Blanched and frozen, or brined and jarred – different crops keep differently. Here's how to choose for each harvest.
Created by jflgardens.co.uk
A garden glut gives you a happy problem: how to keep it. Freezing and jarring (pickling, canning, jam) each suit different crops and lifestyles. A quick sense of which does what saves you both time and disappointed jars.
Blanched veg like peas, beans, sweetcorn and spinach freeze brilliantly and keep their taste and texture better than any other method. Freezing is quick, needs no special gear, and preserves that fresh-picked flavour when done well.
The trade-off: it runs on your freezer's space and power, and soft fruit and leafy greens don't freeze as well as firm veg.
Pickles, jams and canned tomatoes keep at room temperature for a year or more with no freezer at all. It's the oldest, most dependable no-power method – and a shelf of jars is both storage and a thing of beauty.
It takes more kit and a bit more care (sterilising, brines, setting points), and the result is transformed rather than fresh. You keep pickles to taste like pickles, not fresh beans.
Firm, crisp crops – beans, cauliflower, carrots, courgettes, cucumbers – are superb pickled. Peas, corn, spinach and berries freeze better than they jar. Crops like tomatoes and plums are flexible: freeze the pulp or jar the sauce.
Most kitchen gardeners freeze their everyday veg and jar a little of the best for treats and gifts. That mix gives you maximum variety, spreads the workload, and means a fridge-outage on one method doesn't lose the lot.
From seasonal garden care to a full preserving-style overhaul, the JFL Gardens team works across Surrey and London.
