How To Prepare and Preserve Pine Cones…
Solving the problem of sticky sap on pine cones for crafts and projects. It’s easy, quick and permanent!
Problem: Sticky sap on pine cones
Gathering your own pine cones is a great way to save money on projects and crafts, plus you’ll have a fun day and get fresh air while you collect. I collected these Ponderosa pine cones in the forest where hundreds have fallen to the ground.
Good Sierra pine cones
Before you use them indoors or out, you need to prepare them, removing the sap and any possible bugs.
No one likes sap when handling pine cones
I want to use these beautiful, large Sugar Pine cones in a project, but they are so sticky and the sap doesn’t come of my fingers. It’s a pain to handle them at all. What can I do?
Solution: Bake the sap off!
Simply bake the pine cones in your oven, 20 minutes at 200º, does the trick! Here’s how:
Preheat the oven to 200º. Line a a cookie sheet with foil. Give the cones good shake outside and pick off any visible pine needles or leaves and lay in a single layer on the sheet. These foot long cones are from the Sugar Pine tree!
On a foil covered cookie sheet arrange the cones. Three very large sugarpine cones fit.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes
Turn out the cones on to a suitable surface
Remove from the oven and take them outside to cool.
You can see the hardening sap on the foil
The cones cool immediately
Repeat using the same foil for as many cones as you have. The house will smell wonderfully of musky pine! One bonus is the any bugs will be eradicated, so you can use and decorate with your cones indoors.
I have baked chicken and a pie right afterward with no lingering pine smell or taste. Easy!
The sap left on the cone is amazingly hard and shiny
After the pine cones have been, you can spray them with clear polyurethane to further preserve them. These I will use in my three pots on my outside patio table. They look wonderful in the snow!
Pine cone pots in winter
Snowy pine cones
3 Comments
Great to learn how to get rid of the sap and bugs on pine cones. We have pine trees,but the pine cones are very small. I’d love to find some of the huge ones. The big scented ones are selling for $4 each during the Christmas season!
Your local county or state extension programs can advise you on which trees provide the big pine cones for decorations–You can Google the website. Usually associated with a university that has an agricultural program such as University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Just google “county extension agents” in your state or nearby states.
They can also tell you where nearby public forests are. This way you can find these large “sugar cones” or other varieties. Fun to explore your local woods areas and get to see how much OTHER information is there for you. For example I found out which flowers, shrubs are BEST for attracting butterflies and bees. We are losing millions of pollinating bees and butterflies each year as we turned wildflower fields into housing divisions and plain grass lawns.
you had better make sure it is LEGAL to take any from public lands. In my area is is illegal to take anything from a public/county park. Not sure about state run gamelands etc. While you may think it is a silly law..if everyone went an collected pine cones, that would be a lot less food for wildlife over the winter and in time no more seedlings to replace the older trees that die off.