Zinnias!

These zinnias were growing in our gardens yesterday. Today they have been perfectly preserved and are ready to use in our arrangements,wreaths and swags! In addition to our freeze-dry machine, we use a sand-vac machine to dry our flowers. The sand-vac machine dries flowers by burying the blooms in silica gel, placing them under a vacuum and applying heat. A cycle in the freeze-dry machine can take 10 days to 2 weeks to complete. A cycle in the sand-vac machine takes 24 to 48 hours. The sand-vac machine works beautifully to preserve flowers that do not dry easily in the freeze-dry machine. We keep all of our equipment very busy at this time of year!