How To Preserve Enough Food For Winter

It has been a while since my last post and a lot has happened since. At this point of the year, I preserve food daily.

The harvest season is in full swing and the days are growing darker. There’s so much to do and not much time to do it, so planning is essential.

Preparing for 2025

I have planted the winter greens, some black radishes and all of the onions and garlic for 2025. This year I decided to pre-order my alliums and go all out. I ended up ordering elephant garlic – like a cross between garlic and onion in appearance, but more closely related to leeks than to garlic. I also purchased two garlic varieties, shallots, red onions and yellow onions.

The order was beautifully packed without plastic and I even received a matte written guide. I honestly doubted whether it was even possible for me to plant all of it in about 3 sqm, but I did it. Instead of emptying the containers where I grew the summer vegetables, I kept them as is and planted onions and winter greens in them. It means the garden will be more crowded than usual this winter, but it also means more food and less work next year.

Preparing for winter

This week I harvested the last of the summer vegetables and some of the food I grow all year such as green onions, herbs and root vegetables. I have quite a lot of root vegetables that won’t be ready for weeks, maybe longer, so I left them in the soil.

I emptied and took apart the rain water collector and I rearranged the containers to make things easier for winter. No mushrooms yet, but there’s still time. I did find some wild mushrooms in the garden, and I had them for dinner.

At this point in the season I have harvested 50 kg of food and foraged for 55 kg of food. I hope to reach at least 65 kg foraged food and 65 kg homegrown food. Most humans need around one kg of food per day, so my goal is to provide my household with at least 365 kg of food per year. It will take a few more years and more space to achieve that, but it is absolutely possible.

Preserving the harvest

There are many ways to preserve your harvest, but I have definitely had a preference for dehydrating this year. I have been dehydrating my harvest since late August. I have waterbath canned some as well, such as apples, peaches and lilacs. I’ve made jelly, marmalade, syrup, lemonade and more. I also made a spicy glace with tomatoes, berries and chilli paste earlier this year. I call it Black death as the berries made it really dark and rich in both flavour and colour.

With my dehydrator I have preserved garlic, apples, potatoes, leaves, greens, herbs and kimchi flakes. I purchased some persimmon through crowdfarming and I will likely dehydrate some of them as well.

I will dehydrate more potatoes and probably some mushrooms and herbs as well. But all and all, I feel pretty good about winter, food-wise. I have potatoes and rice, plenty of dehydrated vegetables, fermented pastes, fruit preserves, canned sauces, dry beans, tempeh, and soon plenty of mushrooms as well.

It is important to know what you eat and how much you eat. Knowing those two things will make it easier to make a plan for what foods you need to preserve and how much you’ll need of each type of food. Keeping staples in good supply all year round is very important for your food security.

Zero waste gardening

Yes I know, a zero waste life is almost impossible. But not when it comes to gardening. You can deliberately choose to grow plants that are edible from root to leaf. And then you can harvest various parts of the plants throughout the season.

Some examples are bean plants, squash, pumpkin, radishes, root vegetables and alliums. I harvest the greens throughout the season, along with the flowers and the ”fruit”, and at the end of the season I harvest the entire plants. I wash and dehydrate all the parts that still look good, and I compost the rest. There’s usually very little left to compost. However, the following year that compost will help me grow more food.

At the end of the season – around the first frost – I also gather the greens from all the plants that have finished growing, and I wash them well. I turn them into kimchi and let them ferment for 18 to 24 hours. Then I cut the kimchi into smaller pieces, dehydrate everything and then I have kimchi flakes. It is my zero waste version of a very nutritious furikake.

Don’t miss out on free food

Leaves and greens from pumpkin, squash, cucumber, sunflowers, sunchokes, beans, radishes, sweet potatoes and root vegetables are all incredibly nutritious. It is such a waste to feed them to the compost and then buy leafy greens that fall short in terms of nutrition. It’s better to use everything from the plants we’ve worked so hard to grow.

So much food waste is produced when plants and parts of the plants are rejected because they’re not pretty enough or because people aren’t aware they’re edible. One such example is carrot tops. They are delicious, nutritious, can replace parsley and can be turned into an excellent pesto. I dehydrate mine along with the rest of the greens and use them in noodle dishes, soups and hotpots from autumn to spring.

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Have a great week!