Plan a garden for preservation well in advance

Do you grow your fruits and veg­eta­bles? Grow­ing food can be a great joy. Bring­ing food from gar­den to plate can give you the instant reward of tast­ing your hard work in action. If you do not already, con­sider using part of next year’s edi­ble gar­den space for food you will store. There is a new dimen­sion to the joy of har­vest­ing when you par­tic­i­pate in the preser­va­tion of the food you grow. Open­ing a pantry in the depths of win­ter to find a jar of your own food can be a spe­cial treat. The taste of this summer’s jam in the mid­dle of Jan­u­ary can brighten the spir­its of any gardener.

Even if you do not know a thing about food preser­va­tion, you will soon real­ize that plan­ning a veg­etable gar­den for can­ning or freez­ing is dif­fer­ent than a gar­den for fresh pro­duce. Pro­duc­tion gar­dens, with an eye for stor­age, can take a lit­tle bit of time and research. The let­tuce in my salad and the tomato that I enjoy on my sand­wiches in the sum­mer months sim­ply won’t keep.

There are a num­ber of choices in any gar­den plan, but here are a few things about your vari­ety selec­tions to consider:

Pest resis­tance: Preser­va­tion meth­ods slow the growth of bac­te­ria and fun­gus but can­not com­pletely stop it. It is impor­tant that food selected for preser­va­tion be free from all defects. Plant­ing vari­eties with resis­tance to com­mon pests will help ensure fruits and veg­eta­bles that can be put up. Using resis­tant vari­eties will also reduce or remove the need to use pes­ti­cides to ensure unblem­ished produce.

Ripen­ing: Choose a cul­ti­var that tends to ripen all at once, rather than over the entire sea­son. Avoid suc­ces­sion plant­ing. This will allow you to can or freeze similarly-sized fruits and veg­eta­bles in large batches. Bear in mind that some preser­va­tion processes will require you to har­vest when the pro­duce is slightly under-ripe.

Heat-tolerance: Fla­vors and tex­tures change when sub­jected to heat processes. Many gar­den plants have cul­ti­vars that are more suit­able for can­ning than oth­ers. For exam­ple, choose pie cher­ries, sauce apples, prune plums, or paste toma­toes over those for table or fresh use.

Tim­ing: Most cul­ti­vars will indi­cate whether the plant tends to be “early sea­son,” “mid-season” or “late sea­son.” The time to matu­rity should be noted, as well. Use this as a guide to help you deter­mine ideal plant­ing times for your varieties.

It is a good idea to plan a gar­den for preser­va­tion well in advance. Research your preser­va­tion needs: Read your recipes and instruc­tions thor­oughly as a part of your gar­den plan­ning. Try to space out the har­vest­ing times so that you will have time to process the fruit of your labor. Noth­ing is more heart­break­ing than hav­ing buck­ets of food and no time! Take into con­sid­er­a­tion your resources, so that you’re not over­whelmed when the har­vest comes.

Wendy Wolpert is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Nov 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.