Why I Prefer Freezing to Canning

Canning is a popular and effective way to store a wide range of fruits and vegetables, but even though I store a lot of what comes out of my garden each year, very little of it gets canned.

Anyone with a large garden will inevitably come up against the reality that there is more food coming out of the garden than can be practically incorporated into a regular diet. Some things, like winter squash and potatoes, are easily stored, and will keep a long time if kept kept relatively cool, but a good deal of garden produce is perishable in the short term. Things like beans, peas, and most greens will barely last a week in the refrigerator. These things need more sophisticated means of long term storage. I am not talking about jam and pickles and stuff like that here - but simply storing produce long-term in as unaltered a state as possible. For some reason that is a mystery to me, a good deal of the discussion online regarding the long-term storage of garden produce is all about canning. Don’t get me wrong - canning is a safe and effective way to store produce when done right… but I find this strange, because so many things keep better and are easier to store when frozen.

When my beans are in full swing I can pick a big bowl of them every two days! There’s no way we can eat them all, so they have to be stored for later.

What is canning?

For the sake of this article, the term canning refers to processed fruits and vegetables that have been heat-treated and stored in vacuum in sealed glass containers (mason jars). Depending on what is being canned, the sealing process may require boiling the jars for a set amount of time with the lids “finger tight”, or it may require the use of a “pressure canner”, which is a device that, due to controlled air pressure, allows water to boil at a temperature above 100 degrees Celsius.