DIY Green Powder

DIY Green Powder | https://www.hannahhepworth.com #kalepowder #gardensurplus #greenpowder #greensmoothies

DIY Green Powder

Have you ever grown your own greens?  Ever thought about making your own green powder? Some friends of ours had an awesome garden this summer. We on the other hand did not.  It started out decent and then, I went a bit too long without weeding and couldn’t tell what was what, add the fact that it didn’t get watered regularly and you’re headed for disaster.  We did salvage half of our garden though.

Luckily our friends were better stewards and had a bountiful garden and planted a giant row of kale.  They got 3 harvests out of their 1 row.  The great thing about kale is that you pick it and it grows back so I lucked out and was able to help her harvest and we split the spoils.  Take a look at this picture….that’s 5 trash bags full of kale.  This is their third time harvesting, that’s at least 15 trash bags of kale for the summer and it cost only a few dollars, plus some water and labor weeding but still, that’s a deal!bags of kale

I was fortunate enough to bring home 3 of these bags.  My dear friend was pretty sick of washing and bagging kale to freeze so she was fine with a mere 2 trash bags full.

I am a major kale fan, I haven’t been blogging too long but I have 2 posts here and here for kale smoothies.  Kale is an awesome super food!  It is a great source of fiber, iron, vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, and it’s also high in antioxidants and calcium.

To preserve all of this I washed it in my kitchen sink which was terrible.  I will never do that again.  I should have filled up my kids pool in the backyard and washed it all at once but I didn’t think of that in time.  I spread all of the washed kale out on a sheet in the backyard to dry and then went out there with a couple boxes of zip top bags and packaged them, squashed them flat by sitting on them and stuck them in the freezer.

After about 30 gallon sized bags of kale this got pretty old so I decided to try my hand at making my very own green powder.  You can buy all kinds of green powder blends so why not make your own?  It would have been easier if I had more dehydrator trays but I dehydrated it in batches over a few days and blendedKale Collage it up as I went. It is amazing how much it condenses. Check out this photo.  My Vitamix is filled with dried kale leaves and it blends down to about a quarter of a cup!  I went through tons of kale to yield 1 quart mason jar.

The good thing is it takes up way less space.  (My poor mother in law, I took up a good amount of her freezer space on my kale.)  Since I dehydrated it on a low setting I still preserved all of the nutrients in the kale.  It dries fast too, overnight is just right.

So to use this in a smoothie I do about 2 tablespoons of green powder to 1 1/2 c. water with a frozen banana and berries and it tastes great.  I could probably get away with adding another tablespoon.  You could also add a bit to a minestrone soup, or meatballs, or spaghetti sauce, I’ve only just started brainstorming how I will hide this from my kids.

This definitely motivates me to get plenty of greens planted next year.  You could do a mixture of spinach, chard, collard greens, mustard greens, beet greens and so much more.  You could come up with you very own special green powder blend.  Do you grow your own greens?  Do you buy special powders?  I’d love to hear how you use them, comment below!

This post was shared on the following real food/natural living blogs, go check them out!

Frugally SustainableNourishing JoyThe Better Mom, Homemade For Elle, Homegrown And HealthyThe Prairie HomesteadReal Food ForagerDelicious ObsessionsHealthy Roots Happy SoulHolistic Squid, Kelly The Kitchen Kop, Authentic Simplicity, Frugally SustainableThank Your BodyMy Humble KitchenThe Chicken ChickWhole New Mom, Growing Home Blog, DomesblissityVegetarian MamaFood RenegadeGirl Meets NourishmentSmall Footprint FamilyNatural Family Today

13 thoughts on “DIY Green Powder”

  1. Kari Airth

    Hannah, You’re awesome! You’ve inspired me to plant more greens next spring. I love using kale in soups and sauces. But I’ve never made my own green powder. Very cool!!

  2. Hi Hannah,
    I am a big fan of green smoothies and kale is my favorite green so I was very inspired by your DIY green powder! How ingenious! Glad I found your post on Thank Goodness It’s Monday!

  3. I can’t think of a better way to preserve my kale harvest. THANK YOU!!!

  4. Great idea! Wow, that is ALOT of kale ~ we love kale, so powdering would work for us. I often throw kale leaves and other greens into our smoothies to get more nutrients. Thanks for the inspiration! 🙂

    1. admin

      No problem!

  5. Super idea! I have a garden box full of chard right now. I wonder if I could do the same thing?
    Visiting from Unprocessed Fridays…

  6. Great Post!!!

    Thanks for stopping by *Mostly* Homemade Mondays and sharing. I am featuring this post as one of my favs from last week. Hope to see you again this week!

    Jess
    http://www.scratchmommy.com

    1. admin

      Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it and thank you for sharing:)

  7. Hannah

    I love this idea!! I don’t have any special dehydrating equipment, but would love to try this…is there any other way to dehydrate?

    Thanks!

    1. admin

      You might be able to do it in the oven on the lowest setting, I would probably turn on the oven on the lowest setting for a bit then turn it off and let the kale sit in there for a couple hours. Check and see if it’s brittle, the more dry the kale is the easier it will blend into powder, good luck and let me know how it goes:)

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  10. Bobi

    Great post!

    I usually sauté my kale with olive oil, garlic and add lemon juice at the end to finish.

    I bet the powder mixes into the smoothie a lot easier than trying to do battle with whole leaves. I’m going to give this a try for sure!

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