewing holes there. Did I catch these peaches just in the nick of time, or do the ants stop the hole when tiny, doing some kind of farming operation with those maggots? I just saw the fruit starting to ripen up, and I couldn't imagine a breach in the skin covered with ants and maggots being a good thing with the tree covered in bugs and birds. A few of the peaches had half turn to mush or had large holes with lots of ants and maggots in them and other bugs. I was worried that would be the result for all the fruit within a week if I waited. Some of the smaller fruit had detached from the branch on its own but was still in the bag. Amazingly it looked fine and ripe and we ate it when I got home and it was delicious. I've left quite a bit of fruit still on the tree as an experiment to let it ripen further and see what happens. Next time I'm up I'll put tanglefoot type stuff around the trunk. Due to the layout of the situation it will be of limited use, but it may slow them down at least. I also did a lot of pruning to open it up and get some sun in on the fruit. Is it dangerous to remove very large branches that are going much too high? or should I wait for the winter for that? by the way, a student gave me this afternoon a couple of store-bought peaches which are ripe. I placed them on top center for comparison with my tree picked peaches. They are larger, however mine are sweeter. In a taste test everybody preferred my peaches. my wife was stunned that we got any peaches off the tree at all. A much more experienced older farmer locally cut her tree down, because all the fruit had bugs in them and it was too difficult to spray pesticide properly. I don't think she used bags.