Your pantry or just a stock photo from the net?
15 Tips On How To Store and Preserve Your Garden Harvest
It’s not uncommon for many of us to pick our homegrown fruits and vegetables, toss them into the no-man’s-land of the fridge, only to later find they wilted, got mealy, or worse, became a complete science project.
Throwing away what you grew is like throwing away your hard work, time, and money. So what can you do? How you handle and store your produce will determine how long of a shelf life it will have, putting more of it on your table and less into the trash.
Try these tips on how to best store your garden harvest to keep it lasting longer.
1. Bring it Inside
2. To Chill or Not to Chill
3. Utilize Your Crisper
4. Wrap Your Greens
5. Keep Some in The Dark
6. Pick The Right Time To Wash
7. Handle With Care
8. Treat Them Like Flowers (Fresh Herbs)
9. Make Herb Cubes
10. Freeze Your Surplus
11. Make Green Cubes
12. Can, Pickle, or Dehydrate
13. Store Onions and Potatoes Separately
14. Leave Them in the Ground
15. Share the Bounty
https://www.farmersalmanac.com/how-to-store-preserve-fruits-vegetables-garden-124627
Good morning ‘early bird’!
Those are your shelves, right? 😊 One day, I would love shelves that look like that - beautiful & food security.
Every year for decades my Dad took pictures of his shelves full of canning jars full for the winter. I have been more busy this year than in previous years, canning, dehydrating, vac sealing and freezing. We are getting our biggest bumper crop ever this year. I literally can’t get anything new in the freezer unless I take something out. I am so grateful for my upbringing especially the canning and preserving I grew up with and have carried on. It’s work for sure, but worth it for the quality and this year the food prices. I tried the bacon tomato jam and love it. Grateful for the friends here, the advice and sharing that continues. Happy Thanksgiving. It feels like it.
For the past couple of years I have been putting different combos of herbs into a blender and freezing the results in flat sheets so I can break off whatever amount I need to add to recipes: basil pest, dill + chives, parsley + chives.
Greetings from southern New Hampshire!
It has been a tough year for Barb. Started with cucumber beetles, then white flies, squash bugs and vine borers. Rinse, repeat! Very discouraging.
Also, she planted a lot of yellow tomatoes, like Kellogg Breakfast, and the taste was disappointing.
A lot of the summer squash plants were taken out by pests.
My Autumn seedlings are ready for transplant…broccoli, Brussel Sprouts and cabbage.
Our green beans are spectacular! We put a pair of cattle panels between two of the beds in Murderers’ Row and planted Blue Lake Stringless pole beans on either end and the result is incredible! I need to harvest again, today
Our five new beds in the area we call the “North Forty” have been reasonably successful.
It has been a tough year, weather-wise. But, we carry on. Our pullets are laying and the ducks are molting.
Walking into the kitchen while my wife is cooking Menemen with fresh Urfa Biber peppers really cleans out the nasal passages...
We are in the midst of a mini-heat wave for a few days with temps near 100 - not uncommon for So Cal in September. Hopefully this will be the last one.
I have many monarch butterflies flitting about the yard - swallowtails too but they are difficult to photograph b/c they move so quickly. Hopefully, the population has recovered, it was decimated by 90% at one time:
Plumerias seem to thrive in the heat:
And, my helpers, who prefer to stay inside with the a/c blasting away...
Happy Gardening, and as usual, Pray for Rain.
Ping
So impressed with everyone’s preserving activities. (And gardening, too.) I hope next year to have better luck with our garden...I do have a bunch of tomatoes (caged, so critters could not eat them)...think I will make salsa and freeze dry. You all inspire me!
I just came across some canned beets and pickles that are at least 3 years old (long story). What should I do?
The obligatory link to the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning and general preserving info too.
https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html
Click Here To Return to the Perfectly Legal Weekly Garden Thread National "Salsa" Edition September 2-8, 2023
A thread with useful skills and timely subjects for these "interesting times"!
Canning..... I put up a couple of quarts of Chili Sauce Friday using...for the most part...the measurements in the recipe at this link! (The taste substantially matches my grandmother's and mother's versions!)
https://www.canadianliving.com/food/appetizers-snacks/recipe/classic-chili-sauce
**Modifications....I substituted 1 can of Hunt stewed tomatoes for an equivalent volume of fresh tomatoes. I cooked it in a 6 qt crock pot and let it simmer for 4 hours. At 3 1/2 hours I poured off any liquid and cooked it down to reduce it by 1/2 and added 3/4 can of Hunt's tomato paste. Spices...I did not use any powdered spice or celery seed. I used cloves, coriander, ginger, bay, mustard seed, and pepper corn bundled in cheese cloth and added extra celery.
(Recollection....helping mother make chili sauce and both getting the heat from the chilies on our hands and accidentally touching our eyes. Ouch!)
Mrs. Augie and I will head down to Lucas Oil Speedway on Wednesday for three nights of dirt track sprint car racing. I've got a few things to do to make the toy hauler ready for the trip. That will keep me semi-occupied for most of today.
I spent four fun-filled hours on the Kubota Saturday. All the grass that needs to be mowed has been mowed. The newly-planted grass is peeking out of the dirt where I worked on the pond dam fence last week.
I picked another eight-ish gallons of sweet bell peppers yesterday morning. Washed em up, cored the nice ones to make stuffed peppers and sliced the rest for later use. Mrs. Augie made a three-pounds-of-beef batch of pepper stuffing and we used it all. We ate some for supper last night. It had been quite awhile since we made those and boy were they ever good. I thawed another four pounds of ground beef overnight for round two later today. Those will go into the smoker for a half-cook, then get bagged and frozen for winter use.
We've still got half a bushel of apples to work up, and two trees remain to be picked. I might or might not get to that before we take off to the racetrack. I'm going to pick some pole beans today and make a potful to take to the track.
Picking carrots yesterday I found a plump little black swallowtail caterpillar munching carrot tops. I snapped a pic and left him to his business.
