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i've taken my fridge for granted all these years. a little introspection mixed with some spirituality and i've started looking for more primitive; more natural ways of doing things. food storage is tricky though, if you live in a Victorian-era town and don't own land that a smoking hut could be built on. guess i'm lucky i don't eat meat.
my veg sits in a nicely-woven basket on top of my SO's refrigerator. it's nearly spring here, so i'm wondering how i'll go about preserving everything in the summer. it gets hot enough that this will be an issue. still, i'm happy in continuing to buy little and often. hopefully this'll be the year when i learn gardening properly so i can rely on my stemmed friends to keep things fresh until i absolutely need to harvest - allotments are pretty cheap, after all!
any green thumbs have much experience here?
Check out this post from 100 rabits.
It contains a lot of information about preserving foodstuffs.
gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/hundredrabbits/preservation.gmi
Welcome to an exciting journey in living closer to the earth.
I've lived off-grid for the past 9 years in the forested mountains of central Vermont, USA. On the years when my partner and I have focused on our gardens, we've been able to generate plenty of fresh produce during our few warm months. However, we always end up with more than we can eat, especially as the summer progresses and more food is produced each week. Since we have limited power (just solar electricity when it's sunny and firewood during the cold 2/3s of the year), we weren't really able to take advantage of canning. Instead, we have largely made use of three techniques: drying, lacto-fermenting, and root cellaring.
We have a hanging solar dryer which works well for herbs and light things in the summer, but most of the time it is too wet or cold for this to work well. Instead, we like to use our electric dehydrator for preserving all kinds of things. Of course, you can dry sliced fruit, berries, herbs, beans, and so on, but you can also puree fruit and dehydrate it to make fruit jerky or make pasta sauces, chilis, and so on and dehydrate them to create big sheets of dried sauces. We break these up and store them in ziploc bags or mason jars. Later, you can just reconstitute them with warm water and make a quick meal.
Lacto-fermentation is pretty simple once you get your mason jars, salt, and food scale all set up. Start with something simple like sauerkraut. Then be a little more adventurous and make kimchi. Once you've got the hang of these staples, try fermenting cucumbers and sliced beets (in separate jars, of course). These are fantastic on a veggie burger or in a falafel wrap. You can really preserve all kinds of produce this way. We've even stored whole tomatoes with garlic cloves in jars of salt water for months and then strained them out, rinsed them off, and made a somewhat tangy pasta sauce.
Finally, root cellaring (as has already been mentioned by some other folks) is nature's refrigerator. Even if you just have access to a small patch of yard, you can dig a hole deep enough to contain a barrel (or at least a crate or ice chest). Make sure you put it somewhere without much sun if possible and cover it over with something insulating. The earth's temperature (once you get down a few feet from the surface) will stay much cooler than the air temperature above and can be used to extend the life of a number of fruits and veggies like carrots, potatoes, beets, turnips, radishes, apples, pears, and even your brassicas like cabbage, broccoli, and kale.
Have fun and good luck!
Looks to me that you need to learn how to pickle stuff.
Also my grantpa used to store fruits in a large clay container full of weat or barley buried, and potatoes spread across the floor of a dark cold room. It was important for them not to touch one another.
Having a cold basement would help also. A dungeon would do also but be aware of random encounters :p
Herbs and small berries are pretty easily dried, especially if you have enough space to hang a drying rack over your stove. Bigger stuff...you're right to try and eat off the vine as much as possible. Canning works, but it requires a lot of space, planning, and material to do large volumes effectively. If you have a space that could work for a root cellar, that's excellent--bins of moist sand in a cool, dark place will keep onions, tubers, and certain types of apples in fine shape through the year. I know you don't eat meat, but pemmican wrapped in cloth is a good way to preserve fat and meat in the same fashion.
I've been experimenting with solar dryers lately as they would seem suitable for my dry climate, and while it's been a bit of a struggle, I think there's potential there for dehydrating larger amounts of veg. I know some southwest indian tribes dried slices of winter squash, which they would pound into a 'squash flour'. My current goal is to get enough of that to play with in my cuisine this year.
Good luck!