This is berry good news...

Recently I came upon an idea that got me very excited.  After doing my own experiment, I'm happy to share this new-to-me food storage tip.

Did you know you can store fruits like berries in the fridge, in glass jars, sealed up tight for a longer period of time than if you leave them in the containers they were sold in?   

For how long?  

I don't know for sure, but for quite a bit longer than not storing them this way.

I placed unwashed blueberries in a glass canning jar sealed with a canning lid and canning ring on March 19th.    I didn't remove any air from the jar, and it was only finger tightened.  On April 26th (over a month later) I opened the jar to use the blueberries to make some muffins.  

There was one small little puddle of blueberry juice on the bottom of the jar, but otherwise the blueberries looked perfect.  Not a single one was moldy, or had skin that was compromised.

At this point, I washed them off (for the first time since purchasing them) and let the blueberries dry on a paper towel:

Nothing appears to be wrong with these blueberries.  No smell, no mold growing, and they taste fine.

Now, do I recommend storing berries for over a month in the fridge just because you can?  Well, no...  mostly because I imagine they may have deteriorated in their nutritional content.  And I think these must have been incredibly fresh berries to begin with to have lasted this long.

I would not normally buy blueberries with the intention of storing them this long, but the point is... storing them this way will probably keep them intact and usable for far longer than just popping them in the fridge in their original containers - which for me, almost inevitably means I'm going to end up throwing out at least a few (if not many) berries before I get around to using them.    

I also tried this with strawberries and blackberries.  The strawberries lasted at least a week - maybe longer - before one started getting soft, and I stopped the experiment at that point.  I don't know about you, but before this I had never found a way to store strawberries so that they stayed edible for more than a day or two, max.  

I think I broke into the blackberries about two weeks after storing them, and they were fine. 

When I buy large quantities of berries on sale, my plan is always to wash and freeze quickly what I don't think we'll eat right away.  I will continue to do that, but from now on, I will be taking the fresh berries I expect we'll eat soon out of their plastic containers and storing them in glass jars that I can seal tightly with a lid. That way, if they don't get eaten right away I will have bought myself at least some extra days, maybe more than a week, before they go bad because I lost track of them.

Of course, your mileage may vary with this.  So many things can affect how long fresh fruit will stay edible once we've gotten it home.  How long ago was it picked?  How far did it have to travel?  What conditions was it subjected to before I bought it?  How did I treat it once I got it home?  The number of things that affect fresh produce is kind of endless, and most things are out of our control.  The only thing really in my control is how I store it once I get it home.

So tell me... did you know about this way of storing berries?   It's so incredibly easy, I don't understand why this isn't common knowledge?  Or am I just the last person in the world to know about this?