Storing and preserving garden produce

Story and photos by Greg auton

It's the height of growing season and your garden is beautiful. Everything is green and growing, and all your hard work has paid off with an abundance of produce. But now what is to be done with all that food?

Learning how to store and preserve food is a key step toward getting more out of your garden, and while we tend to associate food preservation with labour-intensive tasks like canning, sometimes it can be as easy as leaving things in the ground.

I keep a 2,500-square-foot vegetable garden in my backyard, and usually at some point in late June or early July I start getting more food than I can eat.

It starts with garlic. I grow over 250 heads of garlic, and typically each year, just after the summer solstice, all of them start producing garlic scapes, which are edible stalks that shoot up rapidly to form flower-like bulbils. The scapes have to be removed to ensure that the garlic bulbs achieve a good size, but they are also edible if harvested at the right time. They have a mild garlic flavour and are very nice when added to stir-fries, pastas, or any other dish that goes well with garlic. Unfortunately, all 250 scapes have to be harvested within a twoweek window of time, so the excess needs to be preserved in some way.

At about the same time, my peas start producing more than my family can eat, and then I have too much kale, and then beans, then zucchini, then potatoes, then carrots, and so forth. This continues right until the winter solstice when the ground is freezing up and I am using a pickaxe to get parsnips out of the ground before they are frozen in place for months.

I suppose I could just grow less, but for me, the land is just begging to provide, and it will not be denied! Also, I have found over the years that there are many ways to save food for later, and some are very easy, so let us review all the techniques that I use, from the easiest to the most labor intensive.

Pumpkins and winter squash are ready-made for storage. They keep for months as long as they are kept near 10 degrees Celsius.

Leave it on the ground

Some root vegetables are tough, and as long as you can keep the ground from freezing, you can simply leave them in the ground. I do this with carrots, parsnips and sunchokes (or Jerusalem artichokes). One way to do this is to place bales of hay over the ground where the root vegetables are located.

Another way (the method I prefer) is to place transparent plastic domes over the garden beds. The soil freezes a bit every night, then thaws during the day, never freezing so deep that I can't get the vegetables out when I want them. This may not work in every growing zone. The great side benefit of using a dome is that the garden bed is ready for planting tough greens like spinach and lettuce in March, when everything else is frozen solid.

While we often think of canned vegetables when contemplating options for food storage, this is just one of many options and not always the best.

Cold storage

As long as you have a space of some kind that can be kept above freezing but below 10 degrees Celsius, you can store a wide range of vegetables by simply keeping them cool. I store most of my harvest, including winter squash, pumpkins, garlic, beets, onions, potatoes, carrots and parsnips in this way.

Ideal conditions vary in terms of temperature and humidity for each vegetable, so there is no way that could all be covered here. A comprehensive document on the subject of vegetable storage is the United States Depart ment of Agriculture's document The Commercial Storage of Fruits, Vegetables, and Florist and Nursery Stocks which can be downloaded for free.

Suffice it to say, achieving the optimal storage time for a given vegetable takes research, trial and error. Most vegetables that are suitable for cold storage are quite forgiving, though, so even if you only get two months of storage without degradation out of a vegetable that can store for four months under ideal conditions, it's still a win because you are eating food from your garden in January.

Many older homes have dedicated cold rooms for this very purpose, harkening back to a bygone age when people were more frugal and pragmatic. With a cold room, even if you don't grow your own vegetables, you can buy in bulk to save money, and then use the produce as you need it. Sadly, most modern homes do not have cold rooms, so a little creativity is needed.

In my case, I use my garage, which is attached to the house. The garage has an electric baseboard heater set to 0 degrees Celsius. By some point in November, the garage gets down to about 5 degrees Celsius, and it stays near that temperature until late March, which is perfect for storing root vegetables, onions, garlic and winter squash.

If neither of these options are available, digging in to the ground and creating a root cellar is another option if you have the time, skills and inclination. Buying a second fridge can also work if you don't mind adding from $10 to $15 to your electric bill each year.

Some produce dries very well, like tomatoes and apples and some herbs.

Drying

Drying is simply a process of dehydration. The basic requirement is some combination of heat, airflow and decreased humidity. The only thing I dry is my herbs. I have found that hanging them in my gardening shed in August (arguably the driest month of the year in Nova Scotia) works great. After about three weeks, all the herbs are dry, and I remove the leaves from the stems and store them in jars for use in the kitchen.

Of course, many more things than herbs can be dried. There are many options for storing fruits and vegetables. These typically require the use of either a food dehydrator, or an oven, set to somewhere between 140 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit (60 to 66 degrees Celsius) with the door left open a crack for airflow. The sun can also be used to dry things like tomatoes if you can devise a means to keep the flies away. Frozen soup supplies

Simply chopping things up and putting them in the freezer is very easy, but due to loss of texture, colour and flavour, produce stored in this way is best added to soups and stews. Still it is easy and expedient, and is a great solution for when you have more lettuce than you can possibly eat and it is all about to bolt and go to seed (which makes it bitter). Just harvest it all, chop it up and pack it in a container. No one will ever know that they are eating lettuce in their soup!

Blanching and freezing

Blanching involves immersing vegetables in salted boiling water for a minute or two then quickly removing the vegetables from the heat and cooling them down. If you have ever bought frozen peas or beans, they were blanched. Blanching prior to freezing is recommended to preserve the colour, texture and flavour of vegetables that can be stored in this way. It's great for freezing vegetables like peas, beans, broccoli, asparagus and leafy greens like kale, spinach and Swiss chard. Every fall about half of my freezer space gets filled up with blanched and frozen produce from the garden. I often find that my blanched, frozen and thawed vegetables taste better than the "fresh" ones I can buy at the store in the winter months.

Pesto

Classic pesto involves creating a mashed-up combination of basil, garlic, olive oil, grated hard cheese and pine nuts, but I have found that by broadening that definition to mean any paste involving herbs, garlic and oil it's a really easy way to store herbs and a great way to use up my excess garlic scapes. This may offend your "foodie" friends but it works and allows a lot of flavourful ingredients to be preserved for later.

I make two kinds of garlic scape pesto, one that is meant for pasta dishes (with herbs, olive oil, lemon), and one that is meant for stir fries (with soy sauce, sesame seed oil and black vinegar). These get put into small one-cup containers that are stored in the freezer. When a container is taken out of the freezer, we try to use it up in about two weeks to be sure it doesn't go bad. Because I have so much garlic, and so many garlic scapes, a lot of it gets stored in this way. Even as late as May I still usually have a few jars in the freezer from the previous year. An alternative to small jars would be freezing everything into ice cube tray portions.

If you’ve never tried strawberry freezer jam you are missing out on one of life’s simple pleasures!

Freezer jam

Imagine making jam without having to do any of the tedious and technical aspects of making proper jam. Simply mash up the fruit, add some pectin and sugar, follow the directions, put it and jars, leave them on the counter overnight, and then place them in the freezer.

Now, imagine how much better that jam tastes because the fruit in it wasn't boiled. That's freezer jam! Every year, in late June, over a dozen jars of freezer jam gets made from my strawberries. That's at least one jar for every month of the year, which is an essential ingredient for maintaining peace and harmony in my home.

Lacto-fermentation

Lacto-fermentation is a method of preserving vegetables that predates modern pickling techniques that employ the use of vinegar. Lactofermentation uses natural lactic acid bacteria and yeasts that are present in vegetables to create an acidic environment that preserves the vegetables, is probiotic, and results in some really tasty treats.

While we tend to associate this approach with dill pickles, there are many vegetables that can be stored in this way, and cultures around the world all have traditional delicacies that involve lacto-fermentation. Kimchi, kombucha, sauerkraut and miso are just a few examples of the marvelous foods that can result from fermentation.

No cooking is required for lactofermentation. The vegetables are cleaned, cut up, and then combined with salt and sometimes water, then left to ferment, usually at room temperature, for a specified amount of time. Once the fermentation process is complete, the lids are sealed and the jars are placed in cold storage (above freezing but below 10 degrees Celsius) or in the fridge.

I store a lot of vegetables this way— such as the 13 quarts of dill pickles I make each year—and find it easier to do than canning. When done properly the vegetables remain crunchy for at least six months and taste wonderful. If you try it and are successful, you will, most likely, never be satisfied with any pickle bought from a store again.

Canning

Canning is arguably the most labour intensive and costly way to store produce when you consider the time it takes, the equipment needed, and the cost of the heat energy required. With canning, the vegetables are sterilized with heat, and then placed in jars that are sterilized and vacuum sealed with heat. Done properly you get vegetables that will store a long time that taste like they have been boiled. Aside from some jams, relishes and pickles that I make, I don't can anything because I don't find that the taste and texture justify the time, effort and expense. The difference between blanched and frozen green beans and canned green beans, for instance, is night and day.

Cooked jams and jellies

Cooked jam takes more work than freezer jam, but some berries simply cannot be made into freezer jam due to their physical properties, and some berries have seeds that need to be strained out, and can only be made into jellies, such as grapes and blackberries. An advantage of cooked jams is that they are canned and stored in vacuum sealed jars, so do not need to be frozen and free up your precious freezer space for frozen produce.

Pickling with vinegar

My favorite cooked jam is partridgeberry (or lingonberry) jam. These hard, cranberry-like fruits need heat to become soft enough to work as a jam. Regardless of the fruit in question, cooked jams are a great way to store away some summer sweetness for the cold winter months.

Pickling with vinegar involves processing and boiling vegetables, and then canning them in a jar with some combination of vinegar, water, salt, and sometimes sugar and spices. As with all canned foods, care must be taken to keep everything sterile from beginning to end, but when done right, excellent storage times can be achieved. I make at least eight quarts of pickled beets every year.

Relishes make a fantastic condiment that can add a little zip and sweetness to any meal.

Relish

A relish is very similar to a cooked jam insofar as it is cooked with sugar and canned in a sterile, vacuum sealed jar. What makes relish different from jam is the addition of salt and vinegar, as well as spices. The vinegar and salt makes relish very reliable as a stored food because both of these ingredients inhibit microbial growth. This is a great way to store excess zucchini and cucumbers. I probably make 12 quarts of zucchini relish every year. Green tomato chow is also a highly prized delicacy.

Final thoughts

I use all 12 of the methods discussed above to store food from my garden, but I tend to use the easier methods for the vast majority of the food that I set aside for the winter because it's easier. Potatoes taken out of a cardboard box stored on the floor of my garage in February taste as good as the day they were picked, so why work hard? For that matter, I really enjoy going out in the back yard in February and coming back in with fresh, crunchy carrots. What a great reward for simply leaving them in the ground! This summer, if you are lucky enough to find yourself overwhelmed with too much bounty from your soil, think of ways to set that excess aside for later. You'll be glad you did when the smell of roasted root vegetables warms your soul as you stare out the window into the frozen, snowy white of winter.

Are you drowning in beans? Not a problem if you blanch and freeze them for later.