Putting Away Veggies for Winter

Posted on Tuesday, October 5, 2021 · Leave a Comment 

Like any industrious squirrel, I am getting food stored and ready for winter. Even if your vegetable garden is depleted, you can buy things in bulk from your local farm stand now to save for winter.

 

Each type of veggie has its own requirements. Some like a cool space with high humidity. Others want it cool and dry. Then there are a few, like sweet potatoes, that require a warm space and suffer in the cold. Let’s take a look.

 

Storing is the easiest and cheapest way of keeping veggies for a few months. Winter squash store well in a cool dry location such as under the bed in a spare, unheated bedroom. Drafty old farmhouses have plenty of good places to store them, along with cardboard boxes of onions and garlic. I’ve stored a blue Hubbard squash (which has a very thick skin) for up to a year without any problems. But they will rot in a high humidity area.

 

Buy potatoes now and save for a winter meal

Potatoes, carrots, kohlrabi, rutabagas, celeriac or celery root, turnips and parsnips will store for months at 35 to 50 degrees with high humidity. You can do that in a spare fridge, preferably in a drawer that keeps humidity in it. Or put them in zipper bags and punch a few breathing holes in the bags. You can put an inch of moist sand in a bucket, and store carrots in the garage if it stays cold, but not frigid. Keep a lid on the bucket, and check from time to time. Rodents love carrots and potatoes, so you can’t store them in an open container.

 

I built a “cold cellar” for storing potatoes in my cold basement that often has temperatures below freezing. I made a bin of cement blocks, two layers high, and covered it with an insulated plywood lid. I weighted the lid to be sure mice could not sneak in. I put a heat mat in the bottom to use if temperatures neared freezing in the box.

 

A blanching pot is useful if you plan on freezing veggies 004

A full-sized freezer is a good investment. Among other things, tomatoes, corn, broccoli, beans, peppers, kale and fruit store well in a freezer. I freeze them in freezer-grade zipper bags. You can suck the excess air out of the bag with a drinking straw by closing the seal up to the straw, then pulling it out quickly and snapping shut while still sucking on the straw.

 

Freezing is a time-honored process for storing food. Some veggies need to be blanched before freezing to keep them tasty. Blanching is a quick immersion in boiling water before freezing. It kills the aging enzymes in your vegetables, keeping them fresh-tasting longer. If you know you will eat your frozen things within 3 months, don’t bother with it. I recommend blanching beans, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, corn, kale, peaches, squash and Swiss chard. I freeze apples, peppers and tomatoes without blanching.

 

If you blanch, just do it for 60 seconds, which is often even before the water has come back to a full boil. Use lots of water in a big pot, and not too many veggies. There are special pots sold for blanching. They have an inner pot with holes that help you lift the veggies out of the water quickly.

 

If you blanch veggies too long they will be mushy. Drop the blanched veggies in a sink of cold water, spin dry in a salad spinner, and blot with a cloth dish towel. Then bag and freeze.

 

Excalibur dryer does a good job drying tomatoes, apples and hot peppers

I also dehydrate foods, notably tomatoes, hot peppers, apples and pears. You can buy a good dehydrator like the ones made by Nesco American Harvest for somewhere under $150. Or you can buy the Cadillac of dryers and get an Excalibur for $300 or more. Those use less energy and dry the food evenly without having to rotate the trays.

 

Dehydrating is great for hot peppers: I dry them until they are brittle, then grind them in my coffee bean grinder. That way I have a powder I can add to soups or stews a little at a time and that is well distributed. And I dry cherry tomatoes cut in half; I use them in soups and stews. They offer a bite of summer.

 

I also make tomato paste and freeze it in ice cube trays. I often do this with imperfect tomatoes: I cut out the bad parts and put the rest in a Cuisinart to blend them into a loose “soup” that I then cook down slowly in a big enameled cast iron pot. When I can literally stand a spoon up in the mix, it is done. Having a supply of tomato paste is essential for cooking, and I like that I don’t have to open a can when I need just a little.

 

I freeze tomato paste for storage in ice cube trays.

If you have an apple tree, you probably have already made some apple sauce this year. It freezes well, and is always tasty. But have you made cider? You don’t need to buy a cider press. I bring apples to my local orchard, and ask them to press and bottle the juice. Be sure to tell your orchardist that you are freezing it, and to leave an inch of space for expansion. They will charge you a fee, but it is well worth it for the satisfaction of having your own cider in winter.

 

Lastly, have you thought of making sauerkraut? Cabbages are easy to grow – or inexpensive to buy at your local farm stand. If you want to learn the basics just Google my name and “sauerkraut”. I wrote a full article on it in 2015 and it is available on-line along with book recommendations for in-depth learning.

 

One last bit of advice: don’t freeze or store any veggies or fruit that are not perfect. Freezing rotten food does not make it better! And you will not want to eat it later if you don’t want to eat it now!

 

Henry is an organic gardener. He tries to eat something that came from his garden every day of the year! Reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

Filed under Article · Tagged with freezing the harvest, making tomato paste, storing potatoes

Saving the Harvest

          Tomatoes are an important part of my diet. I cook with them year round, and eat them more than once every day in season. My grandmother used to can them, and I still do on occasion, but the easiest thing to do with them is to freeze them whole. No blanching required. Just put clean, dry tomatoes in gallon zipper bags and freeze. Then, when you need tomatoes to cook with, take out a few and run them under hot water in the kitchen sink. Rub and the skins come off. Allow them to sit for a few minutes and they soften enough to chop and use.

           I do make tomato sauce, but generally freeze it instead of canning it. I core the tomatoes and squeeze out some of the seeds and water, then puree them in the Cuisinart. I cook the tomatoes with onions, garlic, basil leaves, fennel seed, salt, pepper and whatever other spices appeal to me the day I make it. Sometimes I cheat and stretch my tomatoes by adding pureed zucchini to the sauce. The trick is to cook it enough so that the sauce is rich and thick. A little sugar (or maple syrup) is sometimes needed if the tomatoes are not dead ripe.

I also make tomato paste by cooking down pureed tomatoes until I can stand up a spoon in the mixture. I freeze the paste in ice cube trays, and then transfer it to Ziplock bags.

Dehydrator

I dry tomatoes in a dehydrator, making little nuggets of pure tomato flavor for use in winter stews. Although you can use any size tomato, I generally just dry cherry tomatoes. I cut them in half and place on a try, cut side up. It takes about 24 hours to fully dehydrate a batch of cherry tomatoes – but I get about 75 of them on each tray and dry 6 trays or more each batch. Afterwards I put them in zipper bags and store in my freezer. I have plenty of freezer space, but if you don’t, they will store well in the fridge or even in the pantry. I also dry apples, pears and hot peppers most years. I grind my hot peppers in a coffee grinder after they are dry enough to be brittle. Making pepper powder allows me to add just the right amount of zing to a sauce.

My potato harvest was smaller this year than I would have liked, but I have enough for a few months. Potatoes store best between 33 and 50 degrees, with high humidity. An attached garage, bulkhead or unheated mudroom might have the proper temperature. Mice love them, so store them in plastic buckets or storage bins covered with hardware cloth (quarter-inch mesh screening) to keep mice out while allowing good air circulation.

          Carrots, beets, rutabagas and celery root (celeriac) store well under the same conditions as potatoes: high humidity and cool temps. All root crops can be stored in the fridge (I keep a spare fridge in the basement), but tend to dry out unless in a drawer. You can leave root crops in the ground until it gets cold outside – although rodents may nibble on them. So if you leave root crops in the ground, check to make sure they are not being eaten.

          Carrots store well in the ground.  Just cover them with a layer of hay or straw , and then a layer fall leaves. Be sure to place a tall stake in the ground at each end of the row so that you can find the carrots even if we get 3 feet of snow. I’ve stored carrots that way, but found that in years of little snow the ground freezes, making digging difficult. Still, cold temperatures make carrots sweeter. I leave my parsnips in the ground and eat them in the early spring.

Orchard rack

Cool dry storage is appropriate for winter squash, onions and garlic. Fifty degrees is about right, with low humidity. An upstairs bedroom with the heat turned off is usually good. I have an “orchard rack” from Gardeners Supply that works very well for storing those items. It is made of wood, with slats to allow good air circulation. It is always good to cure or dry onions and winter squash a bit before you put them in their final resting place. I spread them out on the deck in the shade, where they only get morning sun, but get good breezes. That allows them to lose a little water and to harden up a little on the outside.

Freezing veggies is one of the best ways of keeping them. Leafy greens, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, beans and summer squash need to be blanched. That means dropping them into boiling water just long enough to kill the aging enzymes that make them tough and tasteless. Sixty seconds is enough for most things – or until the color changes. Don’t blanch so long your veggies are cooked or mushy. Drop them into a sink of cold water to stop the cooking process as soon as you take them off the stove. I recommend investing in a blanching pot, which has an inner pot with holes, allowing you drain out the water as you lift them out of the bath.

Blanching pot

Once your veggies are cool, spin them dry in a salad spinner and then pat dry with cloth towels. Put them in freezer-grade Ziplock bags, and suck the air out with a straw before closing the zipper all the way.   No need to blanch tomatoes, leeks, berries or peppers.

          I get great satisfaction from eating my own homegrown food. It takes work at this season, but for me it’s worth it.

          A correction: A helpful reader let me know that the moth of the hornworm is not the hummingbird moth. Hornworm moths are as large as hummingbirds, but look different and have different habits. So don’t harm those hummingbird moths!

Henry Homeyer is the author of 4 gardening books. His e-mail is henry.homeyer@comcast.net and his web site is www.Gardening-Guy. com. 

Copyright © 2014 Henry Homeyer

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