What to Do in Your Garden Right Now

By Kymisha Montgomery, CGC Urban Agriculture Coordinator

With an abundance of harvest, this is a great time to start thinking about what we should be doing in our gardens today—like preserving our bounty so we can enjoy our delicious summer crops well into the fall and winter. There are so many ways to preserve food, including pressure canning, hot water bath, freezing or even dehydrating. When practiced properly, it is a safe way to preserve our harvest.

Pressure and hot water bath canning involve placing food in jars or cans and heating them to a temperature that destroys microorganisms that could be a health hazard or cause the food to spoil, so it’s very important to follow canning recipes. There are a ton of online recipes, but my go to is the Ball Book of Canning and Preserving. It’s a great go-to that doesn’t make canning at home so intimidating. Just keep in mind that the hot water bath technique is ideal for high acid foods, at low temperatures, to create jams, some salsas, pickles and even chutneys to name a few. My favorite crop to hot water bath is cucumbers so I can enjoy homemade pickles. Pressure canning, on the other hand, focuses on high temperatures and low acid foods to create salsas, meat and vegetables.

Freezing your harvest is one of the easiest and most convenient ways to preserve what you grow. This process involves reducing the temperature of the food to a point where the water within it solidifies into ice. You can use freezer bags or get a little fancier and use a vacuum sealer. Making sure you’re freezing your harvest rapidly and uniformly will almost guarantee you’re successful in preserving the integrity, quality and texture of the harvest you worked all season to enjoy. I like to freeze herbs in ice cube trays using either water or olive oil. That way, I can just pop them into dishes when needed.

Seed saving is another task to think about in August. It’s not difficult and is a great way to save a few bucks next year, especially if you enjoyed a specific crop this growing season. Saving seeds from heirloom crops ensures that you will be growing the plant you expected to grow when you saved the seeds from these crops. Hybrids, in contrast, may produce seeds with unpredictable characteristics of the parent plant. Most crops only require drying the seeds and storing them in a dark, cool place in an airtight container. Tomatoes are an exception; their seeds have to go through a process of fermentation to remove the gelatinous sac surrounding the seeds before saving them.

Of course, this is also a good time to begin planning for a fall garden, if you’ll be planting one. Join me for Succession Planting & Cover Crops on September 27!