Drying Leaves for Winter

[Joanne]

Hi guys, thought I would just share my process of drying leaves for winter. I got my first tortoise in April, so have never done it before, but thought it may be useful to share ideas and such.

So far, I have picked a few leaves today and put thread through them and hung them up to dry. I am in touch with the people at thetortoisetable.org.uk on facebook and they have given me a bit of advice too.

Here are my leaves:

In a few days when they have dried, I will put them in a resealable bag and then into a dark place to keep the colour.

Then in a couple of weeks I will feed some to Shermann to make sure he likes them. No point in drying a tonne of leaves for nothing!

 

[samsmom]

i started an experiment today myself! i cut some grass/weeds, placed in a freezer bag and put it in the freezer. will take out in a few weeks and see if samson will eat them! hadn't thought about drying it out, i like that idea also, kind of like tortpourri! good luck and keep us posted on the outcome!

 

[pepsiandjac]

I blend the weeds and freeze them into icecubes,my torts love it/

 

[samsmom]

I blend the weeds and freeze them into icecubes,my torts love it/

do you add any liquid or just freeze grass and weeds?

 

[Grandpa Turtle 144]

I freeze the grass in paper bags in the fall and mix it with store veg over winter

 

[Joanne]

when I asked about freezing, they said that if you just freeze the leaves as is, when you defrost them they turn to mush (kinda like frozen spinach I guess).

Never thought about blending and freezing in cubes... that's an awesome idea. Think I will try that too!

 

[farber2028]

I recently just made a salad dressing to test out now for use over winter. There's a mix of a bunch of flowers, cactus, a few succulents, and dandelion greens all blended up. Both my torts really seem to like it. This morning a made a "winter meal" just as a test. I had bak choy, radicchio, endive and some of a seed mix, and tossed it with my dressing. Apparently it went over well. I made another one out of just cactus and dandelion greens that I'd like to do like a pellet style food with but can't seem to figure it out. I froze some in an ice cube tray but it didn't seem to work so well.

I plan on putting the dressing on 2-3 weeks over winter and the cubes if I can get them right they'd have 1-2 a week just to keep the variety the same. I really don't want to just depend on the grocery store food so I've been trying to figure something out. I do like the idea of drying the leaves out, but for my torts, i don't htink they'd like it. The rarely touch any food that was left over from the morning feast once it gets all dried out.

 

[Joanne]

Yeah I'd like to make sure he gets a variety over winter. I'm going to test the dried leaves with some shop lettuce next week to see if he will eat it. He does crunch on dried leaves sometimes, but mostly they end up covered in coir so he doesn't eat them.

I like experimenting! It's fun

 

[Joanne]

ok, so just fed Shermann some of the dried leaves and he is happily munching on them. Think I will gather more today to dry. Get stocked up!

 

[FLINTUS]

I dried some weeds and flowers for last winter and they worked well, especially the flowers but the weeds weren't always liked.