How to Make Dried Orange Slice Garland with a Dehydrator

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Today’s post is about how to make a dried orange slice garland. They are so pretty, traditional and festive. They are perfect for decorating for Christmas. The pops of orange are subtle and inviting to the eyes.

This is my first year making a dried orange slice garland and it won’t be my last. I plan to package this garland up safely so that I can re-use it next year as well.

Let’s get started on how to make this garland.

I purchased one bag of fresh oranges which is about 10 medium sized oranges.

Slice oranges.

To slice the oranges, you can either use a sharp knife or to keep the thickness consistent, you can use a mandolin. I used a mandolin and set it to the thickest setting since I knew it would thin out. What I found though was that the mandolin could not cut the orange very well towards the end. The slices began to rip. I don’t use my mandolin very often so I don’t think the blade is dull. I’m not sure what the issue was there. Simply cut the rest of the orange with a sharp knife. I couldn’t find a link for where I purchased this mandolin from, but you can buy them at The Bay here as well.

Press Juice.

Next, press the juice out of the slices with a paper towel to decrease the cook time.

Dry Oranges.

You can either bake in the oven or you can use a dehydrator. I have the 9-tray Excalibur Food Dehydrator, so I used that to speed things up. It dries a lot of slices at one time. I placed the slices 4 wide by 4 deep giving them lots of space for the air to circulate. One bag of oranges used 3 trays.

I turned the dehydrator on to 135F for fruits. I left it on for 6 hours and then I turned it off and left the slices in the dehydrator overnight. Here is how they looked the next morning.

Assemble Garland.

Now it’s time to assemble the garland.

What you will need:
1. String of some kind, either jute or fishing wire will work. I used jute because that’s what I had on hand and I think it looks more traditional.
2. Needle with large hole. I picked up this package at Walmart for $1.97
3. Scissors

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Thread your string thru the needle leaving just a short tail so you don’t have to pull too much extra string thru the orange slice.

Now there are multiple different ways to thread the orange slices. You can either just go thru the top end of the slice or you can go thru the slice twice at opposite ends. I like going thru it twice at opposite ends so it moves less. Thread your next orange slice and so on leaving your desired spacing until your have reached the desired length. Remember to add length for swooping at windows or on a mantel. Allow the garland to extend and hang down at each end for a more whimsical look.

For added decreased movement, I used my glue gun to glue the jute in place at the hole where the needle punctured the slice. I don’t think this step is necessary, but I saw Tara @thecoastalsoul glue her garland down, so I thought I’d also take that extra step to keep the slices in place. Trust me, there are many ways to make an orange slice garland. Just do what you think works best.

Once the glue has set, it’s time to hang your garland. I draped my orange garland over an old faux 8ft evergreen garland I had on hand. I hadn’t used it in years. I’d forgotten I even had it. I folded it in half to make it look more dense and then added the orange slice garland. Once I had it in place, I added some warm white fairy lights that I recently purchased from Amazon.ca It came in a 12-pack, so I’ve got lots of fairy lights to use!

Result.

Here is the finished product. I love how it turned out. This was a very easy project. Any beginner can do this project so long as an adult is supervising if using an oven to dry the orange slices.

Thanks for following along. If you make this dried orange slice garland, be sure to tag @seagrass.sister on Instagram so I can see how wonderful your garland turned out!

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