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| Quite a few farmers in southern MB will harvest flowers damp and dry them with supplemental heat in front of their fans. We did it the year before last on a 20,000bu bin with a 10hp fan. It was below freezing many nights that we were running the fan so it took a long to dry the bin full. I don't believe that it would work to dry grain in late fall without some kind of heat added to the air here in MB. We also decided that we would just run them through the dryer next time because we didn't save any money on propane and with a dryer we know what is happening to the grain. It means monitoring the dryer constantly for any kind of fires.
We borrowed a propane heater from a neighbor that has been doing this for many years with confec sunnies and has been very happy with the system. He has a in bin dryer and does not want to risk drying flowers in it. He told us that he heats the incoming air about 5 degrees to avoid over drying the sunnies in the bottom.
I don't think that it would be a problem taking off 18% flowers and drying them in a bin but would recommend adding some heat to the air. The bin full that we did was about 15%. We have dried 20% confecs in our dryer but have no experience with doing this in a bin.
If you don't want to market them till spring you could always freeze them and dry them with air in the spring although this might be kind of risky with this moisture content.
Avonlea Farm Equipment in Domain, MB sells heaters for fans and have quite a bit of experience with bin drying so you could give them a call. | |
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drying sunflowers with aeration - adding heat?
