How to Store Your Home Garden Summer Vegetable

Why should you store home garden summer vegetables? The first answer is always money, as in storing harvested vegetables can save you trips to the grocery store. A home garden is usually the best way to a raise organic vegetables, not sprayed with pesticide and safe for your family. Harvested organic vegetables can be stored and enjoyed year round, which brings up the money saving point. By storing home grown bounties of fresh produce, you can save yourself a trip to the grocery store for an $6 out-of-season corn, that was probably grown in a glass box and sprayed with chemicals.

The Difficulty Level Of Storing Home Garden Summer Vegetables
In our family storing home grown vegetables, especially summer produce, is more of a tradition that is passed down generations. For us, it is an easy and fun process that does take dedicated time to complete. Is it difficult to prepare summer vegetables for storage? No, it is easy to follow storage and packing process tips. In order to prepare a summer harvest for storage you have to use familiar kitchen tasks such as chopping, blanching, cooking, grilling, packing and freezing. There is really no difficulty in storing summer vegetables, but do dedicate a day or a weekend, depending on the harvest.

Methods of Preparing and Storing Home Garden Summer Vegetables
We use several methods, including pickling, blanching, grilling, freezing and drying. Freezing is the best option for longer storage periods, and especially if you will be eating the harvest year round. All of our vegetables are picked young and tender, with only the best selected for storage. Those vegetables that are ripe are used up in meal cooking immediately.

Grilling and Freezing Red Peppers
Peppers, especially red peppers, are our favorite to grill and freeze for winter storage. Grilled red peppers are often used in Italian cooking, with some garlic and olive oil that make it a great side dish or antipasto platter. We grill or roast our peppers so the skin is charred. After grilling process, the peppers are stored in a paper bag which allows steam to pull off some of the skin. Once cooled, red peppers are completely skinned and placed in freezer bags for storage.

Drying of Herbs for Storage
Herbs are very important to gardeners, and especially those like my parents who enjoy growing summer produce. Summer cooking is more fun with fresh herbs, and even a tomato salad tastes better with some basil. All herbs grown in a summer vegetable garden can be dried and saved for long-term use.
We pick our herbs and wash thoroughly everything that is meant for storage. After washing, only leaves of herbs such as parsley and basil are picked and either dried as whole or cut up first. To dry inside, we place an old table cloth or bed sheet on the dining room table and lay out all herbs in appropriate sections. To dry outside, we use the same method of laying out herbs on an old bed sheet or table cloth, but we cover the herbs with a cheesecloth. The cheesecloth allows sun to penetrate and dry herbs, without flies and other bugs getting on our food. Once completely dried out, we place dried herbs into containers and label appropriately. These dried herbs are the same you'd purchase in a grocery store, but at a fraction of the cost.

Blanching and Cooking of Vegetables Before Freezing
All harvested summer vegetables should be cooked before storage, and can either be fully cooked or just blanched enough to retain crispiness. We use the blanching method for green beans, carrots, zucchini and asparagus. All of these summer vegetables take no longer than three minutes to blanch. Vegetables must be drained and completely cooled off before freezing.

Choosing Freezer Bags for Summer Vegetable Storage
When choosing freezer bags for your vegetable harvest do not go cheap. Also, choose bags specifically meant for freezers, and ones that guarantee no freezer burns. Freezer burn will destroy your stored vegetables, often making them inedible.

Consider Vacuum Packing Summer Vegetable Harvest
Vacuum packing machines are now common in stores and can be fairly inexpensive. Purchasing even a higher quality vacuum pack machine these days can only cost around $100. But these machines allow you to fully preserve summer vegetable harvests, eliminate freezer burn and seal in vegetable freshness.