Tips for Preserving your Vegetables and Fruit

Cultivating your own fruits and vegetables can be a challenging yet rewarding experience. Seeing products of your hard work will continue to draw you toward gardening. As a gardener, you know that different seasons offer ideal climates for different types of produce. How can you preserve the fruits and vegetables you grow so that you can enjoy the “fruits of your labor” throughout the year? There are two main aspects of preserving your fruits and vegetables: canning and freezing. The following methods that will preserve your crops throughout the year:

• Canning. Canning is a method that heats the food to a temperature that kills the decaying action of enzymes, bacteria and other microorganisms that may have spoiled your food. There are a few different types of canning.
o Boiling Water Bath Canning is recommended for processing food with high acid content such as tomatoes, pickles and jams. A boiling water bath canner reaches 212 degrees F, killing bacteria that would spoil your food. The processing time can be anywhere from 5 to 85 minutes. You can find charts that will educate you on the appropriate bath time for different types of food and container sizes. Again, there are sources available that will give you step-by-step instructions to this canning process.
o Pressure Canning is recommended for low acid vegetables, meats, mushrooms and some soups. This process requires you to put your jars in a pressure cooker for a predetermined amount of time that will kill the bacteria that causes food decay. The pressure cooker will heat the food between 240 degrees F and 250 degrees F. This process can take anywhere from 20 to 100 minutes and obviously requires a pressure cooker.
• Freezing. Most foods can be frozen. Keeping your food at 0 degrees F will inactivate the growth of microbes that cause spoilage in food. It does not kill these bacteria, instead causing them to lye dormant unable to multiply which would cause the growth of mold and other food borne bacteria. Not all foods will retain its tasting quality after a freeze. Lettuce, cream sauces and mayonnaise do not freeze well. Some foods, like spinach, require you to blanch the food before you can freeze it. Blanching is when you boil the product and then cool it down and drain the water out. If you did not blanch spinach and some other vegetable, they would not freeze well. Remember that if you freeze an item for extended periods of time, the food will loose its original nutrient qualities.
• Pie Fillings. If you have produced ample fruit, creating pie fillings and freezing that may be an avenue you choose to go down. Pie fillings will use large amounts of fruit and can be frozen for up to a year.

To effectively can and freeze your foods, use resources available in books and on the web to help you preserve your food in the most appropriate and safest manner. It is important to remember that if you are canning at high altitudes, special instructions may apply to keep your product fresh.