freezing garden herbs, fruit, vegetables

FORGET DIAMONDS. A freezer is a girl’s best friend. (Or a boy’s. Or anybody’s.) I freeze blueberries and peaches for offseason smoothies; all my green herbs for the year, and pestos of everything—including of garlic scapes and arugula. In go extra-thick versions of my favorite soups (dilute when reheating, but save freezer space meantime); easy vegetable stock from garden snippets; tomato and other vegetable sauces (and just whole tomatoes, right off the vine). I often freeze about one-third of my garlic and onion crops, too, rather than watch those alliums start to sprout in the cellar before next spring. A roundup of tactics to try.

One quick tip first: We open the door of the freezer section of our refrigerator over and again, day in and out. That’s bad news for things you hope will last a long time, especially delicate things like herbs in plastic freezer bags. I bought a small (about 3 cubic feet), very efficient freezer for my cellar, and I restock my upstairs freezer gradually from there–meaning the backup freezer’s door is only opened once a month or so. Some things inside it include:

• freeze your herbs (I just did a giant freezer bag of dill, and lots of parsley)
• the right way to freeze peaches
• green beans frozen in tomato sauce (and a baker’s dozen of other ideas)
• making quick vegetable stock
• vegetable soup for the freezer, or freeze pureed soups like greens-sweet potato-sage
• freezing onions and garlic (I do this one in late fall, or even early winter, but if you have a lot of poor-keeper varieties, do it sooner.)
• More basic freezer tips from the National Center for Home Food Preservation