You will certainly feel nostalgic when the cold winter sets in and the time for your colorful garden flowers is over. However, we have an option that will help you enjoy the flowers even in winter, so you can start the winter with joy, drink a hot tea or cocoa and watch the snow from the window. You can create a beautiful herbarium and collect all your flowers, leaves, grasses and other plant parts. But what is a herbarium? Find out now!
So, a herbarium is a collection of dried plants pressed in advance for this purpose. With enough specimens, you can even create a herbarium folder and equip it with a cover sheet for the herbarium. But what is particularly important is that...flowersand plants are dried correctly and sufficiently. This is the only way they can retain their real colors.
So that you are successful, we would like to give you tips on how to create a herbarium and help you with pressing plants. Luckily, you still have the whole summer to try things out and, of course, collect a wide variety of pressed plants and plant parts. Leaves that you can collect in autumn, for example, are suitable, as are blades of grass.
You are also welcome to do crafts with children. This is often done with the whole class, especially in schools. In this way, children can be taught different plant names and assigned to the respective plants. To ensure that your herbarium lasts a long time, there are a few things to consider.
You can collect the flowers at any time. But please be selective. The fresher the flower is, the better. Make sure they are in good condition and have no cracks. After all, you want your flowers to look pretty forever. For this reason, it is best to always have scissors and a basket ready in the garden. This means you can collect the right flowers at any time. You shouldn't feel sorry for cutting off the fresh flowers. In this way you stimulate the growth of more and more new flowers.
The best conditions are dry plants. This means that the morning dew should already have dried. So if you are an early riser, don't start collecting straight away, but wait until the moisture has evaporated. On the other hand, the evening is also suitable. But don't wait too long here. The dew forms in the evening, so the flowers should be collected before then. You should also avoid rainy days when collecting. After it rains, let the plants dry for about two to three days and only then start preparing.
Once you have collected enough flowers, you should not waste time and start pressing as quickly as possible. So before collecting, assess whether you have the time for it. If you have to do something quickly, at least don't leave the flowers out in the sun. Otherwise the “harvest” for creating a herbarium will quickly be ruined. When drying the plants, we recommend sorting them by groups.
Place the sorted flowers upside down on a white sheet of paper. The paper later protects the pages of the book. Make sure there is enough space between the flowers. If they touch each other, they will stick together after drying and can no longer be separated from each other.
Then take another sheet of paper and place it on top of the first one with the flowers. Be careful not to move anything. Place this “sandwich” roughly in the middle of a thick book. Now you are one step closer. The next step is to wait and see. The paper draws the moisture from the flowers and absorbs it. It is also important that you use unlabeled paper. The printer ink could transfer to the flowers during the drying phase and then you will end up with labeled flowers, which is not what you want.
Now there are flowers that are very suitable for pressing, as well as those with which it is difficult or difficult to achieve success. In principle, the less moisture a plant naturally contains, the easier it is to dry. It follows that fleshy flowers are not suitable. These contain more water. And in fact, after some time of drying, the flowers of the Busy Lieschen or the Begonia rot.
The durability of the colors also plays an important role. Some lose their strong colors during the drying process and become cloudy, while some varieties even, on the contrary, become even prettier. Suitable flowers for creating a herbarium include the following varieties:
Suitable garden flowers
– Abyssinian gladiolus (Gladiolus callianthus)
–Borretsch (Borago officinalis)
–Jewelry basket(Cosmos bipinnatus)
–Garden field delphinium(Consolidated jets)
– Whorl-leaved girl’s eye (Coreopsis verticillata)
– Dahlias (Dahlia)
– The flowers of the carrots (Daucus carrot)
– Rittersporne (Delphinium)
– California poppy (Eschscholzia californica)
– Garden hibiscus / shrub marshmallow (Syrian hibiscus)
– winged tobacco (Nicotiana alata)
– student flowers (Tagetes)
– verbenas (Verbena)
– pansies (Viola)
– zinnias (Zinnia)
Since dahlias, marigolds, garden hibiscus and zinnias are quite thick flowers, pressing is more difficult. For this purpose, the flower is usually simply torn apart into its individual parts and the petals are dried separately. The flower is then put back together.
Pressing aids
As is well known, books are traditionally used to press flowers, leaves and other plant parts. We all know this from childhood, when we mostly dried four-leaf clovers. You can also use this. Place the prepared sheet of paper with the flowers in a book and, if necessary, stack more books on top of it. A press is just as practical. This is also better for pressing the thick flowers mentioned above. Such presses can be purchased, but they are usually expensive. But there's nothing stopping you from building your own flower press. And it's actually much easier than you might think.
Flower press
All you need are two wooden plates with a hole in each of the four corners, thick cardboard, four anchor screws, washers and wing nuts. To prepare, simply drill the holes already mentioned in the boards. You can then stack as many layers as you like, or as many as the screws allow. Between the layers of cardboard there is a layer of flowers between paper.
Build your own press
Then the screws are screwed tight and you wait until all the flowers have dried thoroughly. A helpful tip is to put a piece of paper on each layer with the type of flower and the date on it. These pieces of paper can be hung out of the press so that they are visible at all times. This way you always know exactly whether you can release the press.
Duration of pressing
Once you have laid the flowers out to dry, it is important not to interrupt this process. In addition, all flowers must have the same pressure on them. This is easiest to achieve with a book. To ensure this is guaranteed with the press, you should make sure that all nuts are screwed on the same way. But how long do the plants press for the herbarium? You need at least a month.
No interruptions
Now suppress your curiosity, because looking at the flowers prematurely could cause them to tear when they open. And even if this does not happen, there is a risk that the flowers will shrivel afterwards, which cannot be reversed. Then you would have to start all over again.
Your patience will be rewarded once the flowers are ready. Now it's time to create your personal herbarium. The dried plants can now be used for a variety of purposes. All you need to plant is time, desire or perhaps an occasion. Hobby gardeners, for example, use the idea to collect their gems in an album.
In this way, you will always remember your copies and can always be proud of your success when you look at the album. For this purpose, the dried flowers can easily be glued to the individual pages with glue. Divide the album into different seasons and label the flowers. Who knows, maybe one day they will encourage you to plant certain varieties again.
Decorate your apartmentwith a pretty mural, which you can put together yourself. You can create a colorful meadow or simply come up with interesting arrangements.
Everyone is happy about flowers. If they last forever, the joy is even greater. You can decorate gift packaging with dried flowers or make your own greeting card for a specific occasion and then decorate it with the flowers.
You probably already know from our article on decorating candles that you can create wonderful candles with dried flowers. The flowers are fixed easily, which you can do using our instructions. Just follow the link from the first approach of this article.
We also find the idea of designing a cell phone case particularly romantic. This way you can create a herbarium and always carry it with you. This idea is again perfect as a gift and makes your cell phone or smartphone look romantic and unique.
“Herbarium collections are invaluable for mapping species distributions, which is critical to conservation efforts. By knowing where species thrive, scientists can predict and manage conservation needs, especially in areas threatened by human activities such as deforestation.”– Adapted fromFrontiers for Young Minds.
