Putting It Up

My strawberry plants this year did the best they've ever done. However, that's not really saying much since all the plants in prior years basically did nothing. This year we each got a few berries to enjoy before the heat turned the plants into crispy little dead things. That doesn't mean we won't be able to enjoy all kinds of strawberry goodness though.

My lovely sister Jenna recently found a smoking deal on strawberries so she ended up buying 18 pounds to put up in her freezer so they would have strawberries as they needed them. The next day I noticed a similar sale on strawberries in my area. I'm a big ol' copy cat. Now, I only bought 8 pounds because my family is not as big as hers, but who knows. The sale goes on for another couple of days so I may just go get more.

"Putting up" strawberries is super easy.



I first washed and hulled the berries.



Then I arranged them on a cookie sheet and put them in the freezer until they were pretty much frozen throughout. This makes it so your strawberries don't freeze into one large strawberry clump that's hard to do much of anything with.



Once they were frozen I could put them into a freezer bag and suck out the extra air. Now they will stay perfectly fresh and delicious for months to come.



And what to do with all of those empty plastic cartons? They are going to make perfect little seed starting greenhouses for some of my fall plants. Nice!