How about jam? It'll last longer than berries.
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2025
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Dehydrate them. Dehydrated fruit makes for tasty and healthy snacks.
You can also pulverize them into powder after drying them and make your own sports drink mix!
You can just freeze them for smoothies. Everyone is saying jam and that’s a good idea but it’s a whole process and has to be sanitary. It’s not super hard, obviously, and it’s worth learning how to do but the first time can be a bit daunting and you really have to follow every step. A smoothie is easy.
Another pretty easy thing is to make ice cream and freeze it. A restaurant I cooked at had fig trees that would go nuts once a year and we’d have buckets of figs. We basically made vanilla ice cream and added figs. That was delicious and ice cream obviously freezes well.
As someone that cans, I'd never suggest a canning option to anyone but someone who has already canned. It's tiring! It's hot! It can be sticky!
Amazing end results if you like doing it though!
Raspberry jam is insanely easy to make. Equal weights of fruit and sugar, heat slowly to dissolve the sugar, then boil rapidly for five minutes. Bung in jars and screw the lids on while still hot.
The only sterile part is the jars - I put them in a lowish oven for ten minutes or so after washing them. Lids are washed, dried and swabbed with vinegar.
The sterilization part is what I was concerned about. People who make jam the first time don’t necessarily know how critical that is. You really cannot take shortcuts and be like, “I just washed it. It’s fine.”
I'm still eating blackcurrant jam I made in 2013. I use jars whose lids have the pop-up seals. Pour hot jam into hot jars, screw on the lid and the little thingie in the middle should pop down as it cools, showing it's sealed. When you open the jar it pops up again, to show the seal is broken. Just about all my jars come from a particular brand of pitted kalamata olives I'm partial to. Perfect size for jam.
When I was a child mum sealed the jars of jam with a disc of cellophane that had been dampened in vinegar, fastened with a rubber band. Pretty good seal actually, it tightened as the jam cooled. But if the jam went mouldy we'd just scrape the mould off - no big deal.
Pies
Freeze them
Dry them
Jam
Juice, pie, jam. Pie being my favorite 😋😋
You can put them in the freezer for use in months when they don’t grow.
Jelly, jam, compote, syrups for juices, and liqueur are all long-lasting things you can make with them.
Sell them at a Farmers Market? Donate them to a local homeless shelter or food bank?
or churches for donations
my mother in law has given a lot of produce from her garden to the different places that will take it. Hearing her recall the number of years and the amounts donated makes me happy. Just thinking of that is good medicine
No such thing
Like the others: jam.
Fruit wine or a melomel.
I used to make raspberry wine. Super easy. Some raspberries, sugar, and yeast. Put it in a barrel, wait a while, get shitfaced.
It's definitely easy to do. If OP freezes them first then mashes them later it could help break down some of the sugars, but it's a good time, stays a while, and makes easy gift giving.
Too many?
If I had them, I'd process the strawberries by generously cutting the tops off (don't throw them away!) then putting them on a parchment lined sheet pan to freeze, then once frozen, into freezer safe bags. With the tops, make kvass. Put them in a pitcher with a lot of sugar and some spices, fill the pitcher with boiled and cooled water. Cover loosely with a towel and stir twice a day until fizzy. I have some in my fridge right now and it's delicious!
Sorbet!
+1. Buy an ice cream maker and use these to make sorbet; you'll never have too many strawberries and raspberries again.
I imagine spicy or sour berry-based sauces could go really well with things from salads to BBQ.
I like berries, especially frozen, in my water or lemonade.
Let neighbourhood kids know they're welcome to eat from your garden, and you can teach them to weed while you help them pick.
Jam? Jelly?
Jam.
Jam.
Get a tortoise and feed the berries to it 👍
(That's what we do at our house)
Freezer Jam:
https://southernbite.com/easy-strawberry-freezer-jam/
It's not shelf stable, but it will keep in the fridge for 3 weeks or in the freezer for a year.
Alternatively brew them into a nice berry wine. You can take this recipe for skeeterpee (it's fun to say lol) and add the berries in primary fermentation. I've got some mixed berry Skeeterpee finishing up right now and it is really good from the small bit I've tasted
Jams amd in plain yogurt to "pump it up"
Amd we freeze them for use on fresh made waffles later in the year.
Yeah making jam is quite easy. Basically just add some sugar and pectin and put it on the stove until it's jam.
Otherwise, put them in the freezer.
Making jam is not trivial but it I think that makes it rewarding! My dad has made jam and marmalade for as long as I've known and it's always an event. My parents have hundreds of jars (for some reason my dad calls them bottles? Only in a jam context though!) and every so often he cooks up a giant pot of jam with an old-fashioned sugar thermometer, testing the batch on a piece of baking paper, then bottling everything up. He often did it with my sister, who now also makes her own jam.
He labels all the jars, and we've opened jars that were... I dunno, a decade old I'm sure, and they were totally fine. So they will definitely keep for a long time!
Making jam is trivial.
You boil the fruit, and if it's not gummy enough, you add pectin.
Done, jam.
How much sugar do you add?
How long do you boil it for? (You don't know; you have to monitor the temperature)
How long does putting it all in jars take you? (ages)
It's not difficult, but it is time consuming and not trivial.
Strawberry shortcake for every meal
Me please
We freeze them and give away some
Jam or give away to your neighbours.
I have a pretty good canning set up, and strawberry jam is the first recipe in the book.
Enlists them in the army.
Freeze them. During the off season thaw some in the microwave and put it warm on ice cream.
Food fight!
could make juice, then make something with the pulp too