Fruits and Vegetables storing without canning or freezing.

There are quite a few fruits and vegetables that you can grow or harvest that do not require having jars, lids and rings, and canning pots. I'm going to compile a list of links to show you which crops to plant and how to keep your harvest long into the winter and in some cases well into the following spring.

Peas and Beans: Allow these to dry in their pods on the plant. When you can hear the bean or pea rattle in the shaken pod pull the plant up by the roots and hang them in an airy place protected from the weather. Allow 6-8 weeks for the pea/bean to finish drying. Remove the peas/beans from their pod and sort them. Discard any that marred or discolored. Place the rest into tightly sealed containers and store in a cool dry place.

How to Grow Beans and Peas

How to Grow and Harvest Dry Beans

Growing Beans for Drying (biased toward vegans but good info regardless) PDF

Fruits:

Sun Drying Fruits

Root Crops:

Storing Root Crops Outdoors Over Winter

STORING ROOT CROPS

Storage of Home-Grown Vegetables

A Variety of Vegetables:

Drying Food

Even those who do not know how to can to preserve food can dry their harvest. I'd recommend printing out the particular articles that are easiest for you to understand and implement.

reply to post by SeenMyShare


Oooo thanks for that, Ive got into my gardening lately, Just got to replace the glass on my greenhouse and im away

reply to post by TedHodgson

Here's one for my UK friends

Save Money by Drying Beans and Pulses

reply to post by SeenMyShare


Yay! I feel special now

Oh, I did not know this about cabbage!

Storing root crops in the garden

To store cabbage in the garden, you can simply dig a trench, put cabbages in the trench, root side up, and cover with soil. If you think the temperatures are going to be especially brutal, cover the trenches with hay.

Potatos:

Every year I put in a bunch of potatos. I am always amazed to find just tossing them in plastic tubs in the cool dark basement in September . They are still edible into January,some may sprout a bit or be a little soft but they are still usable.And certainly better than nothing should TSHTF...
Just leave 'em in the ground until the top dies I leave 'em in until I clean out the patch in Sept.
You know Forrest; they's "bowled" potatos; baked; mashed ;fried; au-grauten

More links:

Drying Packaging and Storing Dried Foods

Dried foods are susceptible to insect contamination and moisture reabsorption and must be properly packaged and stored immediately. First, cool completely. Warm food causes sweating which could provide enough moisture for mold to grow. Pack foods into clean, dry insect-proof containers as tightly as possible without crushing.

Dehydrating Food Using Air and Sun

The only other dehydrator that ever interested me was a junk car in the back yard, but I never had a junk car in a back yard that I could try dehydrating on, so I can't report how well it works. People say they lay the stuff on sweater drying racks in the trunk (boot) in the summer.

reply to post by SeenMyShare


The dry beans are great for making bean sprouts, too!

For drying harder to dry items like greens and fruits here is a wood fired dehydrator design.

Backwoods Home Magazine - Wood Fired Dehyrator

Speaking of drying greens:

Chile Chews How to Dehyrate Your Greens

Thank you for posting these links. I was looking for things like that. I remember the root cellar my grams had. She never closed it cause "You don't know when you'll have to go back to it." That's what she said while she was teaching me the old fashioned ways of canning and rendering things.

One more tidbit and I'm off for the night

Currently there are NO! GMO beans other than soy in the US. This means that you can get your planting beans cheaper and in a much greater quantity than buying the little packets.

Go to your grocery store and stock up on the large packages of dried beans, not only for adding to your food stores, but get extra to plant for the fall and winter and seed saving for the next year.

This won't work for peas though since they are typically sold split. You need the whole seed as planting broken or split seeds will not result in plants. If you can find whole peas sold in bags, grab them up : ).

Storage Guidelines For Fruits & Vegetables PDF

The above PDF has a table with the produce, it's storage requirements and the length of time it will keep.

Winter Cellar some more useful information.

Victory Edition 1919 WAR GARDENING and Home Storage of Vegetables

A small pit provided with ventilation, as shown in Fig. 5, is the most satisfactory. It is better to have several small pits than one large one, as the entire contents must be removed when a pit is opened.

Several storage pits spaced far enough apart that someone may not find all of them seems like a good idea to me. Storage pits are good for apples and root crops.

Here are instructions. Build a Storage Pit Type of Root Cellar

Giving this more thought it would be very easy to disguise your root pit as a compost heap. Another thought would be to put a simple wooden cross with a name scrawled on it and perhaps the date that you buried your root pit. It would serve as a marker for you and a deterrent for scavengers. Disguised as burial pits you could probably get away with putting them side by side.

reply to post by SeenMyShare


I don't know if you've covered this one before - but green beans (usually the pole bean type) can be dried right in the pod and then the entire dried pod, beans and all can be cooked and eaten.

Personally, I think they are delicious and they were a staple in the area where I grew up where money was tight and beans grew really well.

They are usually called Shuck Beans Or Leather Britches

The article talks about how to dry them and cook them. It mentions leaving a 1/4" inch between the beans, you can get away with less space than that - but a warm, dry area is key for the drying.

reply to post by SeenMyShare


Thanks for these links. I'll be checking into them very fervently as I plan on a big garden come this spring. Also on the potatoes I did that last year and worked fine.

reply to post by Frogs

I did not know that there was a bean the dried pod could be cooked and eaten. This would be a great one to have! Do you happen to know its name? I'll see what I can dig up. Thanks

Edit: got so excited I didn't read the second half of your post thanks for the link!

reply to post by SeenMyShare


Usually they used what they called "pole beans" for this. The type of green bean that grows on a vine. From what I remember the most common ones they used were Half Runners or Kentucky Wonder. But, I'm guessing that most any green bean that you can eat the pod on when green would work.

I found another article on drying and storing them..

How to Dry Beans to Make Shucky Beans

It looks to be a pretty good article - covers everything from using a dehydrator or oven to the old school stringing method that we did.

Drying Food in the Dehydrator You Already Own: Your Car

In a post SHTF scenario there will theoretically be millions of "dehydrators" scattered everywhere!

I am not much of a gardener but am learning fast.

I tried something 2 years ago that an older friend told me and I was surprised.

He told me: When you harvest your pumpkins wash them off in a weak bleach water solution.

I made a sink full of water with a cup of bleach in it and washed off all my pumpkins before they went on my front porch. That was around the middle of October and next July they were still as solid as when I picked them.

they didn't start rotting till the end of August. I will try again this year to see if it was a fluke or something. Usually when you buy a pumpkin for Halloween it is rotting within a month.

Mine lasted for about 10 months. That's a long time to have food stored without really doing much to it.

He said that the rotting is caused by bacteria that is on it when you pick it.?.?.?.