'Tis the season for harvesting fruit and veggies. Maybe you are overrun with tomatoes or squash. What is the best way to preserve your harvest before science takes over and those beautiful veggies start to spoil? Luckily, there are several options depending on the amount of time you have to do it, and your level of expertise.
Harvesting your garden is also a great kid's activity. Kids love digging potatoes, harvesting popcorn, and pulling carrots. There is also a ton of science involved in food preservation, including concepts like: pressure, vacuums, bacteria, decomposition, life cycles, etc. There are so many ways to make this type of work a fun, learning experience for you, your students or children.
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Tomatoes on the window seat, tomatoes
on the counter, tomatoes in the freezer and tomatoes on the vine. I
would love to make some pasta sauce with those beautiful Romas and
San Marzanos, dice up the Costolutos and put them in jars. I would
even like to roast some cherry tomatoes and pop them in the freezer
for a mid-winter treat. I know what you are thinking, "Well
then, less talk, more action!". Alas, you need a critical amount
of tomatoes of each type before you begin to can, blanch, freeze or
dry and they don't all ripen at once.
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| ©SBF 2015 |
Gardening is part patience, part
intense action. Here we are at week 25 of my garden adventure for
2015 and I've waited patiently for this moment to come. Once your
produce is ready there is only a small window of time before it
becomes overripe, or an opportunistic woodchuck, chipmunk or rabbit
comes along...instead of "hurry up and wait" we're playing
a game of "wait and hurry up".
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| ©SBF 2015 |
So what is the rush? How can you
preserve your beautiful produce to save for later instead of eating
salads for the next 3 weeks? Why do you need to process it, heat it
to a certain temperature, freeze it solid or dry it out?
Microbes
Microorganisms, such as
bacteria, are ready to do their part in the decomposition portion of
your plant's life cycle. The plant grew your produce as a way of
disseminating its own seeds, not as a kind gesture or repayment for
watering it all summer. Once it has grown its fruit, eventually it
will spoil. Bacteria are everywhere, and can be helpful or harmful to
humans. Many of the bacteria you find in ripening and rotting veggies
are not the helpful kind!
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How Can You Preserve Your Harvest?
Drying or Dehydrating
Drying foods to preserve them was most
likely another happy accident. The sun and wind are pretty good
dehydrators. Most microbes that cause disease enjoy a moist
environment to multiply in. When food is dried out it becomes an
inhospitable place for those types of bacteria. You can dry produce
in your oven or in an electric food dehydrator. Check out the
Colorado State University Extension page for more information on
drying and dehydrating your own vegetables.
Electric food dehydrators can also be purchased
fairly inexpensively.
Blanching and Freezing
Freezing veggies is a quick and fairly
easy option to preserve them for later use. Before you freeze
vegetables you should blanch them. Blanching is a process in which
you heat the vegetables for a short period of time in boiling water.
They are then removed and placed in an ice bath to stop the cooking
process.
Blanching breaks down the
enzymes that are at work
ripening your food. The boiling action also helps to kill any
microorganisms on the food. The blanched vegetables can then be
placed in freezer bags or containers and frozen for longer periods of
time. Different vegetables have different blanch times. See
this link
for the appropriate times for different types of produce.
Canning
Although a little more labor intensive,
canning is one of my favorite ways to preserve food. If you follow a
recipe and work carefully then the result is safe, well preserved
food that looks awfully pretty in a jar, too. I use a
heat bath canner. Basically this means that after your
jars are packed you boil
them for a certain amount of time to destroy any harmful
microorganisms and to vacuum seal your jar shut.
Recipes for canning
fruits and veggies will help you to determine if you need to add
anything acidic to the jars to help preserve the food. Lemon juice
and citric acid are common natural additives to preserving food
canned at home. Microorganisms cannot tolerate acidic environments. I
will be chronicling the process of canning my tomato sauce for you in
a future post- stay tuned. For some great tips and recipes for
canning, you should visit the
Pick Your Own site.
More on the science behind food
preservation:
May 13th, 2015: Seed Potatoes
July 3rd, 2015: Green Galore!
July 24th, 2015: Isn't Summer Delicious?
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