Post and Courier48%
Preserving the Harvest 10%
By Greg Pryor9% Ph.D. Special to The Post9% Courier26%
7/22/2026, 9:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 23 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Optimism Bias, and Overconfidence Bias, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 13.8% saturation with 157 hits. Analysis detected 979 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,135 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 27.1% and a BS Rank of 10% (19,099 of 21,198 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 90.10% of the article peer group.
It’s mid-summer in the Pee Dee and all your hard work in the garden has paid off.
You’re eating fresh produce every day, and now your countertops and refrigerator are full of surplus vegetables.
But now you’re faced with an enviable problem -- what to do with such a bountiful harvest?
In this article, I will describe preserving your harvest by canning, freezing, dehydrating, pickling and fermenting.
For each of these options, I could give a TED talk on the myriad principles and details.
But for now, I will only briefly discuss these methods of food preservation.
For more information, check out reputable websites, books and other references.
Canning
Canning relies upon heat to kill the bacteria and fungi that cause food to spoil.
Furthermore, those microbes and the toxins they produce can make you sick.
Many people have heard about botulism poisoning from canned food, but don’t worry – botulism is easily prevented when canning vegetables properly.
For acidic vegetables, such as tomatoes, a boiling water bath canner can be used.
Canning jars are filled with vegetables, sealed with tight-fitting lids, and submerged in boiling water in a large pot for a specific amount of time.
The heat of boiling water kills most bacteria and fungi.
Botulism-causing bacteria might survive that heat treatment but cannot survive the acidic conditions.
For low-acid vegetables, such as green beans, the filled canning jars need to be heated to a minimum of 250F for a specific amount of time.
But, because water comes to a boil at 212F, simply submerging the jars in boiling water will not work.
For these foods, using a pressure canner is necessary.
Pressure canners work by allowing steam to build up under pressure inside the canner.
As the pressure rises, the temperature rises above that of boiling water.
At 15 psi, a pressure canner will reach 250F.
Modern pressure canners have safety mechanisms that prevent the pressure from reaching dangerous levels, and they are straightforward to use.
If this sounds confusing, complicated, or intimidating, rest assured that canning food at home is safe and easy.
If you follow the guidelines provided in the instruction booklets that come with a pressure canner or boiling-water canner, your canned veggies will be shelf-stable and safe to eat many months from now.
Freezing
You might think that freezing vegetables is simple: just put them in a zipper-style plastic bag and freeze them, right?
For many veggies, freezer burn (which is essentially freeze-drying) will ruin your frozen foods quickly.
Freezer burnt foods are not dangerous to eat, but they are tough and have off-flavors.
If you use zip-seal freezer bags, squeeze as much of the air out before sealing them.
Any bags that have air in them will encourage freezer burn and you will be throwing out a lot of your hard-earned food.
Ideally, you should freeze your produce in vacuum-sealed bags.
A vacuum-sealer increases the cost, but it might be worth it if you freeze a lot of vegetables, meats, and prepared dishes such as casseroles.
Before putting your raw veggies in a zip-seal bag or vacuum-seal bag and freezing them, blanching is recommended.
Blanching is a quick heating and subsequent cooling of raw vegetables.
It deactivates the enzymes that can cause spoilage and preserves some of the color and texture in the vegetables.
I recommend steaming or boiling the veggies for one minute, then chilling them in ice water.
After draining and patting the pieces dry, they are ready for bagging and freezing.
Dehydration
Dried foods include vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, and meat, but the most likely dried food you will preserve for future use is herbs.
For many herbs, dried forms are more often used in cooking than are their fresh counterparts.
The easiest and cheapest way to dry herbs such as basil, oregano, dill, and thyme is to hang them in an indoor room, protected from insects and humidity.
Harvest the plants before flowering and don’t wash them.
Tie the herbs into small bundles, with the leaves still on the stems, and let them hang from a line.
Edible flowers can be dehydrated like herbs and used in making teas.
Alternatively, you can dry herbs and flowers in an oven or electric dehydrator, set at a low temperature (170F or less).
They should be dry within a few hours, but to test them, let them cool and then submit them to the “sealed jar test.”
Put a small sample in an airtight container with a lid on it.
If moisture forms in the jar after several hours, discard the sample and continue drying the herbs.
Pickling
The saltiness and acidity of pickled vegetables delays spoilage, because most bacteria and fungi cannot survive those conditions.
Pickled foods have a shelf life of many months or longer and pickling is an ancient means of food preservation.
Here, I will consider ‘pickling’ as the use of a brine made from vinegar and salt to preserve vegetables.
While there are many different types of vinegar, pickling usually utilizes food-grade white distilled vinegar or apple cider vinegar.
Most Americans consider pickles synonymous with pickled cucumbers, but you can pickle a wide variety of vegetables, including jalapeños, okra, peppers, green beans, beets, onions, carrots, and garlic.
If you research how to make pickles, you will find several options.
The easiest recipes are for refrigerator pickles, which do not rely upon extended heating.
These pickles are the easiest to make and remain crunchy but must be kept in the fridge.
Recipes for canned pickles are more involved, but the final product can be stored at room temperature in sealed canning jars for many months.
Fermentation
Fermentation relies on the growth of harmless live microbes to produce the acidity needed to keep vegetables from spoiling.
Long before vinegar-based pickling, pickling was done by allowing the naturally occurring bacteria on vegetables to produce the acidity required for preservation.
Vegetables are fermented by submerging them in a salty brine and letting nature take its course.
The easiest and most familiar example is fermented cabbage, known as sauerkraut in Germany and kimchi in Korea.
There are many different techniques, equipment, and conditions for various types of vegetable fermentations.
For all of the above means of food preservation, follow the instructions provided by reputable and authoritative references, such as the National Center for Home Food Preservation and the USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning, both of which are available for free online.
As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Happy homesteading.
Pryor has a bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree in biology.
He is a professor at Francis Marion University where he has taught for more than two decades.
He lives on a 130-acre homestead with goats, chickens, gardens, a vineyard, an orchard, and plenty of fish and wild game.
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.