How Do You Store Your Fruit And Veg?

[4390evans]

Just thinking ahead of this year, Im hoping to produce enough food for me to be able to store some for the winter, Im stuck with how to do this though. I know the obvious one is freezing but freeze what? I couldnt imagine all fruit or veg would be ideal for this?
I need the cheapest way of storing Ive got plenty of jars and tubs stuff like that.

Can you guys let me know what you do with yours?

Thanks
Jen x

[FB.]

If it won't store in the simplest, cheapest way (a sack or a box in the garage) I don't bother trying to store it.
Certain types of fruit and veg store in simple conditions much better than others. Generally speaking, the later in the year the crop is ready to harvest, the better it will last through the winter.

Potatoes and other root vegetables in sacks of dry compost, dry sand or even dry soil have never been ruined by freeze damage in my garage. Many of the ultra-late-keeping apples and pears will tolerate being left outside in the frost and snow. At the moment, if I want an apple I wander outside and pick up a Tydeman's Late Orange out of the grass; still as perfect as when it fell off the tree two months ago and having had time for the acidity to mellow and the flavours to develop.

Soft fruits take up too much freezer space (and cooking time), but by having a range of varieties you can have fresh fruit most of the year. Start with fresh rhubarb in late winter/early spring, moving to strawberries in early summer, then cherries, currants and summer raspberries in mid-summer (autumn raspberries will fruit in summer as well as autumn if suitably managed), followed by the earliest-ripening apples, pears and plums in late summer and a large range of fruits in the autumn - many of which will store for a few months and sometimes several months for use until fresh fruit and veg comes again in spring.

Staggering the planting of vegetables gives a more even harvest from mid-summer to autumn. We usually plant a batch of potatoes dangerously early (at risk of frost) but they often do OK and give a really early crop of "new potatoes" in early summer. However, we hold back to a more sensible time for planting the bulk of our potatoes.

With other veg grown from tiny seeds such as lettuces, carrots, parsnips etc, we often let them grow slightly too close together but we eat them as we thin them out (baby carrots) so the last ones left have lots of space and get quite large.
Some seeds we start in pots on a sunny window in the house, to give them several weeks headstart for when we plant them out after the risk of frosts is gone. Many people use a greenhouse for the same purpose.

So for us it's more a case of doing what we can to get a steady stream of fruit and veg rather than one great bulk load which can can't eat all at once and which won't keep.

[AllInContainers]

Roots and/or leaves go in the freezer, either prepped for cooking or as soup with other ingredients from the garden. The rest goes straight in my belly

This year I'm moving more toward berries, which I'll be aiming to try out as jam and other cooked dishes as well as my usual wandering around grazing off the plants

[Bren In Pots]

I freeze my surplus beans and fruit, some apples get turned into sauce others are sliced ready for crumbles so is rhubarb, plus make I lots of jams and pickles.
Another way is to buy a dehydrator they seem to start at around £40 ish.

[Dorothy rouse]

Raspberries, blackcurrants, blackberries all freeze well, strawberries freeze, but go watery when defrosted but fine for cooking or making into something. Beans, peas, runners, broad beans all freeze well, other veg not so good. Onions, string up and hang somewhere cool and dry for winter use, assume sane with garlic. Potatoes dry, in sacks. Other veg like leeks, cabbage can stay in ground. Make liars of chutney, pickles etc, and of course there is bottling? But I've never done that.

[4390evans]

think most of mine will be freezer trying to keep in the ground and I might have a bash at making jam is I get any blueberries this year, Ive got strawberries but either the birds or kids get to them before me!