Canning season can be a busy time of year for serious food preservers – how can we possibly fit it all in? The truth is, we don’t. Here are some suggestions for off season food preservation. In other words, what food to preserve outside of the typical growing and canning season!
If you’re at all like me, you never get through all your food preservation goals during the major crush of harvest and canning season. No matter how I try, I still end up giving away surplus produce to friends and neighbors because I just can’t get it preserved before it spoils.
This causes some stress. I don’t like stress.
Consequently, I’ve learned to use the slower “off seasons” of the gardening year to preserve what I can. Seasons like early winter, late fall, and early spring all have bounty they can share with those of us who want to preserve their harvests.
If you’d like to join me in this off season food preservation campaign, here are some simple suggestions for how to get started.
Before you do that, though, keep your food preservation year organized and efficient, please join our email newsletter group to receive your FREE Food Preservation Worksheets. Print off only what you need and start filling in the worksheets! (There’s a black and white option for economical printing, FYI.)
Preserve Leafy Greens
Off season food preservation can easily begin with learning to save leafy greens in all seasons, but especially early spring and even winter.
Foraging
Greens like dandelion, mint, mache, cleavers, nettle, and more can be foraged growing wild in open spaces. What you can find depends on where you live. Foraging isn’t a difficult skill to learn but there are some points to know before you begin.
—>>>To get started, read Find Free Food – Foraging Basics<<<—
Look for more resources on foraging at the end of the article.
Grow Greens
Other greens like loose leaf lettuce, spinach, kale, and mustard can be grown in late fall, early spring, and even during the winter if they’re protected against hard frosts in the garden.
- To learn to grow greens in the winter garden, please visit this article from Azure Farm Life on 10 Winter Greens to Grow.
There are more resources for learning how to grow greens in the garden at the end of the article.
- Grow a Good Life can teach you how to grow microgreens on your kitchen counter – no garden space needed!
Options For Preserving Greens
To preserve these greens, here are some options to consider after cutting them, bringing them in, and washing them:
- Pat the greens dry and lay them out on a surface where there is good air circulation. Keep them protected from cats who might knock them down or walk over them.
- Similarly, you can bundle the greens and invert them to hang-dry them. This also works well in dry climates.
- If you have a dehydrator, you can lay out the greens on the dehydrator’s racks and set them to a lower setting to dry slowly. Greens aren’t very thick and this should only take a few hours with some.
- Greens can also be preserved in a freeze dryer with no measurable loss of nutritional content.
This method works well in dry climates and should take only a few days.
With the exception of freeze dried greens, it’s best to keep the greens in their original form and avoid crushing them. This will help preserve their nutrition longer. However, if your best method of storage requires they be reduced in size, crush them as needed.
The preserved greens can be crushed or blended when needed. Add them to smoothies and soups especially in the winter when fresh greens are hard to find.
- Why buy “green” energy drink mixes when you can just dry them from out of your garden?
Preserve Herbs
Expand your off season preservation skills by looking for herbs to preserve all year round. Sure, you should preserve all the basil you can in summer at the height of the growing season.
However, do you have time to concentrate on all the other herbs? Herbs begin to ripen early in the spring and go all the way until the heavy snows and I never preserve enough of them!
—>>>Here’s a detailed article on How to Harvest Herbs.<<<—
Typically, air drying will work for most herbs, but a dehydrator or freeze dryer can also be used with success. Some herbs can be saved to use in recipes for food and others can be used in wellness recipes for items like salves, teas, and tinctures.
Recipes follow at the end of the article but here are some ideas for what to grow or forage:
Spring Herbs
Look for early chives, dandelions and emerging mints in the spring.
- 9 Spring Herbs to Forage from Herbal Academy
- From Fewell Homestead 6 Medicinal Herbs to Forage in Spring
- 20 Wild Spring Edibles from Practical Self Reliance
Summer Herbs
Don’t go too crazy during the summer because you’ll be busy preserving the veggies that are in season. However, be sure to harvest the basil and dill from the garden. Look for summer foraged herbs like roses and yarrow.
- From Grow, Forage, Cook, Ferment Summer Foraging
- 9 Summer Herbs to Forage from Herbal Academy
Fall Herbs
Gather all the lavender, rose hips and golden rod you can in the fall.
- What to Forage in Fall from Grow, Forage, Cook, Ferment
- From Joybilee Farm Ten Medicinal Herbs to Forage in the Fall
Winter Herbs
Yes, there are even herbs and foods to be foraged in the winter!
- Winter Foraging from Practical Self Reliance
- From Herbal Academy Winter Foraging Guide
Preserve Meats
Meats can be bought in bulk year-round to be used for off season food preservation. The great thing is that there are a lot of options when it comes to preserving meat.
- Jerky can be made in the dehydrator and is a delectable snack, especially for family hikes and excursions.
- Canning plain meats, like chicken and sautéed hamburger, saves time and keeps the meat preserved. Home-canned meats are a healthy, affordable way to have preserved meat on hand.
- Many of us use our freezers to keep large amounts of meat preserved but, in winter storms, electricity can fail and the freezers stop working. Don’t discount freezing food to preserve it but be aware that it has that risk.
- You can also put up stews and casserole fillings, with meat included, to have whole meals on hand.
If you hunt, learning to preserve your precious harvest is so important!
Preserve Other Foraged Foods
We’ve already talked about preserving wild greens and herbs, but there are other items we can forage for more off season food preservation. For example, foraged fruits can be combined to make unique batches of seasonal jams and jellies; wild plums and cherries make a great combination, too.
Ramps, mushrooms, as well as chicory and dandelion root can all be dehydrated from the wild. Even the flowers can be harvested for jams—ever tried dandelion and forsythia jelly?
Here are several recipe ideas to get you started with more at the end:
- Make Lion’s Mane Mushroom Powder with Joybilee Farm
- Practical Self Reliance teaches you to make Wild Elderberry Jelly
Off Season Food Preservation Ideas
Off Season Food Preservation
5-Step Low Carb Sugared Violets
Sugared violets are a spring delicacy that should not be missed! They look fancy and delicate and too hard for a busy homesteading mom to bother with, but I promise, they're not at all. Have the kids help for family fun!
Violet-Infused Aloe Soothing Gel
11 Freeze Drying Mistakes to Avoid for Best Storage Quality
Canning Venison with the Hot Pack or Raw Pack Method
3 Easy Dehydrator Jerky Recipes that Will Have Them Asking for More
Growing a Jelly Garden With Wild Berry Bushes
Autumn Foraging Guide: 6 Easy to Identify Wild Foods
How to Preserve Leafy Greens
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I love to turn herbs, especially roots into a powder. It is very convenient and versatile.
Yes! In powder form, they’re so much easier to use and integrate into recipes.
I freeze tomatoes, tossing them in bags as I harvest. Then in winter I run them under hot water. The skins just slip right off. I can can them at my leisure. You can also core them prior to freezing. I also freeze berries at summer harvest. Then later in the year I make triple berry jelly for Christmas gifts. And I plant carrots late in the season (end of August) and cover them with straw or hay to winter over. I can harvest all winter and I also can some of them.
Wonderful tips, thank you so much for sharing! I love saving summer berries for holiday gifts; what a wonderful use of your energy at appropriate times. Do you ever have trouble with voles or mice chomping on your carrots in winter?
Sorry, but I felt this article fell quite short of the title. It was more about foraging and growing than actually preserving in fall and winter.
I expected, due to the title, to have suggestions for saving produce from the gardens, and from foraging, with recipes for PRESERVING produce. As suggested in the comment regarding tomatoes.
I expected recipes for produce that builds up during the summer months that can be preserved later when there is more time. That was even mentioned in the first several paragraphs. This was not addressed at all!
Just my opinion, but preserving via freezing isn’t viable for me as I have lost, through broken freezers and often power outages, over $2,000 worth or meat, mostly. I now only use the freezer for very short term foods.
Canning, dehydrating, freeze drying, all these are viable preservation techniques. Meaning shelf stable. I do NOT consider fermenting as a preservation technique, as fermented foods MUST be refrigerated, which then is not PRESERVED, and shelf stable.
I do enjoy most of your posts, however, this one just doesn’t live up to others at all.
Thanks for stopping by, Carol! I suggest you try reading the article again – I think you’ll see your concerns addressed as you do that. There are several links for recipes by season, whether the food is foraged or grown, as well as weird stuff like mushrooms and meat.
I find reading online to be difficult sometimes between small text on my phone and ads and other distractions, so I sympathize with missing things here and there. To help you keep track of where you are in the article, be sure to read the larger bold text – that’s where sections of organized information begins.
When you’re reading over 1200 words of free material online, it’s imporatant to remember that you, as the reader, do need to read what is written and often follow links to more written material for further information on the topic. When all the information is one place, we call that a book and not an article, and we pay for it.
You and I have already had a conversation about fermented foods and we disagree on whether this method counts as a perservation technique. Consequently, my including fermented links shouldn’t have surprised you, and you can simply skip those sections.
The freezer may not be viable for you as a place to save food, but is is where many people begin their preservation journey and I need to help them brainstorm preservation ideas, too.
Overall, it might helpful to remember when reading an article on any blog that the author is attempting to assist as many people as possible over a wide range of experience and knowledge. You simply may not need to read every article at Homestead Lady because you feel your knowledge base is wide enough on certain topics. With electronic material, the great thing is, you can simply skip it!