You can freeze just about anything, but there are just some things that won’t taste good pickled or turned into a jam. That’s why there are so many different methods of food preservation when you’re a gardener. In the articles below, we cover lots of food preservation basics and the specifics of preserving various fruits, herbs, and vegetables.
Unfortunately, there are just as many ways to improperly store and spoil your vegetables as there are ways to preserve them.
For example, did you know you should not store white or sweet potatoes in the fridge? The cold can injure them. You also shouldn’t store them with fruit. Gas from the fruit makes potatoes sprout. And unless you’re cooking, keep your potatoes away from onions; the two in close proximity will make the potatoes sprout.
Or how about storing corn? Once the ear leaves the stalk, the corn starts converting its sugar to starch. The longer you wait to cook and eat it, the more it will taste like grocery store corn rather than fresh-picked. If you store it in the refrigerator, you have about a week.
And did you realize that berries need moisture to stay crisp? If you pick a few bushels of strawberries or blueberries, it’s a good idea to rinse them before storing them because the moisture will keep them plump longer. Blueberries can last over a month in a device like a berry box, which allows you to rinse the blueberries and keep them in a strainer inside an air-tight box, which keeps the berries crisp without sitting in water.
And we haven’t even gotten to our posts on canning, freezing, making jams, and all the ways you can preserve vegetables for the much longer-term so you don’t have to risk storage spoilage.
In the articles below, you’ll learn about everything from canning apples to freezing squash, storing potatoes, and drying herbs. We welcome you to also read our Recipes from Your Garden freebie. Enjoy!
When I think about preserving sage, the first thing that comes to my mind is how I’ll cook with it. Dried sage has a more concentrated (read: delicious) taste when it’s dried than when it’s fresh, and it’s tasty with pork, sausages, poultry, and in stuffing.
Thanks to partner planting and some easy homemade fertilizer, my tomato plants tend to take off each season and I always end up with more than I know what to do with. If you’re like me, you enjoy garden tomatoes in your favorite recipes or even just snacking on a fresh tomato with a dash of salt. If there’s still an abundance of tomatoes sitting on your counter, canning may be a good preservation option.
National Canning Day was on October 23rd and it isn’t your grandma’s canning anymore. No more wax on the jams and jellies which that was my job when I was little and more importantly there are steps to make sure your preserved goods are safe! I always tell people that cleanliness is next to Godliness […]
I am what you call a city girl growing up just 10 minutes from Downtown Pittsburgh in a borough called Swissvale. My Grandma Kaschauer had lived there since 1906 and had owned the house and the double lot since then. My dad was her son and we lived there with her, helping to take care […]
Hooray! You Pumpkin-Spice-latte’d your way through your own apple trees and/or every apple orchard in town and found yourself barricaded in your kitchen with no less than 20 pounds of apples. You already baked everything in your recipe book and your family can’t eat another apple pie, crumble, sauce, or turnover.
On my quest to learn how to preserve zucchini and summer squash, I had to pause for a moment and think about why it was so important to me. One of my goals over the past couple of years (this last one in particular) has been to become more self-sufficient. There’s something very empowering about not having to rely on the grocery store for fresh vegetables.
One thing I love about heading south in the winter is that I get to enjoy strawberry season in February, and then I get to enjoy it back home in the northeast again in July. Our family can’t get enough strawberries, we buy two cartons a week from the grocery store in the winter months […]
A full vegetable cellar is a beautiful sight. The shelves are full of tomato sauce, pickles, peach jam, green beans, and dried beans. There are racks of winter squashes and cabinets full of potatoes. Bulbs of garlic hang from the ceiling and there are crates full of carrots. There, in front of you, is the […]
If you’re just learning how to make preserves, you’re in for an exciting journey. There’s not much better than knowing all your freshly-picked fruits and berries won’t go to waste because you can’t eat them quickly enough. For the record, though, it’s not just fruits that you can preserve and give as gifts or store […]
Throughout the year, as different fruits come into season, I make a fair share of jams—strawberry, peach, blueberry, blackberry, and so on. There are several reasons I enjoy doing this, but one of the things I really love is giving these jams and preserves as gifts. Recently, to fancy them up a bit, I decided […]
