Learn how to keep fruits and vegetables fresh longer with expert tips from Amy Cross of The Cross Legacy. In this podcast transcript, we cover common produce storage mistakes, zero-waste kitchen strategies, and practical ways to make your food last. Ideal for gardeners, home cooks, and anyone tired of wasting produce.
Tips to Keep Your Produce Fresh Longer
This week on the podcast, I sat down with Amy Cross of The Cross Legacy to talk about how to make fresh produce last longer. From cucumbers to avocados, we covered a lot! Below is the edited transcript of our conversation - perfect if you prefer to read or want to refer back to Amy’s best tips.
This is the edited transcript of Episode 25 of HOMEGROWN: Your Backyard Garden Podcast. Small edits were made for readability.
Podcast Transcript:
Fresh-picked produce is one of the biggest rewards of gardening… but it’s so frustrating when those fruits and vegetables spoil before you’ve had a chance to enjoy them.
In this episode, we’re sharing proven tips to keep your harvest - and even store-bought produce - fresh for weeks longer. Do we have tips for you!
Let’s dig in.
Welcome back to HOMEGROWN: Your Backyard Garden Podcast. I’m your host, Kathi Rodgers from OakHillHomestead.com, where I help gardeners grow healthy food, wherever they live.
Today, I’m joined by Amy Cross from The Cross Legacy. Amy is known for her simple, practical methods that help families waste less food and keep produce fresh far longer than you’d think possible.
Her tips have helped thousands of people make the most of their grocery budgets and their garden harvests, and I’m excited to have her here with us today!
Kathi Rodgers: Hi Amy. I'm so glad that you're here with us today. Let's start at the beginning. Tell us about yourself.
Amy Cross: My name is Amy Cross and I'm the founder of The Cross Legacy. That was our family motto. So when I started building this Instagram and social media, that was the name that we chose for this, but I grew up on a 200 acre farm. So a fifth generation 200 acre farm. And then as my husband and I got married, we ended up moving into town, but we still had a backyard garden and chickens.
And I'm a home canner, so I thought when I was going to end up doing something with social media someday it was going to be more like urban homesteading kind of thing. But I ended up, during the pandemic, answering a question of a scared mom saying that she was scared to go to the grocery store and she was scared to take her kids to the grocery store.
That was during the time where we were only going to the grocery store once every two weeks and the shelves were empty and we were washing boxes of things that were coming in, you know, all the things that you remember right at the beginning of the pandemic. And she said that they only had produce for the first four days and then they didn't have produce the rest of the time.
And she was, what am I gonna do with my toddlers? They want berries. And I was just like what do you mean that you only have berries for the first four days? And she said well, my blueberries only last four days, and then they go moldy. And I'm like, the blueberries in my fridge are over a month old.
I go grocery shopping once every three to four weeks and we have fresh produce the whole time. And so I was on Jordan Paige's Facebook page, and Jordan, who had been my hero for a long time, she messaged me that day. 'cause this blew up on her page.
And she messaged me that day and she's like, Amy, you know secrets here that people just don't know. And so she encouraged me to start an Instagram, which I named The Cross Legacy, and she shared it.
Then a couple days later, which was July 3rd, I decided, well, if I'm going to do this, I might as well try to figure out how to put it on a website so people can find it, you know?
So I decided to do Lisa Bass's blogging course that she had open at the time. So from July 1st through 4th, my husband had our kitchen torn down to the studs, and our refrigerator was in the living room. And I had been washing our produce on cardboard boxes with towels on it. You know, like all the things during the middle of a construction project that was happening during the pandemic, so everything was taking longer, you know.
I ended up posting about strawberries in a jar on July 3rd, and it took 12 weeks. On October 8th through 12th, it went absolutely viral.
Kathi: I saw it!
Amy: I was in newspapers in the UK the next day, like it was absolutely crazy.
But it started this trend that I didn't even know was going to be a trend, of people learning that they can keep their produce fresh longer.
Kathi: I remember seeing it, and it was eye-opening to me too. I grow it, but I was not very good at saving it.
So it’s exciting for me to talk to you too, because I'm going get into all your secrets!
Amy: So I've always washed the produce when I brought it home or brought it inside either way, but that's just the way I was raised and what you were supposed to do.
And so it wasn't until about 10 years ago or so, I started really having that calling on my heart: to get plastic out of my kitchen as much as possible.
And we were also foster parents at the time, so we have college age kids. They were teenagers at the time, but college age kids now. And then we have these four under-seven in foster care at our house. And they only knew packages. They only knew fruit snacks and granola bars. They didn't know anything actually came out of the refrigerator. And so when they came here, we're an allergy family, and we buy single ingredient items. It was a big shock, at first, but I knew I could make them happy. But the easiest thing for me to do was to start putting these washed berries into jars. So I could open up the fridge and say, do you want red or do you want blue? Because there were four under-seven and they didn't know the names, you know?
And everybody wanted something different. So if I could open up my fridge and it was beautiful, and it would get them excited to want things out of the refrigerator, you know, and that's where I realized that there was really a secret to everything that I was doing. That washing, it was killing the bugs and mold spores and e coli and listeria and stuff off of the produce items, but then storing it in glass was keeping it fresh a lot longer.
And that's just how strawberries in a jar happened and it's completely changed our life.
Kathi: And a lot of other people's lives too, I'm sure. That is really eye-opening. And it does work better than plastic?
Amy: Plastic is porous. So it used to only last about 10 days when I would store it in plastic. And then when I switched to glass, I realized, blackberries and raspberries will last two to three weeks depending on how far away they came from.
So if they're coming from Mexico or something, they're going to last two weeks. But if you're getting them locally, they're going to last three and then strawberries now last right at that three week mark. Grapes will last four to six weeks and then blueberries will last six to eight weeks in glass. And then, I have a whole book that talks about 75 produce items that last for a month.
Kathi: So what kind of lids do you use on the jars? Are they canning jar lids or do you use the plastic lids that you can buy on Amazon? Or what do you use?
Amy: So for the berries, they actually do better with the plastic lids. Ball calls 'em leak proof. They're not necessarily airtight and they'll let a little bit of the condensation out of the jars.
But other items, like half of an avocado or an onion, they have to be a metal lid, which is completely airtight.
[NOTE: You'll find those leak proof plastic canning jar lids here on Amazon.]
Kathi: That's good to know.
You have helped thousands of people, Amy, and I know that makes the produce last longer. So which ones do they ask you about the most? Is it the berries, the strawberries? Which ones?
Amy: I think greens too is another one, like lettuce and spinach. I can get those to last a long time, a month. Even when I had my TED talk, I traveled six hours with my two week old lettuce and still snapped it on the stage.
Kathi: Oh wow.
Amy: So, lettuce and spinach will last a month, cilantro and parsley will last six weeks. Asparagus will last a month.
Really, everybody is throwing away so much produce. It's really eye-opening. The average family is throwing away 40% to 60% of the food that they're buying.
And when you're starting to think about it, I'm like more in that grown-and-flown parenting age right now and listening to other grown-and-flown kind of parents saying that, oh, we're spending $200 on groceries a week, and it's just two of us, or $250 and we're still going out.
And you know, that's a thousand dollars a month that they're spending on groceries and throwing away $600 of it.
So that's how we're able to keep our grocery budget to $270 a month, $135 per person. There's two of us here and we have zero food waste.
Kathi: That is amazing. Right now everybody needs help with that budget. I have to ask, of course, you did mention avocados. I have a terrible time with avocados. I don't live where they grow, so I can't just run out and pick some, and it's definitely being shipped in here.
I go to the grocery store and I will buy avocados that are different. You know, a bright green one and a green one, and a dark green one, so that they will ripen at different times, right? But they all ripen the same day, and I end up throwing several of them away because they're brown and slimy by that time, or we're sick of them by the time they go bad.
So how do I keep those fresh?
Amy: So first off, even if you don't believe in buying organic, buying organic avocados and organic bananas is really important because those are not sprayed with ethylene. So a lot of them are shipped in and when they arrive they're rock hard, or a banana is like bright green, and then they’re sprayed in the ports and then put on trucks, and then they arrive at the store where they look perfect, but they only are meant to look perfect for two or three days.
So if you can, get it where they're not sprayed with ethylene and they're ripening naturally, you know, the way that they're intended to ripen. That is definitely a cost savings right there. So you might not always think that it's affordable to buy organic or it's not part of your lifestyle, but for those two items, it's really important if you're not using them right away.
But, for avocados, I have kind of a little trick when you're picking them out. If you put your finger and your thumb kind of together and you feel like what that feels like, the little bit of give that it gives on your finger and your thumb together, then that's kind of the feeling that you wanna feel when you're grabbing your avocado.
You want it to not be rock hard. It just has a little bit of give, like you're pinching your finger and your thumb together.
But once you bring them home, and you wash them the way that I teach, and you put them in the crisper drawer with lemons and citrus, they will stay fresh for a month. Once you put them in
the refrigerator, it stops the ripening process.
So I just take a little bit of extra time when I'm at the grocery store to try to pick those perfect ones, and then I bring them home and keep them in the refrigerator. And then they're fresh for the entire month. And then as you cut them in half and then put them in a wide mouth pint jar with a metal lid, then they will stay fresh for about another four to seven days.
Kathi: Do you have to take the pit out or leave it in? Or does that matter?
Amy: If you leave the pit and the skin on half of it, it helps it stay fresh a little bit longer.
Kathi: I'll definitely give that a try because I'm tired of buying them and throwing them away, and they're so good and they have to be shipped in here.
Anything that does go bad in this house, it gets put on the compost pile, so it's not a total waste. But then again, I grew it, I put the time into it, or I had to go and buy it because I can't grow it. I would rather feed my family than the worms.
Amy: Right. That's how I used to feel. We had, we're in the process of moving right now, we're going to be moving in a couple weeks. So we have had backyard chickens for 10 years.
And so I felt like, oh, if it's going out to the chickens, then, you know, it's fine. But then realizing we were working five jobs because we couldn't pay all of our bills and keep up with medical bills and still dealing with groceries. And once we realized that we could get control of our grocery budget is when we were able to have financial freedom and stop working all these extra jobs and, you know, really have that peace of being able to provide for our family.
Kathi: Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the difference between homegrown and store bought produce. You say you do grow some and you also talked about how avocados and bananas are sprayed and treated and all that, and I know that apples and other fruits usually have a coating on them too. How do we get that off? I don't want to eat that.
Amy: So, there's one coating that I just make sure that I don't buy, and that's the Apeel coating. So I do have a soy allergy and supposedly it has soy in it. I just avoid it. And they have this website that you can go to the apeel dot com, and it'll tell you what stores in your area are carrying it and what items.
So, in my area, it's Target and avocados. You could go to Target and get avocados, and you can use it the opposite way too.
Kathi: That is really good to know.
Amy: But for me, I have a soy allergy, so I don't want something that has soy sprayed onto my produce items. The vinegar wash that I teach does help get some of those coatings off. Again, I try to avoid that one.
Kathi: Do all fruits and vegetables belong in the refrigerator? For instance, I've been keeping those avocados on the counter because that helped them to ripen. And now I'm going to start keeping them in the fridge once they're at the right spot.
How about other things?
Amy: So the big one is, a lot of people have a produce bowl on their countertop, and they have these items put together in the bowl that are actually killing each other. So oranges and apples should never be stored near each other. And a lot of people don't know that, and will have them in a bowl together.
And bananas should never be stored near anything.
Kathi: Okay.
Amy: Bananas are going to make everything ripen faster, but it'll also make the banana ripen faster. So if you did have a rock hard avocado and you put them together, it's also going to blacken the bananas sooner.
But anyway, normally in my crisper drawer I'll keep citrus - so lemons and, you know, oranges I'll keep in the crisper drawer. And then you gotta think about when that apple was purchased or rather, when it was picked. So right now, it's middle of summertime, that apple's about 10 months old. No matter if you just got it from the grocery store or not.
So if I happen to have an apple in the middle of the summertime, it's going into the refrigerator, because it has been in cold storage for 10 months. If I'm getting a bushel of apples in the fall, then I will keep those out because they haven't been in the refrigerator.
Two that I think of as food storage is watermelons that people don't really think about. A watermelon will last for about six weeks. So we only go to the grocery store, you know, once a month, once every three to four weeks. And I always get a watermelon and I have one sitting here on my counter and it's over three weeks old right now.
Once I cut it and put it in the refrigerator, then it's going to last for another two weeks, storing it in glass and draining the juice off of it. So, it's a good way to have food security without having to go to the grocery store, knowing that you can have those fruits and vegetables last that entire time and not be wasting anything.
Kathi: Yes, definitely. And we're all trying to put more fruits and vegetables into our diet too, so we have to know how to keep them fresh, we can't go to the store every four days.
Amy: Right.
Kathi: One of the reasons I asked about what to refrigerate and what not to keep in the refrigerator. Cucumbers are another problem for me.
I'm growing cucumbers. Right now I have a box full of cucumbers because I cannot keep up with them. They're just crazy; I only have two plants but they're wild this year. My husband likes them cold when he eats them, so I put some in the refrigerator and within a day they were soft and soggy.
If they're on the counter, they seem to last longer. Is that weird?
Amy: Well, I always wash them when I bring them in and the vinegar wash will kill off any mold spores that are on them. And any critter leftovers that might be on it too. But, I normally store cucumbers in my refrigerator, and it's important what they're stored next to. They need to be stored next to other vegetables in the crisper drawer and not near other fruits.
And then we do, we always joke about it because, except for like if I'm doing a really big canning project, like normally, you know, a hundred pounds of tomatoes or something, we have a fridge in our garage that I call the harvest fridge and that we use during harvest ime, you know, when we have a ton of things in there.
But yeah, storing the cucumbers altogether. And then as they come in, 'cause we do a lot of pickles, then I just make batches of pickles as quickly as I can too. So I know that I can keep the pickles crunchy for the entire year. So I just do it that way.
And then normally I have a bunch of half gallons of pickles down in that refrigerator.
Kathi: And do you usually make refrigerator pickles rather than canning them?
Amy: Yeah, I will never, ever can pickles again. Like we've done everything. I've done the grape leaves, I've done everything with canning pickles. I just don't like it, like they're great for a month or two.
But I have this crunchy pickle recipe that I've been using now for years, and they stay, they get a little more dilly or garlicy over the year, but they stay good for 10 months to a full year.
So we actually still have a jar from last fall when I did them - I'm sorry, when I did them late summer last year - there's still one jar left in the refrigerator that we just eat the whole time. And they're crunchy and great, you know, they have a little bit of bite to them 'cause they get more garlicy as you go. But I will never can pickles again, they get so mushy.
Kathi: Okay. Let's talk about tomatoes. I have always been told that you do not refrigerate tomatoes. Right now I have a two gallon bucket of cherry tomatoes on my counter, and tomorrow I will have another two gallon bucket of cherry tomatoes on the counter.
I know I can can those, you can can tomatoes no matter what kind they are. You don't have to have “canning tomatoes.” So I have done that. But how do you deal with tomatoes and should I keep them on the counter or in the refrigerator?
Amy: So cherry tomatoes, we normally don't have that many of them, but cherry tomatoes I normally store in a glass jar in the refrigerator. My husband actually doesn't like tomatoes, so whenever I'm getting tomatoes in, it's me eating them and I need to make them.
So when you're washing them in the vinegar wash, which will kill off the mold spores, e coli, listeria and any other harmful pathogens, then it will make them stay fresh longer.
And then you also wanna try to keep the vine on them as long as you can. So if the vine pops off of them, that's the same thing for cherries and for grapes also, as long as that vine is still on it or the stem, there's no oxygen getting inside so they don't start deteriorating as quickly.
So if you can take them off the whole vine and bring the whole vine in at a time, it helps.
Kathi: Okay. That's a good tip.
Amy: yeah, garden tomatoes I normally keep on a plate, you know, or on a tray in the kitchen on the counter, and then cherry tomatoes in the refrigerator. But you have buckets of them, so that's kind of exciting.
Like I would be totally - we are moving right now and it's so hard 'cause I'm like all about harvest and wanting to, you know, prepare things for the next year - but I would totally be making some sun-dried tomatoes if I had that many, and packing them in oil.
Kathi: Oh, what a good idea.
Amy: Yeah. And I love too, during tomato season that you can freeze 'em and put them in the freezer and, you know, pull them out all year long. You can just throw them in dishes. And when I had the garden-size tomatoes or Roma tomatoes, I always core them before I put them in the freezer. So I wash them and then core them and that way, skins just slip off right as they're defrosting. And um, I just throw them right in the pan, you know, whatever I’m making.
Kathi: I love that about tomatoes. That's the only way I can peel them. Even if I'm going to use it tomorrow, I throw it in the freezer overnight so that I can get the skin off so easy, and it's the only way to get them off of cherry tomatoes. If I'm going to can cherry tomatoes or whatever they have to be frozen first because it's way too tedious to do that.
How about zucchini and summer squash? Those can be both a blessing and a curse.
Amy: They can. So again, those are items that I would wash in the vinegar wash when I bring them in. And zucchini that are like sizes of cucumbers, you know, or like the size that you would normally get at the grocery store, those should be stored in your crisper drawer with other vegetables, but the ones that are like “leg size” is what I always call them, but the ones that are sun cured, those will actually last in your pantry for months.
Kathi: Really?
Amy: Yeah, summer squash, some of those other squashes, acorn squash, they will last like almost a year in your pantry.
But those large zucchinis, I will let mine grow huge because they will actually last for months and months. So normally around January and February I’m sick of having them in the pantry and I'm trying to use them up the rest of the way.
But definitely all through the fall, through the early winter and then by spring I'm like, okay, we need to make sure we're using up the last of these. But we keep our onions also in the pantry and whenever I go to grab an onion, I kind of check my squashes too. So it's just a really good habit for me to like, oh, I'm grabbing an onion, does this one need to be rotated over? You know, it's just a habit for me to do that.
And then since I'm talking about onions, make sure that you always keep your onions and your potatoes three feet apart, and that will keep them fresh a lot longer too.
Kathi: Ah, okay. I had no idea about zucchini, that it would last that long.
Amy: In the fall time, I normally have them on my countertops, you know, and use them as decor and then I put them in the pantry. But yeah, absolutely, they'll last until early spring.
Kathi: So tell us, how do you help people who are overwhelmed with food waste? Like the lady that you talked about in the beginning, during the pandemic. What could they start doing right now that would make a difference today? Where should they start?
Amy: I always encourage them to wait one more day to go to the grocery store. Like one more day, whatever that is, whatever your schedule is, just try to go one more day. Like really look in your refrigerator and see what you can use up for another day or two.
I always say that I go grocery shopping every three to four weeks. I end up going grocery shopping every four weeks but something mentally happens when I say I only go grocery shopping once a month that I don't like, but at that three week mark, I'm really looking in my refrigerator, like, oh, I still have this I can use and I should take this out of the freezer so I could use this with that, and you know, how am I using up these items?
But getting out of that habit of going to the grocery store every day or every other day and just push it one more day. And then to realize that when you bring your produce home and you actually wash it and put it away, it doesn't take that long.
So it takes me about 30 minutes to wash a month’s worth of produce, and then it lays out to dry and then it takes about 10 minutes to put it in glass jars and put it away in the refrigerator. And my refrigerator looks beautiful, and I'm not worried about pulling out moldy things.
And you know, all of that time that moms think that, oh, I just need to run into the store and do this and grab this. They're not realizing how much it’s affecting their budget, but the time wasted doing that also. So the more you can spread that out just a little tiny bit, whatever that is.
You know, at the beginning we just tried to not go to the grocery store every day so like, oh, I'll just run over to the store. I'll just go grab that at the store, you know, and you run in for an avocado and you walk out with a bag full. Well, that bag-full used to be $25. Now, it's $75.
Kathi: What is your go-to meal when you're not going to the grocery store today? You're going to wait. Your fridge is full of miscellaneous fruits, vegetables, you know, things. What do you do? What's your favorite meal to just throw together?
Amy: Just to throw together... I think we do like stir fries and yakisoba kind of things a lot, you know, 'cause then I have a little bit of protein leftover from this and I can throw this and that together. And we have some organic ramen noodles we can throw in with that. And I make a sauce and you know, it's just really easy and we can do it and my husband can do it out in the Blackstone if I don't wanna do it in the house,
And then, you know, as we go into like fall and winter, there's always, just like at my grandma's house, there's always soup going on. So there's always a pot of something happening, you know, it’s what we used to tease about. But I love being able to take a bunch of different roasted vegetables also and make a marinara sauce. My husband might not necessarily like cauliflower that much, but he doesn't mind if it's mixed in with something else, you know, that I can sneak those things into their diets.
When we were raising our kids and the foster kids, it was really important to me to teach them to eat a rainbow every day. So like when they came in from the door, from school or whatever, I would always have the cutting board ready with, you know, different fruits and vegetables on it. So that's the first snack that they receive when they walk in the door. And then I wouldn't worry so much about what they actually had on their plate at dinnertime, because I knew that when they were hungry and walked in the door, I was feeding them wholesome things.
And then I didn't have to be, at dinnertime, like, did you eat all your veggies? That was just a really good habit to make. And then I've always made high protein dips to go with that, like, cottage cheese and ranch instead of just like a ranch dip, and using more wholesome items. That can boost up those nutrients in them, just something that I've always done.
Kathi: And how about mushrooms?
Amy: So that's another thing my husband won't normally eat. So I have to chop them up really finely and sneak them into onions and then he's fine with them. But, if you store them in a glass jar with a paper towel, they'll last for about three weeks in the refrigerator. The other way to store them is within a brown paper bag in the refrigerator, and still about that same time.
But I like to be able to see everything that's in there. And so I like the jar method better. But the other thing I love to do with mushrooms is I love to dehydrate them, but it smells like swamp.
It smells so bad. So I always try to do it In the late summertime/early fall when I can do a big batch of them and you know, you don't need the A/C on and you can open up the windows and it does smell really bad for 24 hours, but then I can do a whole year's worth of dehydrated mushrooms and I actually like eating them as a snack, so I will take them out of the jar and just eat them instead of having chips or something.
Kathi: I keep my dehydrator in the garage for that very reason.
Any other tips that you would like to share with us today? We definitely want to hear where people can find you, and about your book.
Amy: So, we have a book that's called the Zero Waste Produce Guide that has 75 produce items, A to Z and all the tips that I've been sharing and how to easily store them when you bring them home from the store or in from the garden, and that you can buy on our website, thecrosslegacy.com.
And there's also a blog there that has high protein nut recipes. I'm diabetic, so high protein, low sugar recipes are kind of my go-to. And we're an allergy family, so I'm sharing lots of those kinds of tips. We have like 192,000 followers on Instagram. We are posting on there all of the time and we just reached 5 million views on YouTube.
Kathi: Congratulations!
Amy: It’s cool that we're reaching millions of people through all these platforms every month and really changing lives and, you know, teaching people how to grocery shop better.
So I post all of my grocery hauls and exactly what I spent, and then every two weeks I post meals on YouTube that I've been making for those two weeks. So it started in January, 2025 and now we're like halfway through the year and I've been doing this every two weeks. So you can really see through all the different seasons how I use these ingredients in my house and stick to our grocery budget.
And I'm thecrosslegacy everywhere. It's always those three words, on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and then thecrosslegacy.com.
Gathered Goods
Hand-picked tools, books, and everyday helpers we love!
Amy recommends using vinegar to wash store-bought produce - and if you’d like to make your own vinegar from kitchen scraps, I’ve got a free guide that shows you how! Click here to grab my free vinegar ebooklet so you can make your own vinegar at home.
Plastic lids for canning jars - choose a set of assorted colors or all-white lids. Both types come in a set with both regular and wide mouth lids in the same package. These are the type of jar Amy mentions in our podcast conversation, which will allow a bit of condensation to escape from the jars.
These plastic lids contain silicone rings so your jars will be more air-tight and leak-proof. They also come in sets with both regular mouth and wide mouth lids, and come in assorted colors and all-white lid sets.
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Kathi Rodgers is the gardener and writer behind Oak Hill Homestead (est. 2006) and the host of HOMEGROWN: Your Backyard Garden Podcast. With over 30 years of gardening experience in a variety of climates and soils, she helps new and aspiring gardeners grow healthy, organic food right in their own backyards.
A passionate advocate for simple, self-reliant living, Kathi is the author of multiple ebooks, a published magazine contributor, and shares practical advice with readers who want real-life solutions they can trust.
Kathi lives in Oklahoma, where she grows more cherry tomatoes than she can count and keeps a watchful eye on tornado season. A proud grandma and great-grandma, she believes that wisdom - like a bountiful garden harvest - should be shared.
