Tips on Preserving your Produce from the Garden

Need some tips on how to preserve your garden harvest to keep it from spoiling before it can be shared or eaten? Then you have come to the right place.

First step: Choosing Produce: Be sure to choose the nearest to ripe and most unblemished produce that you can. If there are blemishes in an otherwise good piece of vegetable or fruit, be sure to thoroughly cut out the damaged areas before storing.

Tips on preservation methods:

Dehydration: You can dehydrate certain fruits and vegetables either using a dehydrator or using a handmade drying rack. (you can find a tutorial on a DIY Solar Dehydrator on ehow.com) Follow the instructions that come with your dehydrator for the best outcome of your dried preserving methods. Some of the best fruits and vegetables for dehydration are: apples, grapes, peaches, pears, tomatoes, apricots, bananas, berries, figs, melons, plums, (okay most fruits are great for dehydrating), green beans, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, onions, peas, peppers, zucchini, squash, garlic, and more.

Canning: Canning is a vast world of different recipes, types of produce, etc. The main tip is to be sure you know the acid level of your foods. This will determine whether the food needs to be canned using a water bath canner or a pressure canner. A great guide that will help you in any canning endeavors you will undertake is the Ball Blue Book.

Freezing: The National Center for Home Preservation has a list of some awesome links to guides on how to freeze a huge variety of produce, since each fruit and vegetable is a bit different in the method of how it should be frozen you should look into their info at: http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze.html