Dehydrate Food in a Solar Dehydrator - PEP BB food.sand.dehydrate

I did both kale and tomatoes for this bb. I was so eager to use the dehydrator I didn't read the documentation needed beforehans and then the group and myself were excited to eat it afterwards so the finished kale picture is the meager scraps haha. I don't have a photo on the scale but I do know it was approximately 12 Roma tomatoes and 4 bunches of three leaves of kale. Thought I'd post my documentation and give it a shot!

(Paul Wheaton writes in the referring email) Nothing rhymes with Solar Dehydrator ...

Really?
 
In my Solar Dehydrator,
I can melt a Polar Skyscraper.
One piece at a time,
Just to keep the rhyme.
 
LOL

An arctic snow bunting is a "polar wee migrator"!

Does this work?

Dehydrated approximately 20 lbs of cherries in my solar dehydrator.

I didn't get the weight before hand but my after dehydration weight was 2 lbs.

Trying again

Dried cherries

All week there's been a huge box of mushrooms here at Wheaton Labs. They were starting to turn, and so I got permission to dry a couple pounds of them:

Originally, I thought this BB would be the one I wouldn't be able to do to complete this sand badge. That's because I live where the humidity is so bad that it melts the goats' salt in the mineral feeder. All my research years ago suggested that solar dehydrators aren't suited to high humidity climates. I got to thinking about this and recalled a solar oven webinar I hosted several years ago. One of the topics was how to use that brand solar oven as a solar dehydrator. It's a different technique from solar cooking, and so required several adjustments. And practice! My first batch didn't turn out, but I learned from it and am excited to now know that solar dehydration is possible for me. I'll show the adjustments in the photos below.

Two pounds of fresh onions for solar dehydrating.

Getting started.

To dry, and not cook, the onions, here's what I had to do.

Adjustment #1: Use the dehydrator rack.

I learned from experimenting that I need to stir the onions occasionally and switch out the order of the racks. I removed individual onion pieces as soon as they dried sufficiently.

Adjustment #2: Set oven door on top of the door latches.

Solar cooking is moist heat cooking, so this allowed excess moisture to escape.

Adjustment #3: Use focuser to angle the oven to the east of the sun.

To obtain a lower temperature, I also had to offset the direction of the oven from the sun. I started by turning the oven 6 inches to the east, kept an eye on the temperature, and adjusted as needed.

It took three days to dry a batch of onions. Here's the last of them ready to come out.

Last of the onions ready to come out.

Yield from 2 pounds fresh onions was 3/4 quart dry onions.

I'm encouraged by this experiment. The disadvantage of using my solar oven is that its capacity is small. But, for the first time, I can see a dedicated solar dehydrator in my future.

I dehydrated some apples this fall.  I used my Walk radiant solar dehydrator to do the work.

I purchased over 4kg of stonefruit, but don't have a scale. I am hoping this counts as visibly more than 2lbs. I have photographed them with an Imperial tape measure. Google tells me that a peach of 2 2/3" diameter is 5.3 oz. This means that 6 of these peaches alone would be 2lbs. I used all of these fruit but 1.5 peaches (they wouldn't fit!)--so plenty!