Making your own homemade green powder is the best way to you use your excess harvest and eat healthy greens all year long. They’re easy to make and cost saving too. Don’t have extra greens from the garden? Take advantage of sales at the local grocery.
Spring has arrived and the weather is starting to turn. Soon you’ll have huge bunches of kale and collards, Swiss chard and arugula, spinach and lettuce, just waiting to be eaten.
You will probably do as we do and pack the greens into scrambled eggs and salads, casseroles, soups and side dishes – but let’s face it, as the season progresses there’s often too much for a family to work through and it’s nearly insurmountable to eat it all.
I have a secret weapon for powering through the mountain of greens that will be arriving in your kitchen soon – It’s making your own homemade green powder. This simple vegetable powder, made of whatever greens we’ve harvested is one of my favorite ways to manage the harvest.
Plus, drying and making a powder from the harvest allows you to eat those healthy greens in the winter when your garden is no longer producing. That’s a win all around!
I tend to use anything so abundant we can’t eat it all fresh: beet and turnip trimmings, kale, lettuce leaves, broccoli leaves, leek and onion greens, bell peppers, herbs. Even very dry fruit makes a great addition. Any vegetable will do, and a variety is nice.
How much money can you save by taking this extra step? We used to purchase a container of powdered greens for around $20 and add a scoop of it to our morning smoothie. Cutting that out has saved us $240 per year. Instead plan ahead and use the garden produce you already have (or purchase it when on sale) and make your own healthy green powder.
Powdering dried food is easy and this concept works well with sweet potatoes and turmeric too.
Here’s How to Make Green Powder at Home
You don’t need to trim the leaves or take any great care in preparation beyond seeding the peppers and removing any garden dirt, although I do remove the extra tough stalks of Bok Choi, broccoli, and Swiss chard and dry them on a separate dehydrator sheet.
You may also want to cut leaves into smaller strips. This helps speed up the drying time and lets additional air flow through the trays. As mentioned, place the tougher stalk sections on their own trays, without leaves, they will be the last to finish drying and may need time beyond the 6 hours.
Simply lay the greens on clean dehydrator sheets. It’s okay to have the leaves touching and even overlapping, up to half an inch in depth on the trays. Dry the greens in your dehydrator at 100-125 degrees for 4 to 6 hours.
Check for dryness after 3 hours and consolidate trays if needed.
Process the dried leaves in a blender or food processor until you have a fine powder.
Run the powdered sections through a sieve and re-powder the pieces that did not make it through.
You can store homemade green powder in a dark cabinet, in airtight jars for up to a year, although we never have ours around that long. This homemade green powder is a concentrated food, so keep in mind that one cup of fresh green leaves will make approximately 1 tablespoon of dried green powder.
Sandy says
I’ve wanted to try “super greens” and “super beets” but they are just too expensive for me on a mixed income and tight budget. This past weekend I finally decided to dehydrate kale, parsley and red lettuce and will add already dehydrated spinach and moringa and stingingle nettle leaves before turning it all into a powder to give it a real super-food punch. I can’t wait to start using it!
Shelle says
Terrific! You are on your way to better health, I love when a plan comes together!
Kristi Stone says
Awesome idea! I don’t have a juicer, but I need to get my greens in. This is totally doable for me. Thank you for posting this!