Chapter 19: Harvesting, Storing, and Preserving Vegetables

In This Chapter

Harvesting your vegetables at the right times

Storing your crops

Preserving your crops by freezing, drying, or canning

Saving seeds from your vegetables

Suppose that you've done everything you need to do in your garden: You planted your veggies at the right time, watered and fertilized them as needed, and kept an eye out for pests. Way to go. Now for the best part: It's time to eat!

To get all the best flavor and highest nutritional value from your vegetables, you need to pick them at just the right time. Some vegetables taste terrible if you pick them too early; others are tough and stringy if you pick them too late.

And after you pick your vegetables, what if you can't eat them right away? When properly stored, most vegetables last a while without rotting or losing too much flavor (of course, eating them fresh picked is always best). In fact, you can store some vegetables, like potatoes and winter squash, for months.

So in this chapter, I discuss harvesting and storing your fresh vegetables. You put in too much work not to do the final steps just right.

Knowing When to Harvest

You should harvest most vegetables when they're young and tender, which often means harvesting the plants, roots, or fruits before they reach full size. A 15-inch zucchini is impressive, but it tastes better at 6 to 8 inches. Similarly, carrots and beets get woody (tough textured) and bland the longer they stay in the ground. Table 19-1 provides specific information on when to harvest a variety of veggies.

Other plants are continuously harvested to keep them productive. If you keep harvesting vegetables like snap beans, summer squash, snow and snap peas, broccoli, okra, spinach, and lettuce, they'll continue to produce pods, shoots, or leaves.

A good rule for many of your early crops is to start harvesting when you have enough of a vegetable for a one-meal serving. Spinach, Swiss chard, scallions, radishes, lettuce, and members of the cabbage family certainly fit the bill here. These veggies don't grow as well in warm weather, so pick these crops in the spring when temperatures are cooler.

After you start harvesting, visit your garden and pick something daily. Take along a good sharp knife and a few containers to hold your produce, such as paper bags, buckets, or baskets. Wire or wood buckets work well because you can easily wash vegetables in them.

The harvesting information in Table 19-1 is based on picking mature or slightly immature vegetables. But many vegetables can be picked smaller and still have excellent flavor. Pick baby vegetables whenever they reach the size that you want. The following vegetables can be picked small: beets, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, cucumbers, lettuce and other greens, onions, peas, potatoes, radishes, snap beans, summer squash, Swiss chard, and turnips. In addition, some small varieties of corn and tomatoes fit the baby-vegetable mold.

Be sure to avoid harvesting at the following times:

When plants, especially beans, are wet. Many fungal diseases spread in moist conditions, and if you brush your tools or pant legs against diseased plants, you can transfer disease organisms to other plants down the row.

In the heat of the day, because the vegetable's texture may be limp. For the freshest produce, harvest early in the day when vegetables' moisture levels inside the vegetables are highest and the vegetables are at peak flavor. After harvesting, refrigerate the produce and prepare it later in the day.

In the fall, wait as long as you can to dig up root crops, such as carrots, rutabagas, and beets, if you intend to store them in a root cellar or cold storage room. However, remember that while root crops can withstand frosts, you should harvest them before the ground freezes. They'll come out of the ground easiest if the soil is still slightly moist. Also, don't wash crops that are going to the root cellar; instead, just gently brush away soil crumbs. Use any blemished or cut vegetables within a few days.

Putting Away Your Vegetables

You have only two choices when you harvest your crops: Eat the veggies right away, or store them to use later. Specific vegetables need different storage conditions to maintain their freshness. These conditions can be summarized as follows:

Cool and dry: Ideally, temperatures should be between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, with 60-percent relative humidity — conditions you usually find in a well-ventilated basement.

Cold and dry: Temperatures should be between 32 and 40 degrees, with 65-percent humidity. You can achieve these conditions in most home refrigerators or in a cold basement or garage.

Cool and moist: Temperatures should be between 50 and 60 degrees with 90-percent humidity. You can store vegetables in a cool kitchen or basement in perforated plastic bags.

Cold and moist: Ideally, your storage area should be 32 to 40 degrees, with 95-percent humidity. You can create these conditions by placing your vegetables in perforated bags (vegetables in bags without ventilation are likely to degrade faster) and storing the bags in a refrigerator.

You also can create cold and moist conditions in a root cellar. An unheated basement works well as a root cellar. However, these days, most homes have heaters or furnaces in the basement, which make the conditions too warm for storing vegetables. But if you don't have a heater, or if you can section off a portion of your basement and keep temperatures just above freezing, you can store vegetables like root crops and even cabbage for long periods of time.

Make sure your vegetables are well ventilated in the root cellar; you can store onions, potatoes, and other root crops in mesh bags. Shoot for a humidity level that's as high as you can get. To increase humidity, spread moist wood shavings or sawdust on the floor but keep the vegetables elevated on wooden boxes.

In Table 19-2, I provide specifics on how to store your vegetables so that after you pick them, you quickly know what to do with them (that is, if you don't eat them right away). Table 19-2 also includes information on whether you can freeze, dry, or can vegetables, topics that I cover later in this chapter.

If you want to store vegetables, make sure you harvest them at their peak ripeness. Also avoid bruising the produce, because bruises hasten rotting. The storage times in Table 19-2 are only estimates; they can vary widely depending on conditions. Store only the highest quality vegetables for long periods of time; vegetables that are damaged or scarred are likely to rot and spoil everything nearby.

If you live in an area where the ground freezes in the winter, you can actually leave some root crops — including carrots, leeks, rutabagas, and turnips — in the ground and harvest all winter long. After a good, hard frost, but before the ground freezes, cover your vegetable bed with a foot or more of dry hay. Cover the hay with heavy plastic (4 to 6 millimeters) and secure the edges with rocks, bricks, or heavy boards. The plastic keeps rain and snow from trickling down through the hay and rotting your vegetables, and it also keeps the soil from freezing solid. You can harvest periodically through winter, but be careful to re-cover the opening after each harvest.

Freezing, Drying, and Canning Veggies

You can preserve vegetables three different ways — by freezing, drying, or canning them — to make your harvest last longer than if you stored your vegetables fresh. (Refer to Table 19-2 for information on whether a particular vegetable can be frozen, dried, or canned.) I don't have room to cover all the details about these different methods, but the following list gives you a thumbnail sketch of each technique:

Freezing: This is probably the easiest way to preserve vegetables. Heck, if you want, just puree up some tomatoes, put them in a container, and throw them in the freezer — they'll last for months. The mix is great to use in spaghetti sauce or soups.

You also can freeze some vegetables, like beans or peas, whole. But usually you have to blanch them first to preserve their color and texture. Blanching is simply the process of dipping the vegetables in boiling water for a minute or two and then placing them in ice water to cool them off. Then you dry the vegetables with a towel and freeze them in labeled plastic freezer bags. Simple.

Drying: This technique can be pretty easy, but it must be done properly to prevent spoilage. Basically, you dehydrate the vegetables by laying them out in the sun to dry, by slow baking them in the oven, or by using a commercial dehydrator, which you can buy in most mail-order catalogs (see the appendix). In hot, sunny climates like California, you can dry ‘Roma' tomatoes by slicing them in half and laying them out in the sun on a screen.

Spoilage is always a concern, so before drying your vegetables, you may need to get some additional information. You usually need to store dried vegetables in airtight containers; lidded jars work well. You can use dried vegetables to make soups and sauces.

Canning: Of all preserved vegetables, I like the taste of canned tomatoes the best. Nothing tastes better in the middle of winter. But canning is a delicate and labor-intensive procedure that can require peeling, sterilizing jars, cooking, boiling, and a lot of other work. I usually set aside a whole weekend to can tomatoes and other veggies. I don't want to discourage you, but you need some good recipes, some special equipment, and probably some help if you want to can vegetables.

For help with freezing, drying, and canning vegetables and herbs, I like to refer to the bible, The Ball Blue Book of Preserving (Alltrista Consumer Products, 2004). Or you can check out Canning and Preserving For Dummies by Karen Ward. Your local Cooperative Extension Service office also is a good source of information on preserving vegetables. Finally, I have come across many great Web sites on home food preservation as well. Here are a few to try:

Home Food Preservation (foodsafety.psu.edu/lets_preserve.html)

National Center for Home Food Preservation (www.uga.edu/nchfp)

Pick-Your-Own (www.pickyourown.org)

Saving Vegetable Seeds

If you have a favorite vegetable variety that's suited to your tastes or growing conditions, or if you have a particular plant that thrives in your garden, you can save those plants' seeds and possibly even improve their qualities to better fit your needs. If you collect seeds from only the best plants year after year, the qualities that you want will eventually be more present and predictable.

Hybrid seeds won't come true to type (the exact same plant) if you collect the seeds and try to grow them a year later. Open-pollinated varieties are more likely to give you what you expect.

Saving your own seeds also may be the only way to keep some heirloom varieties alive. Some heirlooms are difficult or impossible to obtain, but they have something special to offer, such as adaptation to a specific climate, certain types of disease resistance, or especially good flavor. Heirloom varieties represent a reservoir of genes that plant breeders can use to improve present and future crops.

The appendix lists organizations dedicated to heirloom varieties. Here are some Web sites that provide information on how to save some of your own vegetable seeds:

International Seed Saving Institute (www.seedsave.org/issi/issi_904.html)

Cornell University (counties.cce.cornell.edu/suffolk/HortFactSheets/factsheets/How%20to%20Save%20Vegetable%20Seeds.pdf)