Field Trip to a North Carolina Family Garden Part

III

Preserving Vegetables and Fruits From the Garden

Students will learn how families preserve the fruits and vegetables that they grow in their gardens.

This Power Point shows photographs of different ways to

preserve food.

Why do families preserve fruits and

vegetables?

• To eat healthier, more natural foods.• To save money. • To carry on family traditions.

How do families preserve their garden

foods?

• Foods may be frozen to preserve their freshness.

• Foods can also be canned in glass jars by using hot, boiling water and a pressure canner or cold water canner.

What kind of tools do families need to

preserve foods?

• Pressure canner or cold water canner

• Freezer • Freezer bags or containers • Glass jars (quart and pint sizes),

lids, and rims• Salt

Pressure canner

The pressure canner is a cooking pot that gets very hot and preserves the food through high heat and pressure.

Pressure canner

Here are jars inside the canner. You must use a jar lifter to take them out of the pot because they are very hot.

Cold water canner

The cold water canner does not build up pressure. Instead, it preserves the foods through the heat of boiling water.

Canning tools

Stove, canning jar, measuring cup, funnel, jar lifter, rims, lids, and salt.

This picture shows the outside of an upright freezer. It looks a lot like your refrigerator. Wait until you see what is inside.

Upright freezer

The inside of the freezer holds all of the vegetables that were preserved from the garden.You can see corn, squash, October beans, tomatoes and green peppers.

Open up…

The door of the upright freezer also holds food such as strawberries and mustard greens. There are also lots of good treats from the grocery store that cannot be grown in the family garden.

Don’t forget the door…

In order to prepare the foods for freezing or canning, the family must

follow some important steps:

• Always wash all foods that come from the garden because they will have dirt and fertilizer on them. Fertilizer is used to help plants grow.

• Cut off all bad places that have spoiled. • When preserving green beans, always remove the

strings. • When preserving corn, always remove the husks

(outer covering) and the silks (inner covering).

Preparations

Preparing yellow squash

The family must wash the squash, then remove the ends before slicing and freezing.

Preparing and freezing corn

To prepare corn, the family must remove the husk and silk and wash the cob. The corn can be stored whole or scraped from the cob as kernels. They put it in bags or plastic containers to be frozen.

Making pickles

The family picks and scrubs cucumbers and puts them in jars. They pour boiling brine over the cucumbers to pickle them and add sprigs of dill, an herb, to flavor the pickles.

An array of canned vegetables

Lots of vegetables, including beets, peppers, and tomatoes. Some canned vegetables, such as green beans, can stay fresh as long as 4 years.

What did we learn?

• Families can preserve their garden foods by freezing or canning them.

• All kind of foods can be preserved, including summer squash, green beans, October beans, green pepper, and corn.

• Cucumbers can be made into pickles.• Garden food offers families a healthy

alternative for meals. • Garden foods often cost less than grocery

store foods.

Where did all of these pictures come from?

5: Penny Willard6: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amerk/233408163/in/set-

72157594267462308/ 7: Penny Willard8: Penny Willard9: Penny Willard10: Penny Willard11: Penny Willard13: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bengarland/sets/7215760739250467614: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dazed81/sets/72157594239405124

Lower left: Penny Willard15:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/86571141@N00/sets/72157607075211243

16: http://www.flickr.com/photos/35256155@N00/1358043302

These photos appear in the Creative Commons and can be found at their original source under the following URLs (listed by slide number). The rest of the photos were taken by Penny Willard.