Tag Archives: food preservation

Garden Advice

Vegetable Storage: Best Practices

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There’s nothing like enjoying vegetables straight from the garden. However, we often have more vegetables that we can use at once. To keep our garden produce fresh for as long as possible, it’s essential to store it properly. Here are the best ways to store your fresh vegetables for longevity and a few ways you can preserve them. 

Room Temperature

While most vegetables store best in cool or cold conditions, fresh herbs often keep best at room temperature. 

Basil

Basil keeps its best flavor and appearance at room temperature. Trim the ends and place them in a jar with a couple of inches of clean water like a bouquet. Basil will last about 5 days.

Magic Cushaw Winter Squash
Magic Cushaw Winter Squash

Cool and Dry (50-60°F and 60% relative humidity) Storage

For most folks, the best option for cool, dry storage will be a basement or semi-heated garage. Each person’s home is different, so monitor the humidity and temperature in your space to ensure it stays in this range. It’s also important to remember to protect your produce from rodents and to provide ventilation. Poor ventilation won’t let your vegetables breathe and can reduce shelf-life. 

Pumpkins & Winter Squash 

Harvest pumpkins and winter squash before frost. Cure for 7-10 days before storage. Keep them somewhere the temperature stays above 45°F for long-term storage. Depending on the variety, they may keep for up to 12 months.

Cold and Dry (32-40°F and 65% relative humidity) Storage

Your refrigerator probably falls within this range. Ensure your refrigerator isn’t dipping below freezing in any spots before using it for long-term storage.

Onions & Garlic

Cure at room temperature for two to four weeks before storage. Don’t store onions and garlic with potatoes or other vegetables that release moisture. Onions and garlic will store for up to 8 months depending on the variety.

Jeffery Martin, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Cool and Moist Conditions

Unless you’re a grower with a dedicated walk-in refrigerator for cool, moist storage, these conditions will be hard to achieve. At home, we do the best we can and enjoy or preserve these vegetables quickly after harvest.

Cucumbers

Cucumbers keep for about a week in cool, moist conditions. Don’t store them next to apples or tomatoes. Perforated bags in a cool spot in the kitchen or refrigerator can help extend their shelf life, but they typically only keep for about 1 week.

Eggplants

Store in perforated bags in a cool spot in the kitchen or refrigerator, if necessary. They do best at around 55°F. At temperatures lower than 50°F, they can brown and get pulpy. Use eggplants within about 1 week.

Peppers

Store peppers in cool, moist conditions. Perforated bags in a cool spot in the kitchen or refrigerator can help extend their shelf life, but they typically only keep for about 2 weeks. Avoid storing peppers below 45°F; they will develop pitting.

Summer Squash & Zucchini

Harvest when the fruits are 6 inches long or less. They do best at around 55°F. Store in a cool spot or in the refrigerator in perforated plastic bags. They will keep for about 1 week.

Tomatoes

Store in a cool spot in the kitchen. They do best around 55°F. Do not refrigerate tomatoes; it affects their flavor, texture, and color. Tomatoes are best when you use or preserve them within about 5 days.

Watermelon

Watermelon does best when you store it somewhere cool and moist, around 55°F. It keeps for about 2 weeks. Many people store watermelon in the refrigerator, but watermelon will degrade if stored below 50°F for more than a few days.

Wolfmann, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Cold and Moist (32-40°F and 95% relative humidity) Storage

For the home gardener, root cellars are usually the best option for this type of storage. Just like with basements and garages, your exact situation may vary, so it’s worth checking on the temperature and moisture levels in your storage. You should also watch for any rodent activity. 

Perforated plastic bags in the refrigerator can also increase the humidity to mimic these conditions. This method works well for vegetables you use quickly, like asparagus, sweet corn, and lettuce, but it doesn’t work for long-term storage vegetables like turnips and beets. Solid plastic bags hold in too much moisture and don’t allow ventilation.

Asparagus

Store asparagus upright. It will keep for up to two weeks. 

Snap Beans 

Fresh snap beans will store for about one week. They do well in cold, moist conditions with temperatures at about keep at 40°F or above. Beans stored below 40°F will develop pitting.

Beets 

Beets are an excellent storage crop. Harvest beets when they’re between 1.5 and 3 inches in diameter. Trim the tops and store them in cold and moist conditions, and they’ll keep up to 5 months.

Broccoli

Broccoli stores for up to 2 weeks in cold, moist conditions.

Brussels Sprouts

Store in cold, moist conditions for up to 1 month.

Cabbage

Store in cold, moist conditions for up to 5 months.

Carrots

After harvest, trim carrot tops and store them in cold, moist conditions. They will keep for up to 8 months.

Cauliflower

Store in cold, moist conditions for up to 3 weeks.

Sweet Corn

Store in cold, moist conditions for up to 5 days.

Kohlrabi

Store in cold, moist conditions for up to 2 months.

Lettuce

If you harvest lettuce on warm days, chill it in ice water immediately. Store in cold, moist conditions for about 1 week.

Muskmelon

Store in cold and moist conditions. Keep above freezing. They typically keep for about 1 week. 

Parsnips

Parsnips are best when you harvest them after a light frost. Keep them in cold, moist conditions for up to 4 months, ensuring they have good ventilation. Parsnips sweeten after two weeks of storage at 32°F.

Peas

Store in cold and moist conditions for up to 1 week.

Potatoes

Harvest your potatoes after the vines have died back. Then cure them at 50-60°F for 14 days before storage. Generally, potatoes store best in dark, cold, moist conditions (32-40°F and 95% relative humidity). Potatoes may keep for up to 6 months depending on the variety.

Radishes 

After harvest, trim the radish tops and store them in cold, moist conditions. They will keep for up to 1 month.

Rutabagas

After harvest, trim the tops and store them in cold, moist conditions. They will keep for up to 4 months.

Spinach 

On warm days, dunk spinach in ice water immediately after harvest. Store in cold, moist conditions for up to 10 days.

Turnips

After harvest, trim the tops and store them in cold, moist conditions. They will keep for up to 4 months.

Preserving Fresh Produce

To make the most of extra fresh produce, preserve any surplus as quickly as possible. You can use freezing, canning, and drying to preserve your harvest for winter.

Freezing

Many vegetables freeze well, but most must be blanched before freezing. You’ll need to blanch vegetables like collards, green beans, carrots, peas, and broccoli so that they keep their color and texture in the freezer. You can also freeze cooked vegetables like tomatoes, pumpkin puree, and winter squash. Some gardeners also freeze fresh herbs like basil in an ice cube tray of olive oil for winter cooking.

To learn more about freezing vegetables, check out the National Center for Home Food Preservation section on freezing vegetables.

Canning 

Canning is a great way to preserve vegetables because you don’t need a lot of freezer space and they’ll be safe if the power goes out. However, most vegetables aren’t acidic enough to be canned in a boiling water bath canner. This means you’ll need a pressure canner that reaches higher temperatures to preserve vegetables like green beans, sweet corn, and carrots. Some vegetables, like zucchini, are only safe to can in certain ways, because their texture can affect the process. 

To learn more about safely canning vegetables, visit the National Center for Home Food Preservation canning section or the Ball Mason Jars Canning and Preserving Guides.

Dehydrating or Drying

Dehydrating vegetables is often overlooked, but it’s an easy way to put up a surplus. You can dry most vegetables in a simple home dehydrator, and most dehydrators have settings for specific vegetables. However, many vegetables must be blanched first for best results. To learn more about dehydrating vegetables, visit the Penn State Extension Let’s Preserve: Drying Fruits and Vegetables (Dehydration) resource.

You can also hang most herbs like basil and mint to dry in bundles at room temperature. Placing an upside-down paper bag over each herb bundle will keep any dust off. 

Garden Advice

Harvesting and Storing Peppers

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In August, peppers dot the garden like holiday lights. We’re harvesting large sweet bell peppers like Charleston Belles, fiery little hot peppers like Serrano Tampiqueños, and fragrant spice peppers like Trinidad Perfumes. Whatever peppers you’ve grown this year, knowing how to harvest, store, and process your crop will help you make the most out of your peppers. 

When to Harvest Peppers

You can harvest peppers at any color stage, but they aren’t fully ripe until they reach their mature color. Waiting until they are fully ripe increases flavor and nearly doubles the vitamin C content. 

Exactly what color your peppers ripen to depends on the variety. For example. Chiclayo Hot Peppers ripen from light green to light orange while Purple Beauty Sweet Bell Peppers ripen from green to purple to deep red. 

Especially for larger peppers, you may want to use shears or scissors to harvest the peppers. Tugging the fruits off by hand may damage your plant.

Chiclayo Hot Peppers
Chiclayo Hot Peppers

Extending the Harvest

Usually, mature pepper plants are still thriving when fall weather comes to Virginia. To extend our harvest, we cover the plants each night in old sheets or frost cloth during our first one to two weeks of light frosts. 

Then, before the first killing frost, we uproot plants and place the roots in a bucket of water and store in a cool location to extend harvest by one month. 

For fresh use late into the fall, we also like to grow Doe Hill Golden Sweet Bell Peppers. Their fruits keep well.

Storing Peppers

How you process and store your peppers will depend on the variety and what you have planned. 

Fresh Eating

Store any peppers you want to eat fresh in the crisper drawer of your refrigerator. This is also a great place for peppers your waiting to process for canning or freezing. Pickled Peppers

Canning

Peppers are a low acid vegetable, which means to safely can them, you must pressure can them or make incorporate them into an acidic recipe for water bath canning like salsa, hot sauce, or pickled peppers. Always used tested canning recipes from trusted sources. 

Here are a few tested recipes:

Freezing

Peppers are easy to freeze, you can freeze them raw or roast or blanch them first if you want to use them for cooking later in the season.

Here’s how to freeze peppers.

Drying

Drying or dehydrating peppers is a great way to store them. You can dry hot or spice peppers to be ground up for seasoning, or chunks of peppers to rehydrate and cook in soups, sauces, and casseroles. 

Unfortunately, it’s usually too humid to air dry most peppers in the Southeastern United States. For most large peppers, it’s best to use a food dehydrator or dry them in the oven. You need an oven or dehydrator that you can set to 140°F. Higher temperatures will cook the peppers rather than dry them. 

Learn to dry peppers in the oven here.

For some small peppers, you can use thread and needle to sting them for air drying. Typically, this works best if you can hang the strings somewhere hot and dry. An attic, loft, car port, or garden shed may work well.

Garden Advice

Great Varieties for Canning

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Last week on the blog, we discussed ten tips for canning stress-free canning. Food preservation is an essential part of gardening, and canning is a popular way to put up extra food without needing to keep a large freezer running. When I’m not busy preserving food, I also like to take some time each fall to think about how different varieties performed and what I can do differently next year. This fall, I’m considering great varieties for canning.

While you can pressure can many vegetables, including green beans, peas, corn, squash, and potatoes. You can only water bath can certain vegetables and fruits that are highly acidic or are tasty when pickled or otherwise made highly acidic using vinegar. Water bath canning is easy and great for beginners because it requires little start-up cost. Below we’ll discuss some great varieties you can grow for water bath canning tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, cucumber pickles, salsa, and pickled peppers. 

Tomatoes

Canned tomatoes or sauce is one of the most versatile products in the pantry. I make pizza, pasta dishes, soups, chili, burritos, and more using home canned tomatoes. While any variety can be preserved, certain varieties produce less juice and more flesh making them more suited to cooking.

Indeterminate vs. Determinate

Tomatoes are divided into two categories, determinate and indeterminate. Determinate tomatoes reach their mature size and yield a large quantity of tomatoes in a relatively short time. Determinate tomatoes can be convenient for preserving.

Indeterminate tomatoes are more vining and continue to grow upward and produce throughout the season. These can be a better option if you want tomatoes for fresh eating over a longer period, but you can also preserve them.

Here are five great options for canning tomatoes:

Amish Paste (Indeterminate)

You’ve probably run across Amish paste if you’ve looked into canning tomatoes. These tall plants produce heavy yields of large, coreless tomatoes with excellent flavor. Despite the name ‘Amish Paste,’ the juicy fruits are best suited to making sauce.

San Marzano (Indeterminate)

This Italian heirloom is famous for its use in Neapolitan pizza and other Italian dishes. San Marzano tomatoes are very productive, 6-foot-tall plants with good disease resistance. The long Roma-type tomatoes have thick, dry, low acid flesh and few seeds. They are ideal for canning in recipes with enough acidity. 

Heinz 1350 VF Processing Tomato (Determinate)

Developed in 1963 by the H. J. Heinz Company, Heinz 1350 is an excellent processing tomato for canning and cooking. It’s widely adapted, has a concentrated fruit set, and produces round 4-6 oz fruits with good crack resistance.

Yellow Bell Paste Tomato (Indeterminate)

Southern Exposure introduced this Tennessee family heirloom in 1986. These heavy-yielding plants produce 5-12 fruits per cluster. They survive better in cool, wet conditions than other sauce tomatoes and bear heavily until frost. Yellow bells are great for salads or making lovely tomato paste, juice, preserves, salsa, and yellow catsup!

Roma VF, Virginia Select Paste Tomato (Determinate)

Our neighboring farmer and Growing for Market writer Pam Dawling has been saving this locally adapted strain since 2001, selecting for high, early yields and tolerance to Septoria Leaf Spot. It was introduced in 2009 by Southern Exposure and produces 4-5 ounce fruits.

Cucumbers

One of the first recipes I learned to can was basic dill pickles. Cucumber pickles are easy to make and a great way to enjoy your garden produce even in the winter.

Arkansas Little Leaf Pickling Cucumber

The University of Arkansas developed this popular, reliable variety in 1991. It produces compact vines with multiple branch points that will climb a fence or trellis easily and are resistant to multiple diseases. Arkansas Little Leaf has small leaves that make finding fruit easier and parthenocarpic flowers which produce fruit under stress and without pollinators. It produces 5-inch long fruits that are good for slicing and pickling. 

Boston Pickling Cucumber 

A classic old pickler, this variety dates back to 1880. While not as rampant as some, it’s still productive, and the blunt-shaped fruits are crisp and mild, ideally sized for pickling.

Roseland Small White Pickling CucumberRoseland Small White Pickling Cucumber

In the early ’70s, Gordon Shronce’s sister Evelyn Allran received seed from a neighbor in the Roseland community near Lincolnton, North Carolina. Southern Exposure introduced Roseland Small White Pickling Cucumbers in 2016. It produces loads of early, blocky white cukes that are excellent sliced or pickled. Gordon likes to pick them at 3 inches or less, but they’re still mild and tender to 7 inches long.

Homemade Pickles Pickling Cucumber

Homemade Pickles produces medium green fruits with small white spines that are solid and crisp. These vigorous plants were specifically developed for home gardeners and have good disease resistance, including Downy Mildew resistance. They make delicious, robust bite-sized pickles, slices, or large spears.

Mexican Sour Gherkin (Mouse Melon, Sandita) 

These tenacious vines bear many 5⁄8 in. x 7⁄8 in. fruits with skin like tiny watermelons. They bear until frost and can be pickled whole for a fund snack or conversation-starting garnish! Immature, they taste like cucumbers; when fully mature, they taste like pickled cucumbers.

Peppers

When growing a lot of your food, peppers are essential. They preserve well and add great flavor to many dishes. I love pickling peppers and adding them to salsa. My father-in-law also taught me to add hot pepper to some of my jars of pickles and spaghetti sauce.

Hungarian Hot Wax Banana Pepper

This very productive variety produces banana-shaped peppers with medium heat. They adapt well to the deep south and cool north and can be used fresh, canned, or pickled. 

Red Cherry (Cherry Sweet) Sweet Pepper

This pre-1860 variety is excellent for pickling, canning, stuffing, or snacking! The little bonbon-shaped fruits are thick-walled, sweet, and flavorful. Red cherries bear heavily and are disease resistant. 

Serrano Tampiqueño Hot Pepper

If you like your food a bit spicy, Serrano Tampiqueño is a great multi-purpose pepper. Plants reach about 4 feet tall and produce pendant-shaped, thin-walled fruit. They’re very hot, whether picked green or red, and are excellent for drying, salsa, pickling, hot pepper vinegar, and flavoring spicy dishes like chili. 

Sweet Banana (Long Sweet Hungarian) Sweet Pepper

Sweet bananas are excellent for fresh eating, frying, freezing, and pickling. I love using pickled sweet banana peppers on salads, sandwiches, pizzas, and nachos. This variety produces heavy yields and is a great choice for the Mid-Atlantic region.

Jalapeño Hot Pepper

These classic salsa chiles had to make the list. These thick-walled peppers are great for pickling, adding excellent flavor to salsa, smoked, or making Jalapeño vinegar. Jalapeños filled with cream cheese and fried are a Southern specialty. They’re often harvested green but can be harvested red or left to mature to red off the plant.

As you’re planning next season’s garden, it’s a good idea to consider how and if you want to put up excess produce. Planting a few canning varieties is a great way to stock your pantry beyond the summer months.