Growing & Preserving Cranberries

'Tis the Season for All Things Cranberry

Cranberries are one of those fruits most people associate with their holiday table, but historically they were an important source of vitamin C all winter long. They keep exceptionally well, literally for 6+ months if kept relatively cool.

Winter seasonal scurvy was a problem for millennia, especially in northern climates with just a short summer season for vitamin C rich fruits. People would scour the hillsides looking for cranberries and loganberries to store for the winter, literally as if their life depended on it.

We grow cranberries here on our homestead, and they’re honestly incredibly easy to grow, tend and harvest. (Ocean spray commercials would have you believe you need a bog and several feet of water to grow them, but that’s just how they do it to save on labor.)

Flood harvesting means you can do the work with machines instead of nimble hands, but the fruit quality suffers. You can actually just grow cranberries as a ground cover in your backyard, and just pick them as you would any other fruit. (The same goes for growing lingonberries, a closely related but much sweeter fruit.)

Our homegrown lingonberries

Harvested by hand at the peak of ripeness, they’re sweeter and more flavorful than commercially grown fruits (and they keep longer, since they’re not bruised by flood harvesting).

Even if you don’t grow your own, this time of year is the best time to stock up on cranberries and preserve them at home.

Cranberry wine is delicious all winter long, and it’s truly stunning on your holiday table. Fermented honey cranberries are a great alternative to traditional cranberry sauce, as are spiced pickled cranberries, which go great with holiday turkey.

Spiced pickled cranberries work wonderfully as a holiday dressing in place of or alongside cranberry sauce.

Freezing and refrigerating work really well for preserving cranberries, and if you’re growing your own off grid, you can even leave them out in the garden and harvest them all winter long. We dig to pick them in the winter months, and then harvest the last ones as soon as snow melts.

It’s like winter foraging, but right in the yard (though of course it works in the wild too, if you find a patch).

Cranberries harvested in March after snow melt

Cranberry canning recipes are some of the easiest ways to put up cranberries without taking up freezer space, and allows you to preserve them right on your pantry shelf.

• Canning Whole Cranberries

• Canning Cranberry Juice

• Canning Pickled Cranberries

What’s your favorite way to preserve cranberries?

Or, how are you enjoying cranberries this time of year? Do you have any favorite ways to use them, like grandma’s famous cranberry orange bread or your aunt’s supurb cranberry pumpkin pie?

Let me know in the comments! I’m always looking for delicious new cranberry recipes.

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Until Next Time,

Ashley at Practical Self Reliance