Turn your garden harvests into meals!

GYOV founder Stacey Murphy developed our Harvest-into-Meals food preservation system that gives you strategies for eating fresh year-round, whether it’s out of your garden or from the farmer’s market.

Having a food preservation system helps you:

• • Manage the harvest you have coming in without overwhelm or waste

• • Enjoy garden-fresh nutrition year round

• • Take the guesswork out of meal planning

• • Plan to preserve your favorite staple foods

• • Open up time and energy to enjoy other activities

Like any new skill, learning to manage harvest takes time and energy upfront. But as you incorporate a food preservation system into your routine, it becomes second nature with time.

>>> Want to learn about your food preservation options? Check out our “5 Methods to Preserve Vegetables at Home” blog post.

Step 1: Set food preservation goals

The first step in creating a food preservation system that works for you is setting goals. Goals that work for you and your lifestyle are all about…YOU! So put away those “shoulds” and focus on what you actually want.

The best kind of goals create habits, especially if it’s a daily habit or a weekly habit. Habits make accomplishing your goals automatic, just like brushing your teeth.

Be realistic about your time and energy

Whatever kind of garden space, time, and energy levels you’re working with, be realistic about what kind of food preservation system will work for your lifestyle. If you have a busy life with lots of priorities, your plan should be enjoyable and easy to execute in the time you have. If your time is flexible and you’re looking to take on a new project, be realistic about how much you can take on at once without burning out.

Set a variety of goals

• • Set some small goals that you know you can accomplish (ex: I want to learn how to lacto-ferment vegetables). Easy wins create momentum!

• • Set some stretch goals so that if you manage the small goals, you have something to stretch for (ex: I want to lacto-ferment 20 quarts of sauerkraut from my own cabbage).

• • Differentiate between rate-based goals (ex: I want to can two quarts of tomatoes per week) and overall goals (ex: I want to can all of the pasta sauce I need for a year).

Set Questions for reflection

How many hours per week can you commit to preparing and preserving food?

• • Do you have friends or family who can help with prep work?

• • What materials or supplies do you need to get started?

• • What kind of preserved food excites you?

• • In your garden, do you want to grow food specifically for preservation? Or do you want to grow easy foods you enjoy and figure out how to preserve them later?

Step 2: Quantify your goals

After you’ve set realistic goals for your food preservation system that align with your values and lifestyle, it’s time to do the math. If you plan to grow vegetables in your garden specifically for preservation, this step is crucial for your crop plan.

For example, if your overall goal is to grow and preserve all of your own tomatoes for pasta sauce for a year, you need to figure out:

• • How much pasta sauce you eat in a year (in quart jars)

• • How many tomatoes it will take to make that much pasta sauce

• • How many tomato plants you need to grow that many tomatoes (tip: overestimate here to account for loss)

It’s okay to estimate in the beginning! You’ll use what you learn this year to create a more specific plan next year.

Step 3: Track your garden harvests

The third step of your Harvest-into-Meals food preservation system is to create or adjust your crop plan for the next growing season so that you’re growing for preservation. To do that effectively, you’ll need to create a harvest log.

Keep a harvest log

A harvest log is a list of crops you’re growng. Every time you harvest, you note the amount of each crop by weight or by bunch. This empirical data comes straight from your garden and gives you a clear picture of how much harvest you can expect from your plants and your space. Start simple with one or two of your staple crops.

Harvest once a week & batch tasks

Make it a weekly event: harvest your produce, log your harvest, and plan what to do with it. You can see everything that’s available for the week (see Step 4) and create your meal plan (see Step 5) in just a couple of hours.

A note for the farmer’s market

Even if you don’t have your own garden, you can note when different crops become available at the farmer’s market. And look for sales. For example, at the end of a tomato season, farmers may have discounted boxes of tomatoes perfect for preservation.

Step 4: Divide up your harvest

You want to use or preserve all of your harvest each week. Naturally, some may end up in the compost bin, but dividing up your harvest will help you reduce waste.

What you preserve:

First, separate out all of the best-looking produce. That’s what you’re going to preserve! When you preserve food, it has to be blemish-free. Blemishes increase nutrient loss and can introduce bad bacteria.

What you eat:

Those tomatoes with blemishes? Those are what you’re going to cook or eat raw this week! Just cut away bad sections and incorporate the good bits into your meal plan for the week.

What you compost:

If anything is blemished and damaged beyond edibility, or if it has mold growing on it, that goes into the compost. When you compost, yucky vegetables go back into your garden as nutrients.

Don’t have a compost bin yet? Toss food scraps outside instead of putting them in the trash. Food scraps don’t biodegrade in landfills–but they do contribute to methane emissions and climate change.

Using scraps:

You might want to keep certain food scraps and do something with them. You can make apple cider vinegar out of apple cores and peels. As long as they look good and aren’t moldy, you can also cook vegetable scraps into stock for soups.

Step 5: Plan meals for the week

Could you commit two hours to meal prep each week? This little bit of structure could lead to lots of creativity. Plus, strategically planning your meals ahead saves you time and energy in the long run.

If you can successfully plan one week of meals at a time, you can conquer the whole year.
-Stacey Murphy

Questions for reflection:

• • What does a well rounded meal look like for you?

• • What do you eat when you are in a hurry?

• • How many meals are you eating on the run?

• • How can your loved ones help?

Step 6: Preserve according to your goals

Step six is the preservation step, so you’re going to spend some time here. This is where you take all the planning that you’ve done and you actually do each process.

>>> Need some ideas? Check out…

Step 7: Create a preservation log

Then the seventh step in your preservation system is to create a preservation log. A good preservation log is going to tell you:

• • What you preserved and when

• • How much you have on hand vs what you already ate

• • Progress on your rate-based goals

The most important goal of your preservation system is to make everything visible. Things disappear quickly in the back of your refrigerator or shelves, and you forget about them.

Ideas for keeping your preserved items visible

• • Keep a dry erase board on your fridge for reminders

• • We read left to right, so orient your “eat by” food dates left to right

• • Add drawers and label lids

• • Tiered shelving

Your log might be your pantry itself, where you just have everything labeled very clearly. Or you might want to create a paper log or a digital log. However you track so that you can follow along. You can improve your system for next year so that you can reset your goals.

Let’s do this!

Learning to preserve your own food can be a big project or just a few simple steps–it all depends on your lifestyle! Either way, having a food preservation system in place will simplify your process and turn new skills into lifelong habits.

Related articles you may enjoy:

5 Methods to Preserve Vegetables at Home
The Benefits of Fermentation
Waking Your Inner Gardener – Growing Food Made Easy with Food Revolution Network

Masterclass on YouTube:

10 Tips to Growing Tomatoes… and More of Them!

Share your biggest take-a-ways from your preservation log!

It’s easier than you think to preserve vegetables at home. 

When it comes to preserving food, many of us think of Granny canning tomatoes late into the night. But there are lots of other options! Whatever kind of experience, space, and tools you have, you can preserve your garden harvests, as well as fruits and vegetables you pick up at your local farmer’s market or grocery store.

Harvesting & Storing for Preservation

To make sure your preserved vegetables are safe, delicious, and packed with nutrients, it starts with how you harvest and store them.

Use the freshest produce possible. Vegetable texture and nutrition begin to degrade within just a few hours of harvest, so going directly from harvest into canning is best. Using the farmer’s market? Make a plan to preserve your haul the day you shop. 

Use fruits and vegetables that do not have blemishes. Use those fresh in salads or cook them up that week. 

Some vegetables like garlic, onions, winter squash, and sweet potatoes need to be cured before storage. But if you harvest and cure them correctly, many can store for months on end. These cold weather staples become hearty winter soup for a reason. If your goal is to grow food for yourself for the entire year, consider adding some of these to your crop plan. 

Dehydrating

Properly dehydrated food is the closest thing to raw in terms of nutrients. 

Dehydrating preserves vegetable enzymes. Enzymes are most susceptible to damage when food is wet, and they can withstand drying temperatures up to 140ºF (60ºC). Once most of the moisture is removed, enzymes become stable and dormant until re-hydrated in your gut or in a recipe.

To dehydrate your veggies, you can use your oven, purchase a food dehydrator appliance, or build your own solar dehydrator (like Tom Bartels uses to preserve his abundance of kale!). There are lots of options based on your budget, space, and DIY skills, so a bit of research will help you find or create a food dehydrating system that fits your needs. 

Tips to preserve vegetables at home by dehydrating:

• Air circulation is key! Moving air prohibits microbial growth. Spread your food in a single layer with a little room to “breathe,” and keep that breeze blowing throughout the dehydration process.
• Keep it even: Consistently slice your veggies so they dry at the same rate. Remember that edges always dry faster than the center, and note that the back of your dehydrator may become warmer faster. For an even batch, keep an eye on your veggies and rotate them.
• Get that moisture out! Sometimes, it’s hard to tell if something is completely dehydrated. When in doubt, put it in an airtight container overnight. If there is fog in the container or the food is softer the next day, either there was humidity in the container to begin with or the food was not totally dehydrated. 

Freezing Vegetables

Almost everything that comes out of your garden can be frozen! Freezing is a quick and accessible way to preserve vegetables at home, even in small amounts. 

There are only five vegetables that don’t like to be frozen: Radish, cucumber, lettuce, cabbage, and celery. They lose their flavor and texture. For every other vegetable, there’s a way to make sure that you retain everything that makes it delicious.

You can chop and directly freeze peppers, onions, and mushrooms. 

Other vegetables require blanching before you freeze them. “Blanching” is just a fancy name for heating your veggies in boiling water for a certain amount of time, then quenching those vegetables in an ice bath for the same amount of time. Blanching times are different for different crops, so look it up before you get started.

Benefits of freezing your veggies: 

• Freezing takes less time than drying, canning, and fermenting.
• You can preserve the texture of that vegetable, as well as the flavor and nutrient profile.
• Chopping and freezing a whole bunch of your harvest all at once can reduce prep for future meals.
• You control the size you cut your veggies and the size of the portion. Create little serving size packets in your freezer so that you just pull out what you need for each meal.
• Did you know you can freeze tomatoes, and they store for at least 3-4 months? Freezing is a fast method to preserve all those tomatoes.
• Freezing involves simple procedures that you can do with household items.

Why you may not want to freeze your harvest: 

• You have to have freezer space and the power to keep the freezer cold. If you have a big family, you might not have enough freezer space to store all that garden harvest.
• If you freeze your vegetables incorrectly, you can actually speed up the loss of texture, flavor, and nutrients and make your food really unappetizing.

Lacto-Fermentation 

Lacto-fermentation happens when friendly bacteria, called lactobacili, convert the natural sugars in your vegetables and fruits into lactic acid. The proliferation of lactobacilli in your fermented vegetables enhances their digestibility and the bioavailability of their nutrients.

Which vegetables can you lacto-ferment? Basically all of them. It’s just a matter of taste. The flavor of leafy greens, for example, can become very strong in the fermentation process. “Tougher” vegetables also hold up better through fermentation and storage. The more fibrous the cell wall, the longer they’re going to last. 

You can get started with lacto-fermentation using items you most likely already have in your kitchen, like glass jars. There is special equipment you can purchase that can make your life a little easier, like fermentation crocks, seals for jars, and weights specifically designed for fermentation. 

Benefits of lacto-fermentation: 

• The biggest benefit of lacto-fermentation is for your health. Lacto-fermented foods are not only preserved–-they are nutrient dense, enzyme rich, and chock-full of probiotics.
• Store-bought fermented foods are expensive, so you’re going to save a lot of money fermenting your own.
• Lacto-fermentation is a simple and fast way to process lots of your harvest. A quick wash and chop will get your ferment started, and then it’s just a waiting game.
• Fermentation is a fun science experiment and learning experience for all ages!

Disadvantages of lacto-fermentation:

• Lacto-fermentation is vulnerable to contamination, so it definitely requires monitoring.
• Full fermentation can take up to eight weeks.
• Some people find a disadvantage in that lacto-fermentation requires salt.

Water Bath Canning:

Water bath canning is for highly acidic foods that have a pH of 4.6 or lower. Many unwanted bacteria, including botulism, cannot survive at such a low pH. That list of high-acid foods includes fruits, pickles, sauerkraut, jams, salsas, and hot sauces. Tomatoes are close enough, too, as long as you add a little extra acidity.

There are two types of water bath canning: 

1. Raw packing. Take your raw fruits or vegetables, put them in the jars, and then pour some sort of brine or sugar fluid over the top. The advantage to raw packing is that it’s easy and saves time. The disadvantage is that not as much gets preserved per jar, so you can eat up shelf space quickly. There will be a lot of extra space in each jar, so you’ll need to use a lot of fluid. 

2. Hot packing. With hot packing, you pre-cook a recipe and put that into the jars. This process reduces the air inside of the jar and it improves the quality of the product. It does take a little extra time to pre-cook the recipe, but hot packing maximizes jar space. 

There are three ways to kill off unwanted bacteria in the canning process: heat, sugar, natural acids, or a combination of them. Following your canning recipe closely ensures the food you’re preserving is safe. 

One disadvantage of water bath canning is that it is fairly time consuming to heat up a lot of water and do all the cleaning necessary for the process. If possible, make a day of it, and can a lot of things all at once.   

Pressure Canning: 

For fruits and vegetables that have a pH greater than 4.6, pressure canning utilizes pressurized steam to heat water above its boiling point (212 °F). Low acid foods must be canned at 240 °F or higher and held there for the time specified in the recipe in order to destroy unwanted bacteria.

Pressurized steam creates superheated temperatures, hotter than boiling water. The rest is the same as water bath canning. As the jars cool down, a vacuum is formed, and it seals the food into the jars and prevents any new microorganisms from entering, which could spoil the food.  

There are two types of pressure canners: weighted gauge and dial gauge. If you’re purchasing a new pressure canner, make sure to do your research and find one that fits your needs. Understanding how to use and maintain your pressure canner is crucial for safe canning. 

Pressure canning safety: 

• Wash, rinse, and dry canner to remove all the foreign matter after each use.
• Prevent odors from forming in the canner by thoroughly airing it.
• Store the can in a dry place to prevent rust.
• Do not use your pressure cooker to pressure can. A pressure canner is considered a pressure canner if it holds a minimum of four quart jars. Most pressure cookers cannot. The recipes that are in the USDA guidelines for canning are based on empirical data from things that have been tested. And what’s been tested are pressure canners that hold at least a minimum of four quart jars.
• Don’t add grains, bread, noodles, eggs, thickeners, package mixes, avocado, or coconut milk. 

Some fruits and vegetables don’t can well. Eggplant, celery, brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, and zucchini get really mushy, and you’re not going to enjoy the results of pressure canning those vegetables. 

Let’s do this!

Want to learn more about how you can preserve vegetables at home in a way that fits your lifestyle? Check out our Preserve the Harvest course here!

Related articles you may enjoy:

Grow Your Own Immune Boosting Garlic For Improved Health & Vitality
Vegetable Crops for Hot Weather Gardening
The Benefits of Fermentation

Share your favorite method of preserving your harvest!