Community Garden: Preservation for Sustainability

by Sheila Moon

There is nothing worse than to have a bumper crop of something and not have a plan in place to use it. Most of us by now have harvested all of our summer’s hard work.......but then what?

We’ve shared with those that helped us, we shared with those less fortunate, we’ve shared with our church and family and friends … And we still have more than what we bargained for.

If you are like me - now is the time to have fun.

Preservation is like anything else, it takes planning. You may have grown up somewhere other than where you are living now and harvest season may catch you off guard. Make sure you have done your research.

Your preferred method for preservation may also change based on the climate as well. I have found myself leaning toward freezing many more fruits and vegetables here versus where I grew up because of our hot, humid, rainy weather in late summer.

There are three primary ways to preserve food: dehydration, freezing, and canning.

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Dehydration can be done using an oven or a dehydrator. Basically, what you are doing is removing the water from the food to preserve and store it. I personally love to use this method when making fruit jerky or what most school age children call fruit roll-ups.

Freezing has become my favorite way to preserve food here in Southeast Georgia. I have learned over the years there are a few ways to freeze fruit. You can put them into the freezer bags unfrozen or you can individually freeze each piece of fruit on parchment paper and then put the fruit into freezer bags.

One other way is to put sugar or sugar water on the fruit, stir it up and then place in a bag or in freezing containers. I have found these containers are hard to write the dates on year after year and are hard to organize in a freezer especially if you have limited amount of space.

Fruits that I freeze are strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and wild elderberries. Vegetables I freeze are: yellow squash, okra, and whole small onions, crowder peas, kale, broccoli and sweet corn. Yellow squash I individually freeze first as I do the berries. Sweet corn can be frozen on the cob - most par boil the corn before freezing if you leave it on the cob.

My family and I have a long-standing tradition of coming together during the corn harvest. We take great pains to arrange our schedules - even when that means traveling and/or taking time off work to get together.

Putting away corn is a family affair. Pictured here is my mom, Diann Means, stepdad Robbie Means, my brother Aron Metternich and my late grandmother Dorothy Johnson, AKA Grandma J.

Each of us has a task, whether it is to husk the corn, cut the corn off the cob, cook the corn in the milk on the stove, cool the corn, bag and date it, or stack it in my mother’s freezers for 24 hours. As you just read it is quite the process. Obviously, my family loves corn!

My niece Sydney Metternich

The next best thing to having enough corn in the freezer is having enough spaghetti sauce In the pantry for the whole year.

Yes, we can our own tomatoes and chilies like Ro*tel, our own spaghetti sauce and salsa. I am still experimenting with ketchup but I haven’t accomplished putting any up yet. But truly, it’s ok - it gives me something to look forward to next year.

My niece Sydney Metternich and the late Dorothy Johnson, AkA Grandma J.

I can jellies and jams, pickles, anything tomato, jalapeños and sweet potatoes. Another one on my to-do list is potatoes. Most would say, what? Can potatoes?

But part of sustainability is to be able to have what you need at your fingertips. Through the few months that we were asked to stay home as much as we possibly could, the canned potatoes I bought were very useful for casseroles, soups and stews. I vowed to can my own next year......

My advice for any of these methods is to start small. You may find you don’t care for frozen fruits and would prefer to eat the fruit that is in season.... if you’ve never frozen squash keep in mind frozen squash is mostly used in casseroles or soup. My family prefers their squash fresh and their broccoli frozen. You will fine tune the in’s and outs of dehydrating and freezing.

Canning on the other hand is an art. Being prepared is key, two people in the kitchen is almost a must. Of the three methods, it is the most expensive way of preservation and the more complicated.

There is hot water bath canning and pressure cooker canning. Depending on what you are canning is what method you will use.

Like I said canning is an art. If you love to cook, you will likely enjoy canning. Canning is best learned by participating in the process. If you’re able, learn from someone with experience before attempting it on your own. Buy a canning book, help a friend put up her favorites she likes to can, join a community group or one online that supports sustainable living - there are many from which to choose.

Fall Planting Schedule

Collards....................... Aug 1 - Sept 1 Kale............................. Aug 1 - Sept 1 Cabbage.........................Aug 1- Oct 1 Lettuce.........................Sept 1 - Oct 1 Mustard................... Aug 15 - Sept 15 Green onions ............. Sept 1 - Dec 31 Onions (dry bulb)....... Oct 10 - Nov 10 Radish........................ Sept 1 - Oct 15 Spinach ...................... Sept 1 - Oct 15 Turnip........................ Aug 10 - Sept 1