Preserving a years worth of fruit

Can I really preserve a years worth of fruit?


Its all very well saying I can grow all the fruit I need to feed my family but can I preserve it all? Will I have enough jars, tubs and tubs saved? Do I have the space to keep it all for a year?

Can I preserve enough fruit? Do I have enough jars, bags and tubs?

For the months June, July, August and September the fruit can be cooked eaten and jam made and eaten straight from the source so that leaves the other 8 months. For the jam I will need 32 jars which when you think about it is a LOT of jars, however I have been saving all my jars for a lot of months now and still have a couple more months to go. I don't only save my jam jars but sauce jars, peanut butter, coffee jar and the list goes on. For the fruit pies and crumble I think its best to freeze the fruit in bags flat in the bottom of the freezer for easy storage which means I will need 64 freezer bags for this. That will only cost £1 for the storage of the fruit for the pies and crumbles. Although we would have a full fruit bowl in the summer months and even October for the late fruiting plants, it won't be that easy in the remaining 7 months. I think the only way to contour this is by freezing the fruit that would be eaten and making extra pies, crumbles, smoothies and other bakes including fruit. This will mean extra storage I produce another 96 bags/tubs of single layer fruit so another £2 for the bags to put this fruit in. So in total I will need 64 jars and 160 bags or tubs to preserve enough fruit for a year.

Do I have enough space for 8 maths supply of fruit,

Sixty four jars for jam is a lot of jars, luckily my kitchen is an large extension to an old victorian house. My kitchen and utility area is actually larger than the downstairs living space, I thank the person that originally built. I should be able to fit the jars in the bottom of one of my cupboards if they are stacked on top of each other,  will just bunch up the tins a bit more in the other cupboards.

Last year I started freezing my own fruit and veg as an experiment, I have a 7ft fridge freezer and also a 5ft freezer. I can fit 24 tubs and bags in each drawer of the tall freezer and there are 6 drawers in total. In order to get 160 bags and tubs frozen I will need to use the whole of the tall freezer, which is a bit impractical. I will need to look into other ways of preserving the fruit to free up more freezer space fro the vegetables that I will need to freeze. 

Other possible ideas for preserving my fruit are canning and drying. I think to free up the freezer space I will try some drying methods as this can we stored in a cupboard for long periods. Some canned fruit can last for years so this is also a possibility. More jars will need to be collected for canning but the dried fruit can easily be stored in sandwich bags and food containers. I will need to be carful to preserved enough for us to have a couple portions of fruit a day.




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