I’ve been wondering: How do you make potpourri?
Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at
8:06 am
Can you make it with flower petals, or pine cones?
Tagged with: flower petals • pine cones
Filed under: Potpourri
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There is a lot of information available on the web on making your own potpourri. I liked the following info (see source below) which has recipes for potpourri made from flowers and also from pinecones. Here is the introductory info on poutpourri:
"You can use almost anything in your garden to make an aromatic potpourri mixture. Traditionally, potpourri is a mixture of dried flowers and other ingredients, placed in open containers, like small bowls or cups and placed to allow their aroma to delicately scent the room. Sachets are usually small cloth "pillows" containing potpourri, which can be used almost anywhere. Sachets have the advantage of being portable, you can place them in drawers, pin them to pillows, or carry them in your purse wherever you go.
Generally, potpourri ingredients should not be finely ground, petals of flowers should be lightly crushed. Ingredients such as cinnamon sticks or orange peels should be broken into small pieces or finely chopped. "
Here are two recipes for potpourri:
For a floral potpourri, "Combine
* 10 marigold blossoms
* 6 geranium leaves
* 5 rose blossoms
* 2 tsp dried lavender
* 2 tsp orrisroot
* 2 drops rose fixative "
For a pine potpourri,
"Combine:
* 1/2 cup bayberry leaves
* 1/2 cup snipped balsam needles
* 1/2 cup miniature pine cones
* 1/2 cup rose hips
* 2 tsp orrisroot
* 2 drops pine-scented fixative
Mix the bayberry, balsam, pine cones and rose hips in a large bowl. Add the orrisroot and fixative and stir gently. This makes a great Christmas potpourri! "
I have a freeze dried cooker that dries beef and make your own beef jerky type of thing. You can get one of these and put any flower of elegance in it and dry it up and use certain ones when added to warm water over the stove for fragrance to the mind. In fact if you choose a good flavor of flowers you can actually enhance your mate into sexual activity because it makes you tingle with the smell of it.
It is like candles…its' aroma just peels you off into another world.
Potpourri is only dried flowers. get 2 pieces of board about 18 inches square,put a newspaper on one, then the flowers, put another newspaper on the flowers, and then the other board on top of that. Now you can put all that on a level surface with a heavy weight on top of it all and allow the flowers to dry out. you can put the flowers in whole or pull the petals apart, I prefer to leave them whole to get the maximum smell throughout. I have put bolts through the boards with wing-nuts and I tighten them every second day,that helps to dry them out quicker. Good luck.
It senseless to try to make it when it is so cheap at Wal-Mart or K-Mart, even cheaper at a Dollar Store.